Osiris Oliphant

“To Fortune:

Thou purblind puppet for a Tradesmans stall,
Thou limping Lady of the Hospital;

Empress of Epicures and belly-gods,
With whom I vow to live and die at odds;

Thou mole-eye'd, owl-eye'd, Countess for a spittle,
That gives to some too much, to me too little;

Thou whirly-gig, and ratsbane of my life,
Which by thy wheel dost seem some wheelwrights wife;

Thou make-bate to a discontented mind,
Thou water-bubble, wasteful puff of wind;

Thou flying-feather of a woodcocks wing,
Thou Heathenish and very Pagan thing;

Thou Misers friend, thou worthy Gallants foe,
Thou scurvy Ballad of I wale in woe;

Thou that all discontentment dost provoke,
Thou worse to me then this Tobacco smoke;

Thou that Rage, Fury, Envy dost importune,
I'll tickle thee, thou scurvy minded Fortune.”
― Samuel Rowlands, The Melancholie Knight

“What! the passions of a Nero, of a Tiberius, could be useful? - Without doubt, very useful in corporate industry. Let us explain this mystery.

Nero is a being born with bloodthirsty inclinations. Nature wants him to take sides in some of the butchery groups of his phalanx from the age of three. If he had a horror of bloodshed, he could not passionately exercise a job in the butcheries, get used to it for pleasure from an early age, and become at twenty a very skilled butcher, as nature wants.
But I hear Agrippina reply: What a ridiculous vision! to pretend that my son, heir to the throne of the world, is made for the profession of butcher! - On this, Agrippina has her son indoctrinated by Seneca and other scholars who will teach him that nature is vicious, that bloodthirsty inclinations are odious, that a young prince should love only commerce and the Charter, and that he would debase himself by sneaking around with butchers.
Here, then, is one passion of young Nero hindered, and twenty other of his tastes will be similarly thwarted by the healthy doctrines of gentle and pure morality. Such will be the opinion of Seneca; but Horace and La Fontaine are of a very different opinion, and judge much more soundly when they say:

If you chase her out the door,
she comes back through the window.”
― Charles Fourier

“Eh! what does it matter that he begins at a young age with the job of butcher, since everything is linked in the system of societary studies! The work of butchery will lead like others to all sciences. Indeed, Nero will learn early to judge by eye the difference in the flesh and fat of animals fed with such and such fodder, fattened according to such and such system. These remarks are linked to the rivalries which exist between the butchers of Tibur and those of the neighboring phalanxes, then between the Tiburians partisans or rivals of such and such system of fertilizer. Nero will thus become an agronomist on fodder and vegetables given to livestock. This knowledge will lead him to others.
Let us add that the young Nero, raised in a Phalanx, will have satisfied there from the age of 4 twenty other inclinations that the wise Seneca would have stifled for the good of morality, and these various tastes, developed early, will lead the young Nero to twenty kinds of useful studies. Little by little he will find himself initiated into all the sciences by the sole impulse of these inclinations reputed to be vicious in Civilization and repressed in children.
What happens today with this repression? Nature is hindered, but it is not destroyed; it was not able, from a young age, to exercise itself usefully on industry, it will reappear later, usque recurret , and the bloodthirsty inclinations of Nero will be exercised at the expense of humanity. It is therefore not Nero who is vicious, it is Civilization which did not know how to use its inclinations, and which forces them to reappear in countermarch or recurrence, an effect which is always disastrous and which disguises the passions and makes them as harmful as they would have been useful.”
― Charles Fourier

“The unity of man and nature is the fundamental principle of a sound society.”
― Charles Fourier