/lit/ - Literature

>>18421904
Xenophon, Julius Caesar, Flavius Josephus, Ammianus Marcellinus
*drops mic*
Don't you dare @ me, Butters.

>>18206903

>>16686324
When, Socrates, I hear you say such things time and time again, I’m
very impressed and I praise you to the skies; and also when you go on
to the next point, that those who discipline the body while neglecting the
soul are doing something else of the same sort, neglecting that which
should rule while busying themselves with that which should be ruled;
and also when you say that it’s better to leave unused what you don’t
know how to use: if someone doesn’t know how to use his eyes or his
ears or his whole body, it would be better for him not to use it all, whether
for seeing or hearing or anything else, rather than use it in some haphazard
way. In fact, the same applies to skills; for someone who doesn’t know
how to use his own lyre will hardly be able to use his neighbor’s lyre, nor
will someone who doesn’t know how to use the lyre of others be capable
of using his own lyre, nor any other instrument or possession whatsoever.
Your speech delivers a wonderful coup de grace when it concludes that
someone who doesn’t know how to use his soul is better off putting his
soul to rest and not living at all rather than leading a life in which his
actions are based on nothing but personal whim. If for some reason he
must live, it would be better for such a man to live as a slave than to be b
free, handing over the rudder of his mind, like that of a ship, to somebody
else who knows that skill of steering men which you, Socrates, often call
politics, the very same skill, you say, as the judicial skill and justice.
I dare say I never objected nor, I believe, ever will object to these argu- c
ments, nor to many other eloquent ones like them, to the effect that virtue
is teachable and that more care should be devoted to one’s self than to
anything else. I consider them to be extremely beneficial and extremely
effective in turning us in the right direction; they can really rouse us as if
we’d been sleeping. I was therefore very interested in what would come
next after such arguments; at first I asked not you, Socrates, but your
companions and fellow enthusiasts, or friends, or whatever we should call
their relationship to you. And I first questioned those who are thought by
d you to be really something; I asked them what argument would come next
and put my case to them in a style somewhat like your own:

>>14912335
>No replies
Brainlets can't even

>>14909675
Damnnnnnnnnn

"From whatever new points of view the Buddha's system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides, like the walls of a well, dug in sandy soil. It has, in fact, no foundation whatever to rest upon and hence the attempts to use it as a guide in the practical concerns of life are mere folly. Moreover Buddha, by propounding the three mutually contradicting systems, teaching respectively the reality of the external world, the reality of ideas only and general nothingness, has himself made it clear that he was a man given to make incoherent assertions or else that hatred of all beings induced him to propound absurd doctrines by accepting which they would become thoroughly confused…Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness."

Adi Shankara - Brahma Sutra Bhasya 2.2.32.

>"From whatever new points of view the Buddha's system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides, like the walls of a well, dug in sandy soil. It has, in fact, no foundation whatever to rest upon and hence the attempts to use it as a guide in the practical concerns of life are mere folly. Moreover Buddha, by propounding the three mutually contradicting systems, teaching respectively the reality of the external world, the reality of ideas only and general nothingness, has himself made it clear that he was a man given to make incoherent assertions or else that hatred of all beings induced him to propound absurd doctrines by accepting which they would become thoroughly confused…Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness."

Adi Shankara - Brahma Sutra Bhasya 2.2.32.


well there you have it from the man himself