Nero Knowledge Quotes

I've always believed in the Nero Wolfe theory of knowledge. You can just sit quietly in your room - according to Pascal, the activity that if practiced more assiduously would free humanity from most of its troubles, but that was before e-mail - and through sheer mental effort force the tiniest snippets of information to yield the entire story of which they are a fragment, because the whole truth is contained in every particle of it, the way every human cell contains our DNA.

Wolfe nodded. “The letter-writer’s arrangement is even more adroit. Not only is there no risk of contact, there is no possible line of approach. But she must be found, and I have considered two procedures. One would be extremely expensive and might take many months. The other would require the cooperation of men who were close friends or associates of Mr. Valdon. From Mrs. Valdon’s suggestions four names were selected: yours. On her behalf I ask each of you to make a list of the names of all women with whom, to your knowledge, Richard Valdon was in contact during the months of March, April, and May, nineteen-sixty-one. Last year. All women, however brief the contact and regardless of its nature. May I have it soon? Say by tomorrow evening?

I rule not like Nitocris over beasts of burden, as are the effeminate nations of the East, nor like Semiramis, over tradesmen and traffickers, nor like the man-woman, Nero, over slaves and eunuchs-such is the precious knowledge foreigners introduce among us-but I rule over Britons, little versed, indeed in craft and diplomacy, but born and trained to the game of war; men who in the cause of liberty stake down their lives, the lives of their wives and children, their lands and property. Queen of such a race I implore your aid for freedom, for victory over enemies infamous for the wantonness of the wrongs they inflict, for their perversions of justice, for their insatiable greed; a people that revel in unmanly pleasures, whose affections are more to be dreaded and abhored than their emnity. Never let a foreigner bear rule over me or over my countrymen; never let slavery reign in the island!

Allesandra stood close against Nero's flank flank and looked into her brother's blue eyes, "Your knowledge will keep me safe - or as safe as a girl with dreams can ever be in this small minded world

He acquires a knowledge of his rights by attending justly to his interest, and discovers in the event that the strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it, and that, in order "to be free, it is sufficient that he wills it.

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.