Famous quotes containing the words universal, common and/or ancestor:
“The philosopher’s conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men’s, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The difference between human vision and the image perceived by the faceted eye of an insect may be compared with the difference between a half-tone block made with the very finest screen and the corresponding picture as represented by the very coarse screening used in common newspaper pictorial reproduction. The same comparison holds good between the way Gogol saw things and the way average readers and average writers see things.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“I cannot yet begin to understand
Why we are proud that an ancestor knew
The crazy Poe, who was not of our kind
Bats in the belfry that round and round flew
In vapors not quite wholesome for the mind.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)