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Don't you know that it has been an expensive work to persuade the Khonds of Goomsoor to give up roasting each other in the name of Heaven? Very fine is Epictetus, but wilt he be your bail? Will Diogenes bring home legs of mutton? Can you breakfast upon the simple fact that riches have wings and use them? Can you lunch upon vanitas vanitatum? Are loaves and fishes intrinsically wicked?
He was one of 'these tanti men. 'I told Paoli that in the very heat of youth I felt the nom est tanti, the omnia vanitas of one who has exhausted all the sweets of his being, and is weary with dull repetition. I told him that I had almost become for ever incapable of taking a part in active life. Boswell's Corsica, ed. 1879, p. 193.
The selfish languor and indifference of to-day's possession is the consequence of the selfish ardour of yesterday's pursuit: the scorn and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is but the lassitude of the sick appetite palled with pleasure: the insolence of the successful parvenu is only the necessary continuance of the career of the needy struggler: our mental changes are like our grey hairs or our wrinkles but the fulfilment of the plan of mortal growth and decay: that which is snow-white now was glossy black once; that which is sluggish obesity to-day was boisterous rosy health a few years back; that calm weariness, benevolent, resigned, and disappointed, was ambition, fierce and violent, but a few years since, and has only settled into submissive repose after many a battle and defeat.
The ugly nakedness of Europe has brought to shame all those who used to bow before Europe's mask. It was a silken shining mask hiding the inner ugliness and poverty of Europe. The mask was called: culture, civilisation, progress, modernism. All was only vanitas vanitatum and povertas povertatum. When the soul fled away, what remained was empty, ugly and dangerous.
I was happier at peace. I rose and warmed myself by the fire. Dale regarded me uncomprehendingly. "You look as if the prospect bored you to tears. I thought you would be delighted." "Vanitas vanitatum," said I. "Omnia vanitas." "Rot!" said Dale. "It's true." "I must fetch Eleanor Faversham back from Sicily," said Dale. "Don't," said I.
Vanitas vanitatum was the text of many a homily that she delivered, and a certain sadness replaced the sense of malice that had once possessed her. Once more than aggressive, now she had had bestowed upon her in some degree that gift of understanding that engenders sympathy.
Unlearn him his own cognomen, teach him another name, too late, too late. We cannot afford the delay." "I don't see why he should be called any name at all. He observes your signs just as well without." "If I had but discovered that at the beginning. Pity! Such a fine name too. Sir Isaac! /Vanitas vanitatum!/ What desire chiefly kindles the ambitious?
Omnia vanitas! Is that indeed the proper comment on our lives, coming, as it does in this case, from one who might have made his own all that life has to bestow? Yet he was never to be seen at court, and has lived here almost as an exile. Was our "Great King Lewis" jealous of a true grand seigneur or grand monarque by natural gift and the favour of heaven, that he could not endure his presence?
Certainly it was worth while to have come so far only to see him, and hear him give his pontifical blessing, in a voice feeble but of infinite sweetness, and with an inexpressibly graceful movement of the hands. A veritable grand seigneur! Omnia vanitas! he seems to say, yet with a profound resignation, which makes the things we are most of us so fondly occupied with look petty enough.
Pinxit, who has been starving in his garret, and whose walls are lined with dusty canvas, shall lay on colors which shall charm the world; his old, neglected frames shall be brought out, and the world shall find Apollos in his men, and Venuses in his women, which before were only meaner beauties; Vanitas shall loiter round his easel and command his pencil with ready gold; and Art-Journals shall rehearse his praises in strange, cabalistic words.
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