Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil du Châtelet

Quote by Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil du Châtelet

“Among all books, those of reasoning seem the most susceptible of good translations. Reason and morality belong to all countries. The genius of language, this bane of translators, is less noticeable in books where only ideas have to be conveyed, and where style is not the first merit, whereas works of imagination can be rarely transmitted from one person to another, for, in order to translate a good poet, you would have to be as good a one as he.”

Quote by Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil du Châtelet

Work

Reason, Illusion, and Passion: Philosophical Works

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil du Châtelet

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil du Châtelet. more

You May Also Like

“— For my purpose I can work on at present by the light of one or two ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas. — I see. I quite see your point. — I need them only for my own use and guidance until I have done something for myself by their light. If the lamp smokes or smells I shall try to trim it. If it does not give light enough I shall sell it and buy another.”

“Using the tools developed by physicists in the last century, biologists in this century are poised to enact their own scientific revolution. Time will tell whether years from now another book will describe how "biologists changed the future." But on thing is for sure---we will not be able to embrace and participate in that future without the discipline, curiosity, questioning, and reasoning that science requires.”

“These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one. Royal Society members and French Encyclopædists are in the Chariot, availing themselves whilst they may of any occasion to preach the Gospels of Reason, denouncing all that was once Magic, though too often in smirking tropes upon the Church of Rome,— visitations, bleeding statues, medical impossibilities,— no, no, far too foreign. One may be allowed an occasional Cock Lane Ghost,— otherwise, for any more in that Article, one must turn to Gothick Fictions, folded acceptably between the covers of Books.”

“Man is finite, man's reason lives in preliminary concerns; but man is also aware of his potential infinity, and this awareness appears as his ultimate concern, as faith. If reason is grasped by an ultimate concern, it is driven beyond itself; but it does not cease to be reason, finite reason. The ecstatic experience of an ultimate concern does not destroy the structure of reason. Ecstasy is fulfilled, not denied, rationality.”