Wednesday, December 24, 2014

The wisdom of Jean de La Fontaine


“En toute chose il faut considérer la fin.”
“In everything one must consider the end.”

Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)
French poet and writer of fables

It’s from La Fontaine’s Book III (1668), Fable 5 (The Fox and the Gnat).

It’s a very early and very elegant way of saying that, as a mark of prudence and for the most pleasing successes, one should always take the long view.

Mark Strand, a past Poet Laureate of the United States, offered this complementary observation:
“The future is always beginning now.”

Indeed.

Jean de La Fontaine isn’t at the top of the charts these days, but he was a familiar voice to educated Americans and Europeans in the 18th century. David McCullough notes that President John Adams was wont to quote from the fables of La Fontaine.
  






Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2014

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