Pittacus of MytileneПиттак Митиленский
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.
4. Те люди, которые употребляют свой разум на ненужные предметы, похожи на ночных птиц, которые видят в темноте, но слепнут при солнечном свете. Их ум очень проницателен, когда они употребляют его на научные пустяки, но он перестает видеть, когда его поражает истинный свет.
4. Those people who use their reason on needless things are like night birds, which see in the dark but go blind in the light of the sun. Their mind is very keen when they use it on scientific trifles, but it ceases to see when the true light strikes it.
Source not found yet (more).
Related · Aristotle, Metaphysics… ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ τῶν νυκτερίδων ὄμματα πρὸς τὸ φέγγος ἔχει τὸ μεθʼ ἡμέραν, οὕτω καὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς ὁ νοῦς πρὸς τὰ τῇ φύσει φανερώτατα πάντων.
Source text: raw.githubusercontent.comDetails
Not found yet.
Not found. The Jubilee name index identifies «Питтакус» only as one of the Seven Sages (vol. 41, p. 538). None of the sayings of Pittacus in Diogenes Laertius or Moralistes anciens is this one, and its "scientific trifles" and "true light" sound modern. The image of the night birds, who see in the dark and are blinded by daylight, is Aristotle's (Metaphysics II.1): "as the eyes of bats are to the light of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all" (related); there it describes the weakness of every human mind before the highest truths, here the minds that waste themselves on useless things. The signature is doubtful; the source Tolstoy read was not identified.
Searched: Moralistes anciens (1841), whose lives and sayings of the Seven Sages include Pittacus; Boiste's Dictionnaire universel (1851); Ramage's Greek and Latin Authors; Diogenes Laertius (Hicks) and the other saved texts naming Pittacus; the saved sources for "night birds", "birds of night", "oiseaux de nuit", "Nachtvögel"; Thoughts of Wise Men (1903) and Jubilee vols. 41–43 and 45; web searches in English and French.