Randomday, with Latin Quote Detection

"Men are most apt to believe what they least understand." -a quote by Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD

Or was it?

This quote came up today on cryptograms.org, where I can frequently be found. I love it when the quotes are classical, not so much when the quotes are by Jack Handey, Justin Bieber or Homer Simpson. In fact, because I'm weird this way, I have taken it on myself to be a bit of a quote detective for any quotes that come up as English translations of Latin authors. I will google and try to find the Latin source quote, and then paste it into the "comments" box that the site provides for the entertainment of its users. In this way I feel I am contributing a bit to the sum total of human knowledge, and not just wasting hours trying to once again reclaim my position on the top 100 solvers of all time (get distracted for a month or two, and the world passes you by. Story of my life).

So I opened another few tabs on my browser and started googling. The English came up quite easily, but many quote sites are inaccurate and just paste other quote sites... you really have to verify. (Quote research is on my mind lately because the Kindle First book I chose this month was on just this subject). This quote was a little more interesting than many I've done because it is also attributed to Michel de Montaigne. I tried translating through Google and did a search for Pliny and words like "aptissimi intelligere minime credere." I googled Naturalis Historia (Pliny the Elder's magnum opus) and some of these keywords and still found nothing. Eventually I found a fuller version of the original: "Men are most apt to believe what they least understand, and through the lust of human wit obscure things are credited." However this traced more likely to Michel de Montaigne, and eventually I found HIS Latin version: Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis quae non intelligunt. Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur.

At this point I figured I was home free and would soon find the quote and its source in Pliny. I assumed Montaigne had borrowed the quote verbatim from Pliny, so I searched those Latin words. It was quite confusing, but turns out that the second half came not from Pliny but from Tacitus, the Histories. And the first half, the one that cryptograms had as Pliny? Well, I finally found the original Pliny, not exactly as Montaigne had given it: "minus credunt, quae ad salutem suam pertinent, si intelligunt." Or, people believe less, in things that pertain to their health, if they understand them. This turned up in several treatises on ancient medicine written in the last hundred years. Montaigne had crafted his take on it himself, not using Pliny's Latin words at all and with the sentiment turned around.

So, armed with this fruit of over an hour of painstaking research, I clicked on the tab of my browser for the Cryptograms quote that started it all... and I missed it by that much. In other words, I ended up collapsing that tab altogether. I was going to note the original Latin by Montaigne and suggest that it should be credited to him rather than Pliny, and also give Pliny's Latin for comparison. But once you collapse a Cryptogram solve screen, it's gone forever, or at least until the next time you get that exact quote out of the randomized umpty-thousand quotes on that site. So here I am, pouring out my Randomday woes to the blog. Such is my life: I am drawn to arcane disciplines that require inordinate amounts of time and painstaking attention to detail, and that nobody else really cares that much about.

What would Donald Trump say? "Sad!"

Maybe I'll just go knit something.

Back-to-School quotes

Tertia's first day of public school 8th grade was yesterday.  I am grateful my happiest child is the one I'm sending off to the educational situation where I have the least involvement and familiarity with it; I still worry about her, but she will be all right.  It's her gift.  She also has a very cheerful, efficient and punctual bus driver, same as last year.  Any other mom could probably confirm how beneficial that is!

As for me, I've spent the last two days in mandatory inservice.  Secundus and Quarta will join me Monday for the first day of school, at which we are expected to hit the ground running.  I was just up at the campus this morning, and I do have a desk now.  The paint is drying in the room where it will be.  I have three classrooms to set up as much Latin information as I am able to fit onto 1-2 bulletin boards and a bit of shelf space.  I have an entire year's worth of lesson plans canned from last year; I will need to manually change the dates and insert any different information -- that massive bit of text editing will take anywhere from an hour to 3 days, depending on variables I haven't calculated yet.  My biggest bit of copying is done (I added a ream of paper twice).  I would kind of like to know the names of the kids I am teaching before I walk into class Monday, but it will probably be okay.  I'm not quite so sure about the carpool.  Back to school will work because... there is no other option.  The moms and the teachers of the world need to make it work.

So without further ado, I will close with a series of quotes (from the cryptograms.org website I've been playing obsessively lately) that for some reason made me think of the back to school cycle.

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"The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin."
— Heinrich Heine

"Grade school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life."

— John Rogers

"Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them."

— Paul Hawken

"The sooner you make your first five thousand mistakes the sooner you will be able to correct them."

— Kimon Nicolaides

"I never guess. It is a shocking habit -- destructive to the logical faculty. "

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others. "

— Confucius

The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid."

— Lady Bird Johnson

"A human being must have occupation if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world."

— Dorothy L. Sayers

"Life is mostly froth and bubble. Two things stand like stone - Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own."

— Adam L. Gordon

"When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over. "

— George Macdonald