Whereof QUOTES

1 " As for the tokens whereof thou ask me, I may tell thee of them in part: but as touching thy life, I am not sent to shew thee. "

― COMPTON GAGE

2 " As for you, you're unwise: how may you then speak of these things whereof thou ask you? "

― COMPTON GAGE

3 " As concerning the things whereof thou asked me, I will tell thee; for the evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come. "

― COMPTON GAGE

4 " There is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, 'See, this is new?' it had been already of old time, which was before us. "

― COMPTON GAGE

5 " What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since everyone hath every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you.
On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new.
Speak of the spring and foison of the year;
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear,
And you in every blessèd shape we know.
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart. "

― William Shakespeare , Shakespeare's Sonnets

6 " Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud/ Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon/ Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage./ Far off from these a slow and silent stream,/ Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls/ Her wat'ry Labyrinth whereof who drinks,/ Forthwith his former state and being forgets,/ Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain. "

― John Milton , Paradise Lost

7 " Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet, #1)

8 " The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other - he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy - but it would be the only strictly correct method. My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. "

― Ludwig Wittgenstein , Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

9 " It is therefore worthwhile, to search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, and moderate our persuasions. "

― John Locke , An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

10 " Wittgenstein likes to assert: " Whereof we cannot speak we must be silent" . But skilfully using our hands and manipulating our thoughts can be plausible options to make ourselves understood. So, if we can’t say it, we can show and depict it. Whereof we cannot speak we can paint! (" Happy days are back again" ) "

11 " There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof I
hope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not
understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound
is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence
is printed in a different character shall be judged to contain something
extraordinary either of wit or sublime. "

― Jonathan Swift , A Tale of a Tub

12 " I neither oblige the belief of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own. Nor have I stood with others computing or collating years and chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious about the time and circumstance of things, whereof the substance is so much in doubt. By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes. "

― John Milton , History of Britain

13 " n sooth, I know not why I am so sad:It wearies me; you say it wearies you;But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,I am to learn;And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,That I have much ado to know myself. "

14 " And, indeed it is a very pleasant thing for to ride forth in the dawning of a Springtime day. For then the little birds do sing their sweetest song, all joining in one joyous medley, whereof one may scarce tell one note from another, so multitudinous is that pretty roundelay; then do the growing things of the earth smell the sweetest in the freshness of the early daytime—the fair flowers, the shrubs, and the blossoms upon the trees; then doth the dew bespangle all the sward as with an incredible multitude of jewels of various colors; then is all the world sweet and clean and new, as though it had been fresh created for him who came to roam abroad so early in the morning. "

― Howard Pyle , The Story of King Arthur and His Knights

15 " Seventy years I regard as the limit of the life of man. In these seventy years are contained, without reckoning intercalary months, twenty-five thousand and two hundred days. Add an intercalary month to every other year, that the seasons may come round at the right time, and there will be, besides the seventy years, thirty-five such months, making an addition of one thousand and fifty days. The whole number of the days contained in the seventy years will thus be twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty, whereof not one but will produce events unlike the rest. Hence man is wholly accident. "

― Herodotus

16 " Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. "

17 " Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty. "

― Jeff Wheeler , Fireblood (Whispers from Mirrowen, #1)

18 " I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that whereof we cannot speak. "