"I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war,

plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors,

comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities

besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, &c., daily musters

and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times

afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies,

shipwrecks, piracies and sea-fights; peace, leagues,
stratagems, and fresh alarms.

A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions,

lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances are daily
brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, corantoes,

stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes,

opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion,...

Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments,

jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels,

sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons,

cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals,

burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions, now comical,

then tragical matters. Today we hear of new lords and officers

created, tomorrow of some great men deposed, and then again

of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned;

one purchaseth, another breaketh: he thrives, his neighbour turns

bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs,

another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps...."

 

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy 1652

 

 

"when the storm rages and the shipwreck of the the

state threatens, we can do nothing more worthy than to

sink the anchor of our peaceful studies into the ground

of eternity."

 

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)