Rex Warner > Quotes

“It was a day when I was preparing a speech to be delivered in praise of the Emporor; there would be a lot of lies in the speech and they would be applauded by those who knew that they were lies."
The Confessions of St. Augustine”
― Rex Warner, translator, The Confessions of Saint Augustine

“Excellence is always a matter of effort, and no one is capable of more than a certain amount of effort.”
― Rex Warner, Pericles, el Ateniense

“Such is the ability of man to believe in what at any time he finds it convenient to believe, they may actually have convinced themselves that they were speaking the truth.”
― Rex Warner, Pericles, el Ateniense

“If we are to believe in gods at all, we must believe them to be wiser and better than men.”
― Rex Warner, Pericles, el Ateniense

“Because an argument is used hypocritically, it does not necessarily follow that it is untrue.”
― Rex Warner, Pericles, el Ateniense

“The arguments themselves did not appear to me to be any better simply because they were better expressed; eloquence did not make them true."
St. Augustine page 85”
― Rex Warner, translator

“It is undoubtedly rare for a man not to soon grow tired of a woman, but it is impossible to maintain that everything rare is undesirable.”
― Rex Warner, Pericles, el Ateniense

“Understanding is forgiveness.

- Sonnet XV”
― Rex Warner, Poems and Contradictions

“Justice,” he whispered, stretching out his hands as though in confident appeal to some impartial court, “justice that can be demonstrated mathematically, that is what I have to give.”
― Rex Warner, The Professor

“I think that the plausible speaker Who is a villain deserves the greatest punishment. Confident in his tongue's power to adorn evil, He stops at nothing. Yet he is not really wise. As in your case. There is no need to put on the airs Of a clever speaker, for one word will lay you flat.”
― Rex Warner, Medea