"Glenn Beck: Tears of a Clown"
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The Tea Party -- informed by the madness of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter -- would wisely heed this ancient counsel, whichever of the following sources is its origin.
- Account no man happy till he dies.
- Circumstances rule men and not men circumstances.
- Herodotus, Book 7, Ch. 49; Misattributed to Euripedes in "The Imperial Four" by Professor Creasy in Bentley's Miscellany Vol. 33 (January 1853), p. 22
- Variant translation: Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
- Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
- Anonymous ancient proverb, wrongly attributed to Euripides. The version here is quoted as a "heathen proverb" in Daniel, a Model for Young Men (1854) by William Anderson Scott. The origin of the mis-attribution to Euripides is unknown. Several variants are quoted in ancient texts, as follows.
- Variants and derived paraphrases:
- For cunningly of old
was the celebrated saying revealed:
evil sometimes seems good
to a man whose mind
a god leads to destruction.- Sophocles, Antigone 620-3, a play pre-dating any of Euripides' surviving plays. An ancient commentary explains the passage as a paraphrase of the following, from another, earlier poet.
- When a god plans harm against a man,
he first damages the mind of the man he is plotting against.- Quoted in the scholia vetera to Sophocles' Antigone 620ff., without attribution. The meter (iambic trimeter) suggests that the source of the quotation is a tragic play.
- For whenever the anger of divine spirits harms someone,
it first does this: it steals away his mind
and good sense, and turns his thought to foolishness,
so that he should know nothing of his mistakes.- Attributed to "some of the old poets" by Lycurgus of Athens in his Oratio In Leocratem [Oration Against Leocrates], section 92. Again, the meter suggests that the source is a tragic play. These lines are misattributed to the much earlier semi-mythical statesman Lycurgus of Sparta in a footnote of recent editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and other works.
- The gods do nothing until they have blinded the minds of the wicked.
- Variant in ''Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1906), compiled by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 433.
- Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.
- Publilius Syrus, Maxim 911
- The devil when he purports any evil against man, first perverts his mind.
- As quoted by Athenagoras of Athens [citation needed]
- quem Iuppiter vult perdere, dementat prius.
- "Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first sends mad"; neo-Latin version. "A maxim of obscure origin which may have been invented in Cambridge about 1640" -- Taylor, The Proverb (1931). Probably a variant of the line "He whom the gods love dies young", derived from Menander's play The Double Deceiver via Plautus (Bacchides 816-7).
- quem (or quos) Deus perdere vult, dementat prius.
- "Whom God wishes to destroy, he first sends mad." -- A Christianised version of the above.
- Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
- This variant is spoken by Prometheus, in The Masque of Pandora (1875) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
- As quoted in George Fox Interpreted: The Religion, Revelations, Motives and Mission of George Fox (1881) by Thomas Ellwood Longshore, p. 154
- Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.
- As quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 16th edition (1992)
- Nor do the gods appear in warrior's armour clad
To strike them down with sword and spear
Those whom they would destroy
They first make mad. - Bhartṛhari, 7th c. AD; as quoted in John Brough,Poems from the Sanskrit, (1968), p, 67
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