Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[prabe]

27. The foolish man in company
does best if he stays silent;
no one will know that he knows nothing,
unless he talks too much;
but the man who knows nothing does not know
even if he is talking too much.
-Havamal, (Larrington 2014 translation)

Related-

6. About his intelligence no man should be boastful,
rather cautious of mind;
when a wise and silent man comes to a homestead
blame seldom befalls the wary;
for no more dependable friend can a man ever get
than a store of common sense.

7. The careful guest, who comes to a meal,
keeps silent, with hearing finely attuned;
he listens with his ears, and looks about with his eyes;
so every wise man spies out what’s ahead.

Proverbs, I'm guessing. What chapter/s?

(also clearly not King James, so what version?)

 

[Mannahnin]

Proverbs, I'm guessing. What chapter/s?

(also clearly not King James, so what version?)

Havamal, from the Poetic Edda. From the 2014 translation by Carolyne Larrington, which is probably my favorite.

My mind is a bit blown that someone pegged these as Biblical. Quite the opposite!

 

[dragoner]

One thing i like about roleplaying is looking at different points of view. Being a Westerner, ancient Greek monism, the absolute, I find very much influences our world view. Looking to Eastern philosophy, they often look to it as not an absolute, but an endless repeating cycle: birth, rebirth, yin-yang. One day a fool, the next wise. Maybe best to not be too wise, only to find oneself the fool.

Though I think in a way, the monism can be more destructive: it's bad destroy it; where in the cyclical way: integrate it into the whole. I don't know if either is best, and obviously I have my bias towards the Western way.

 

[prabe]

Havamal, from the Poetic Edda. From the 2014 translation by Carolyne Larrington, which is probably my favorite.

My mind is a bit blown that someone pegged these as Biblical. Quite the opposite!

It was the language, mostly, and the thinking isn't wildly off from at least some of the thinking in Proverbs. It's plausible that anyone aiming for slightly archaic and/or heightened English ends up sounding Biblical (at least to me). My error, thanks (genuinely) for the correction.

 

[Mannahnin]

It was the language, mostly, and the thinking isn't wildly off from at least some of the thinking in Proverbs. It's plausible that anyone aiming for slightly archaic and/or heightened English ends up sounding Biblical (at least to me). My error, thanks (genuinely) for the correction.

Thanks for the interest, the courtesy, and for adding a moment of surprise to my day.

Fair point that it's not necessarily really opposite of traditional pre-Christian wisdom recorded in Biblical sources. I sometimes notice commonalities between Jewish and pagan thought that make the former seem more reasonable to me than the Christian version.

 

[Scribe]

--

Honestly step back, review what is before you, and consider the position on display.

Its not remotely this difficult.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Apparently this is a novel concept to some people, but I've always thought it best to actually assess things, find out the actual truth and the facts, and then adopt those as my point of view/opinion/stance/whatever...

 

[overgeeked]

Havamal, from the Poetic Edda. From the 2014 translation by Carolyne Larrington, which is probably my favorite.

The Havamal is a great book. I have a copy on my shelf. Not sure which translation though.

 

[Mannahnin]

The Havamal is a great book. I have a copy on my shelf. Not sure which translation though.

Both the poetic and prose eddas are well worth reading, but the poetic is wonderfully readable (at least in a decent translation) and pretty short.

 

[overgeeked]

Both the poetic and prose eddas are well worth reading, but the poetic is wonderfully readable (at least in a decent translation) and pretty short.

Yeah. They’re both great books. The various sagas you can find can be fun reads as well. That big bastard of a book Sagas of the Icelanders comes to mind.

Just checked mine. It’s Saying of the Vikings, a translation of just the Havamal by Björn Jónasson and published by Guðrún in Iceland. Had this one for decades. Nice little hardback book. I also have the Hollander translation of the larger Poetic Edda. But I keep going back to that small hardback more often.