MenedemusМенедем
1 passageотрывков: 1
Each date opens its day beside the list, with these passages marked.Каждая дата открывает свой день рядом со списком, где отрывки этого автора отмечены.
3. Великое благо иметь то, чего мы желаем; еще более великое благо ничего не желать, кроме того, что мы имеем.
3. It is a great good to have what we desire; it is a still greater good to desire nothing but what we have.
From Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers · reworded by Tolstoy (more).
Not in Leo Tolstoy as EditorThe change from wanting “the right things” to desiring “nothing but what we have” is in Boiste’s French dictionary, which Tolstoy translated closely.
What Tolstoy read · P.-C.-V. Boiste, Dictionnaire universel de la langue française, ed. C. Nodier and L. BarréC'est un grand bien d'avoir ce qu'on désire; c'en est un bien plus grand de ne désirer que ce que l'on a. [Ménédème.]
Source text: archive.orgOriginal · Ancient GreekΚαί ποτέ τινος ἀκούσας ὡς μέγιστον ἀγαθὸν εἴη τὸ πάντων ἐπιτυγχάνειν ὧν τις ἐπιθυμεῖ, εἶπε, πολὺ δὲ μεῖζον τὸ ἐπιθυμεῖν ὧν δεῖ.
Source text: raw.githubusercontent.comIn English · R. D. Hicks, 1925On hearing some one say that the greatest good was to get all you want, he rejoined, "To want the right things is a far greater good."
Source text: en.wikisource.orgDetails
The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, II.136 (life of Menedemus); in Boiste s.v. "Désirer".
Tolstoy translates Boiste's dictionary closely, an example under "Désirer" signed "[Ménédème.]": "It is a great good to have what one desires; it is a far greater one to desire only what one has", with «ничего не желать, кроме того, что мы имеем» (to desire nothing but what we have) for "ne désirer que ce que l'on a". The saying is Menedemus's reply in Diogenes Laertius II.136, and the French changed its sense before Tolstoy: to a man who said the greatest good was to get everything one desires, Menedemus answered that "far greater is to desire what one ought" (ὧν δεῖ; Hicks: "To want the right things is a far greater good"). Boiste turns "what one ought" into "what one has", so that a saying about right desire becomes one about contentment; the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1778, article "Menedemus", not saved) tells it in the same form ("a much greater to desire nothing but what we have"). The Jubilee name index has no entry for Menedemus.