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Quote by Benvenuto Cellini

“My lords, for more than half an hour you've not stopped questioning me about some fantastic story or other; one could in fact say that you're babbling, or rambling. By babbling, I mean, that you're talking nonsense; by rambling, that you're saying nothing at all.”

Book:The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

Work

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

The book offers an intimate look into the life of Benvenuto Cellini, a prominent figure of the Renaissance, through his own eyes. It includes his experiences as a sculptor, goldsmith, and adventurer, providing insights into the artistic and social landscape of the time. more

Author

Benvenuto Cellini

Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and writer, born on November 3, 1500, and died on February 13, 1571. He is known for his exquisite craftsmanship and contributions to the art of the Renaissance. more

“There is a story that Simonides was dining at the house of a wealthy nobleman named Scopas at Crannon in Thessaly, and chanted a lyric poem which he had composed in honor of his host, in which he followed the custom of the poets by including for decorative purposes a long passage referring to Castor and Pollux; whereupon Scopas with excessive meanness told him he would pay him half the fee agreed on for the poem, and if he liked he might apply for the balance to his sons of Tyndaraus, as they had gone halves in the panegyric. The story runs that a little later a message was brought to Simonides to go outside, as two young men were standing at the door who earnestly requested him to come out; so he rose from his seat and went out, and could not see anybody; but in the interval of his absence the roof of the hall where Scopas was giving the banquet fell in, crushing Scopas himself and his relations underneath the ruins and killing them; and when their friends wanted to bury them but were altogether unable to know them apart as they had been completely crushed, the story goes that Simonides was enabled by his recollection of the place in which each of them had been reclining at table to identify them for separate interment; and that this circumstance suggested to him the discovery of the truth that the best aid to clearness of memory consists in orderly arrangement. He inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty must select localities and form mental images of the facts they wish to remember and store those images in the localities, with the result that the arrangement of the localities will preserve the order of the facts, and the images of the facts will designate the facts themselves, and we shall employ the localities and images respectively as a wax writing tablet and the letters written on it.”

Memory Simonides Cicero De Oratore Loci

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“When Simonides was discussing wisdom and riches with Hieron's wife, and she asked him which was better, to become wise or to become wealthy, he replied, 'To become wealthy. For I see the wise sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.”

Aristotle Simonides

Book:Rhetoric

Source: Rhetoric

“Stranger, go back to Sparta and tell our people that we who were slain obeyed the code.”

Sparta Simonides

Author:Simonides

“One thousand years, ten thousand years are but a tiny dot, the smallest segment of a point, an invisible hair.”

Willis Barnstone Simonides