Translators From England

"... God not only punisheth the wicked, but proveth and trieth the just and righteous (howbeit there is no man innocent in his sight) by diverse troubles in this life, declaring thereby, that they are not his bastards, but his dear sons, and that he loveth them."

"In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun, which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course."

"For as soon as the Bible was cast aside, and no more put in exercise, then began every one of his own head to write whatsoever came into his brain and that seemed to be good in his own eyes: and so grew the darkness of men's traditions."

"The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning."

"... and where it is taught and known, it lighteneth all darknesses, comforteth all sorry hearts, leaveth no poor man unhelped, suffereth nothing amiss unamended, letteth no prince be disobeyed, permitteth no heresy to be preached; but reformeth all things, amendeth that is amiss, and setteth every thing in order."

"... and have ever an eye to the words of scripture, ..."

"In the Psalms we learn how to resort only unto God in all our troubles, to seek help at him, to call only upon him, to settle our minds by patience, and how we ought in prosperity to be thankful unto him."

"... to live after the law of God, and to lead a virtuous conversation, is the greatest praise that thou canst give unto his doctrine."

"if thou find ought therein that thou understandest not, or that appeareth to be repugnant, give no temeritous nor hasty judgment thereof: but ascribe it to thine own ignorance, not to the scripture, ..."

"... be ever reading, exhorting, and teaching in God's word, that the people of God run not unto other doctrines ..."

"... it bringeth all goodness with it, it bringeth learning, it gendereth understanding, it causeth good works, it maketh children of obedience; briefly, it teacheth all estates their office and duty."

"And above all things fashion thy life and conversation according to the doctrine of the holy ghost therein, that thou mayest be partaker of the good promises of God in the Bible, and be heir of his blessing in Christ."

"If thou be a preacher, and hast the oversight of the flock of Christ, awake and feed Christ's sheep with a good heart ..."

"... take these words of Scripture into thy heart, and be not only an outward hearer, but a doer thereafter, and practice thyself therein, that thou mayest feel in thine heart, the sweet promises thereof for thy consolation in all trouble, and for the sure establishing of thy hope in Christ, ..."

"... when thou readest scripture, be wise and circumspect: ..."

"... the word of God is the only truth that driveth awaye all lies, and discloseth all Juggling and deceit, ..."

"... seeing that light is come into the world, love no more the works of darkness, receive not the grace of God in vain."

"Christ was the true prophet, the true Messiah, and the only true Saviour of the world, sent of his heavenly father to suffer the most cruel, most shameful, and most necessary death for our redemption: according to the meaning of the prophesy truly understood."

"... defend the faith, yea even the true faith of Christ, not dreams, not fables, not heresy, not papistical inventions, but the uncorrupted faith of God’s most holy word, ..."

"For the ungodly talie and ymagin thus amonge themselves (but not right:) The tyme of oure life is but short and tedious, and when a man is once gone, he hath nomore joye ner pleasure, nether knowe we eny man that turneth agayne from death: for we are borne of naught, and we shal be herafter as though we had never bene. For oure breth is as a smoke in oure nostrels, and the wordes as a sparck to move oure herte. As for oure body, it shalbe very asshes that are quenched, and oure soule shal vanish as the soft ayre. Oure life shall passe awaye as the trace of a cloude, and come to naught as the myst that is dryven awaye with the beames of the Sonne, and put downe with the heate therof. Oure name also shalbe forgotten by litle and litle, and no man shal have oure workes in remembraunce.For oure tyme is a very shadow that passeth awaye, and after oure ende there is no returnynge, for it is fast sealed, so that no man commeth agayne. Come on therfore, let us enjoye the pleasures that there are, and let us soone use the creature like as in youth. We wil fyll oure selves with good wyne and oyntment, there shal no floure of the tyme go by us. We wil crowne oure selves with roses afore they be wythered. There shal be no fayre medowe, but oure lust shal go thorow it. Let every one of you be partaker of oure volupteousnes. Let us leave some token of oure pleasure in every place, for that is oure porcion, els gett we nothinge. ...Soch thinges do the ungodly ymagin, and go astraye, for their owne wickednes hath blynded them. As for the misteries of God, they understonde them not : they nether hope for the rewarde of righteousnesse, ner regarde the worshipe that holy soules shall have. For God created man to be undestroied, yee after the ymage of his awne licknesse made he him. Neverthelesse thorow envye of the devell came death in to the worlde, and they that holde of his syde, do as he doth.But the soules of the righteous are in the hande of God, and the payne of death shal not touch them. In the sight of the unwyse they appeare to dye, and their ende is taken for very destruccion. The waye of the righteous is judged to be utter destruccion, but they are in rest. And though they suffre payne before men, yet is their hope full of immortalite."

"For as false doctrine is the original cause of all evil plagues and destruction, so is the true executing of the law of God and the preaching of the same, the mother of all godly prosperity."

"... the scripture of God teacheth us every thing sufficiently, both what we ought to do, and what we ought to leave undone; whom we are bound to obey, and whom we should not obey; therefore (I say) it causeth all prosperity, and setteth every thing in frame; ..."

"I that my slender oaten pipe in verse was wont to sound Of woods, and next to that I taught for husbandmen the ground, How fruit unto their greedy lust they might constrain to bring, A work of thanks: Lo now of Mars, and dreadful wars I sing, Of arms, and of the man of Troy, that first by fatal flight Did thence arrive to Lavine land, that now Italia hight."

"'Philology' was for a long time limited to linguistic studies, and was regarded as only including grammar, lexicography, exegesis, and textual and literary criticism; but, since the time of Wolf, it has been generally understood in a wider sence, as including the study of ancient life in all its phases, as handed down to us in the literature, the inscriptions, and the monuments, of Greece and Rome ..."

"In Petrarch we readily recognise a link between the mediaeval and the modern world. He was fully conscious of belonging in a peculiar sense to a transitional time. He describes himself as placed on the confines of two peoples, and as looking backwards as well as forwards ..."

"Experimental Science is represented by Bacon, in the sixth part of the Opus Maius, as a general method for the purpose of checking the results reached by mathematical processes, and also of prompting further researches in fresh fields of inquiry. He saw its bearing and its importance as a universal method of research."

"Steaming onwards to the south-east between Methana and Ægina, we passed close under the island of Poros, with its hilly slopes clothed with groves of citron, an island which once bore the name of Calaureia, and was the scene of the death of Demosthenes. It was here that he sought sanctuary from the emissaries of Antipater in the temple of Poseidon."

"The Koran cannot be translated. That is the belief of old-fashioned Sheykhs and the view of the present writer. The Book is here rendered almost literally and every effort has been made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Koran, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy. It is only an attempt to present the meaning of the Koran – and peradventure something of the charm – in English. It can never take the place of the Koran in Arabic, nor is it meant to do so."

"Thus Wilson, in a letter to his parents, noted that "the Aryan tribes in conquering India, urged by the Brahmanas, made war against the Turanian demon worship. . . . It is among the Turanian races, . . . which have no organized priest-hood and bewitching literature, that the converts to Christianity are most numerous" (quoted in Devendraswarup 1993, 35)."

"“By annihilating native literature, by sweeping away from all sources of pride and pleasure in their own mental efforts, by rendering a whole people dependent upon a remote and unknown country for all their ideas and the words in which to clothe them, we should degrade their character, depress their energies and render them incapable of aspiring to any intellectual distinction.”"

"These lectures were written to help candidates for a prize of Pound Sterling 200- given by John Muir, a well-known old Haileybury man and great Sanskrit scholar, for the best refutation of the Hindu Religious System."

"The Brahmans who compiled," says H. H. Wilson, "a code Hindu law, by command of Warren Hastings preface their performance by affirming the equal merit of every form of religious worship. Contrarities of belief, and diversities of religion, they say, are in fact part of the scheme of Providence; for as a painter gives beauty to a picture by a variety of colours, or as a gardener embellishes his garden with flowers of every hue, so God appointed to every tribe its own religion.""

"The earliest seat of the Hindus within the confines of Hindusthān was undoubtedly the eastern confines of the Panjab. The holy land of Manu and the Purānas lies between the Drishadwatī and Saraswatī rivers, the Caggar [Ghaggar] and Sursooty [Sarsuti] of our barbarous maps. Various adventures of the first princes and most famous sages occur in this vicinity; and the Āshramas, or religious domiciles, of several of the latter are placed on the banks of the Saraswatī . . . These indications render it certain, that whatever seeds were imported from without, it was in the country adjacent to the Saraswatī river that they were first planted, and cultivated and reared in Hindusthān."

"The system of learning Bengalee among the natives .... their notion of learning Bengalee was by learning Sanscrit. If you make a man a good Sanscrit scholar he will be able to write Bengalee with perfect accuracy and elegance.... Bengalee is the language most akin to Sanscrit. I have taken pains to ascertain the proportion of Sanscrit in the first 500 words... they amount to 350.... Sanscrit forms the very body of most of the dialects, particularly of Upper India, and though it is not so essentially a part of the languages of Southern India, yet it enters so largely into the composition of even the language of Malabar, that four-fifths of the words are Sanscrit."

"We must confess that we are disposed to look upon this limit |two hundred years for the Brahmanas] as much too brief for the establishment of an elaborate ritual, for the appropriation of all the spiritual authority by the Brahmans, for the distinctions of races or the institutions of caste, and for the mysticism and speculation of the Aranyakas or Upanishads: a period of five centuries would not seem to be too protracted for such a complete remodelling of the primitive system and its wide dissemination through all those parts of India where the Brahmans have spread."

"As in its original language, we see the roots and shoots of the languages of Greek and Latin, of Celt, Teuton and Slavonian, so the deities, the myths and the religious beliefs and practices of the Veda throw a flood of light upon the religions of all European countries before the introduction of Christianity. As the science of comparative philology could hardly have existed without the study of Sanskrit, so the comparative history of the religions of the world would have been impossible without the study of the Veda."

"In making the present attempt to improve on the performance of predecessors, and to produce something which might be accepted as echoing however faintly the sublime rhetoric of the Arabic Koran, I have been at pain to study the intricate and richly varied rhythms which—apart from the message itself—constitutes the Koran’s undeniable claim to rank amongst the greatest literary masterpieces of mankind."

"Men ignorant of letters, studious for their bellies, and ignominiously lazy."

"Friendship's an abstract of this noble flame, 'Tis love refined and purged from all its dross, The next to angel's love, if not the same, As strong as passion is, though not so gross: It antedates a glad eternity And is an heaven in epitome."

"I did but see him and he disappeared, I did but pluck the rose-bud and it fell, A sorrow unforeseen and scarcely feared, For ill can mortals their afflictions spell."

"Essential honour must be in a friend, Not such as every breath fans to and fro; But born within, is its own judge and end, And dares not sin, though sure that none should know. Where friendship's spoke, honesty's understood; For none can be a friend that is not good."

"I sing the goodly armes, and that Chieftaine Who great Sepulchre of our Lord did free. Much with his hande, much wrought he with his braine; Much in that glorious conquest suffred hee: And hell in vaine hitselfe opposde, in vaine The mixed troopes Asian and Libick flee To armes, for Heaven him favour'd, and he drew To sacred ensignes his straid mates anew."

"Now was it night, when in deepe rest enrol'd Are waves and windes, and mute the world doth show Weari'd the beasts, and those that bottome hold Of billow'd sea, and of moyst streames that flow, And who are lodged in cave, or pen'd in fold, And painted flyers in oblivion low, Under their secret horrours silenced, Stilled their cares, and their harts suppelled."

"A Chinese poem is at best a hard nut to crack."

"[The Tao-Tê-Ching] is interesting as a collection of many genuine utterances of Lao Tzŭ, sandwiched however between thick wads of padding from which little meaning can be extracted except by enthusiasts who curiously enough disagree absolutely among themselves."

"Flowers fade and fly, and flying fill the sky; Their bloom departs, their perfume gone, yet who stands pitying by? ... Oh, let me sadly bury them beside these steps to-night! ... Farewell, dear flowers, for ever now, thus buried as 'twas best, I have not yet divined when I with you shall sink to rest. I who can bury flowers like this a laughing-stock shall be; I cannot say in days to come what hands shall bury me. See how when spring begins to fail each opening floweret fades; So too there is a time of age and death for beauteous maids; And when the fleeting spring is gone, and days of beauty o'er, Flowers fall, and lovely maidens die, and both are known no more."

"Dear Land of Flowers, forgive me!—that I took These snatches from thy glittering wealth of song, And twisted to the uses of a book Strains that to alien harps can ne'er belong.Thy gems shine purer in their native bed Concealed, beyond the pry of vulgar eyes; And there, through labyrinths of language led, The patient student grasps the glowing prize.Yet many, in their race toward other goals, May joy to feel, albeit at second-hand, Some far faint heart-throb of poetic souls Whose breath makes incense in the Flowery Land."

"It must however always be borne in mind that translators are but traitors at the best, and that translations may be moonlight and water while the originals are sunlight and wine."

"During the four hundred years of Han supremacy the march of civilization went steadily forward. Paper and ink were invented, and also the camel's-hair brush, both of which gave a great impetus to the arts of writing and painting."

"It was on his return journey that Pao-yü's father heard of the success and disappearance of his son. Torn by conflicting emotions he hurried on, in his haste to reach home and aid in unravelling the secret of Pao-yü's hiding-place. One moonlight night, his boat lay anchored alongside the shore, which a storm of the previous day had wrapped in a mantle of snow. He was sitting writing at a table, when suddenly, through the half-open door, advancing towards him over the bow of the boat, his silhouette sharply defined against the surrounding snow, he saw the figure of a shaven-headed Buddhist priest. The priest knelt down, and struck his head four times upon the ground, and then, without a word, turned back to join two other priests who were awaiting him. The three vanished as imperceptibly as they had come; before, indeed, the astonished father was able to realise that he had been, for the last time, face to face with Pao-yü!"