"So study as if you were to live forever; so live as if you were to die tomorrow." Edmund Rich
I have just read that this quote is first of all attributed to Edmund Rich, shortly before he became the first known Oxford Master of Arts.
I cannot find any supporting evidence and hope that y'all can help me with this endeavour.
Thank you, all4
"Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?" Former Sen. Jesse Helms (R)
Life is hard. After all, it kills you. Katharine Hepburn
Posts: 932 | Location: The best place in the world, home, where the heart is. | Registered: 07-23-07
I must be missing something, Zendam. How could Edmund Rich
quote: I found it all over the Net as attributed to Gandhi. Perhaps Rich was paraphrasing him?:
paraphrase someone who was born 629 years after he, Rich, died? Might it be the other way around, that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), was paraphrasing Edmund Rich? Thanks for your effort, still looking, all4.
"Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?" Former Sen. Jesse Helms (R)
Life is hard. After all, it kills you. Katharine Hepburn
Posts: 932 | Location: The best place in the world, home, where the heart is. | Registered: 07-23-07
Also found attributed thusly: Saint Isidore of Seville, Thomas More, and unattributed.
The most reliable citing I found stated it this way:
quote:How much better was the advice of that philosopher, wise although without Christ, who said: "Live as if you were to die tomorrow, study as if you were to live for ever." ~ Erasmus [1466-1536], The Antibarbarians (written around 1520) Translated and annotated by Margaret Mann Phillips Footnote [regarding the quotation]: This quotation and comment are an addition of 1520. The philosopher has not been identified.
[The information for the book is stated as follows: Literary and Educational Writings By Desiderius Erasmus Translated by C.R. Thompson, Sir R.A.B. Mynors Published by University of Toronto Press, 1978]
So, the point being that this rather well researched and cited book provides no source for the quotation. Found at
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
I appreciate the time y'all have spent helping me out. Have gained some valuable information.
Thanks, all4
"Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?" Former Sen. Jesse Helms (R)
Life is hard. After all, it kills you. Katharine Hepburn
Posts: 932 | Location: The best place in the world, home, where the heart is. | Registered: 07-23-07
Disce quasi semper victurus. Vive quasi semper moriturus. Gilles li Muisis (c. 1272 — 15, 1352) (Thesaurus Proverbiorum Medii Aevi, Bd. 11 // books.google.com).
Posts: 59 | Location: Moscow, Russia | Registered: 04-30-07
Disce quasi semper victurus. Vive quasi semper moriturus. Gilles li Muisis (c. 1272 — 1352) Thesaurus Proverbiorum Medii Aevi, Bd. 11 // books.google.com.
Posts: 59 | Location: Moscow, Russia | Registered: 04-30-07
The quote appears in Robert Bacon's biography of St Edmund Rich. Bacon (d. 1248) wrote of St Edmund: "Discere scilicet, quasi semper victurus ; vivere quasi cras moriturus. In istis precipue fervor illius et diligencia versabatur." (Therefore learn as if to live forever; live as if to die tomorrow. Before anything he turned his passion and diligence to this.) (Cambridge MS C. 12.9, f iii v col i)
(Quoted in Wallace, Edmund of Canterbury, London, 1893) (http://www.archive.org/details/lifeofstedmundof00walluoft)
Bacon doesn't attribute the motto to St Edmund, but almost seems to suppose that his reader already knows it.
