May 30, 2018 08:25
5 yrs ago
1 viewer *
Spanish term
Lo que con mucho trabajo se adquiere...
Spanish to English
Art/Literary
Philosophy
quotation
Sorry about the seemingly long "term". I am looking for an Aristotle quote, translated into Spanish as:
"Lo que con mucho trabajo se adquiere, más se ama."
I've gone through Aristotle quotation lists in English and it's apparently not one of the more popular ones. Aware of the problems involved here (original Greek, interpretation, literary rendering, plausible synonyms), I simply have to ask.
This is an example given in the typesetting chapter of a manual.
"Lo que con mucho trabajo se adquiere, más se ama."
I've gone through Aristotle quotation lists in English and it's apparently not one of the more popular ones. Aware of the problems involved here (original Greek, interpretation, literary rendering, plausible synonyms), I simply have to ask.
This is an example given in the typesetting chapter of a manual.
Proposed translations
(English)
| 4 +1 | The more effort you put into acquiring something, the more you love it |
philgoddard
|
| 4 | no joy without pain |
Francois Boye
|
| 3 | Honor lies in honest toil... |
neilmac
|
Proposed translations
+1
4 hrs
philgoddard
United States
United States
Native in English
United States
Six languages into flawless English
Native in: English
Works in: German to English, French to English, Spanish to English, and 4 more.
Related KudoZ points
:
32
Selected
The more effort you put into acquiring something, the more you love it
See my comments in the discussion box. This may be a made-up quote, but either way its translation is pretty straightforward.
Peer comment(s):
| agree |
Charles Davis
: This is an accurate and serviceable rendering, I would say.
2 hrs
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Thanks.
|
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
5 hrs
Francois Boye
United States
United States
United States
An economic geek with social skills
Native in: French 
Works in: English to French, French to English, Spanish to English, and 1 more.
Related KudoZ points
:
4
no joy without pain
The effort to create/get something is the precondition for joy. Joy results from the fulfillment of an effort.
6 hrs
Honor lies in honest toil...
This might work at a pinch, it sounds old-fashioned enough anyway.
Found nothing by Aristotle though.
Found nothing by Aristotle though.
Reference comments
6 hrs
Reference:
St Basil the Great, Proemium to Commentary on Isaiah
I found it in Latin (how is a longish story I won't bore you with):
"Deinde quo maiori labore res partae sunt, eo magis amantur"
lit. "Therefore by so much greater labour things are acquired ['given birth to'], by that much more are they loved"
It's quoted in a sermon by Felipe Díez Lusitano, a Franciscan preacher from Salamanca. I found it in an edition of his sermons entitled Summa praedicantium ex omnibus locis (Venice, 1591), p. 550a
https://books.google.es/books?id=4Tfkk-mi_awC&pg=RA1-PA550&l...
It's near the end of a paragraph which starts by referring to "B. Basilius in prooemio in Isaiam". I suspected this might mean that our aphorism comes from Basil, and so it turns out to be.
By great good fortune there's an English translation of St Basil's commentary on Isaiah online. In this passage Díez refers to, Basil is defending and explaining the obscurity of scripture:
"He also purposely designed lack of clarity in Scripture for the benefit of the mind, waking up its activity. Designed in the first place, so that being engrossed in these pursuits it might be drawn aside from less commendable ones; next, because things acquired with effort are somehow much more valued and those that come over a long period remain more steadfast."
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/40256869/St_... (p. 7)
I don't know whether you'll be able to open this pdf. I downloaded it from here:
https://www.academia.edu/2949471/St._Basil_the_Great_Comment...
But I can't remember whether you have to be registered.
Basil could be quoting Aristotle here, though it doesn't say so. The attribution to Aristotle could simply be because this sentence was anthologised, the attribution was lost, and someone decided later that it was probably Aristotle, in the same sort of way stray quotations get falsely attributed to people like Oscar Wilde and Churchill.
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Note added at 4 days (2018-06-03 21:05:52 GMT)
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I'm so glad! Best wishes.
"Deinde quo maiori labore res partae sunt, eo magis amantur"
lit. "Therefore by so much greater labour things are acquired ['given birth to'], by that much more are they loved"
It's quoted in a sermon by Felipe Díez Lusitano, a Franciscan preacher from Salamanca. I found it in an edition of his sermons entitled Summa praedicantium ex omnibus locis (Venice, 1591), p. 550a
https://books.google.es/books?id=4Tfkk-mi_awC&pg=RA1-PA550&l...
It's near the end of a paragraph which starts by referring to "B. Basilius in prooemio in Isaiam". I suspected this might mean that our aphorism comes from Basil, and so it turns out to be.
By great good fortune there's an English translation of St Basil's commentary on Isaiah online. In this passage Díez refers to, Basil is defending and explaining the obscurity of scripture:
"He also purposely designed lack of clarity in Scripture for the benefit of the mind, waking up its activity. Designed in the first place, so that being engrossed in these pursuits it might be drawn aside from less commendable ones; next, because things acquired with effort are somehow much more valued and those that come over a long period remain more steadfast."
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/40256869/St_... (p. 7)
I don't know whether you'll be able to open this pdf. I downloaded it from here:
https://www.academia.edu/2949471/St._Basil_the_Great_Comment...
But I can't remember whether you have to be registered.
Basil could be quoting Aristotle here, though it doesn't say so. The attribution to Aristotle could simply be because this sentence was anthologised, the attribution was lost, and someone decided later that it was probably Aristotle, in the same sort of way stray quotations get falsely attributed to people like Oscar Wilde and Churchill.
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Note added at 4 days (2018-06-03 21:05:52 GMT)
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I'm so glad! Best wishes.
Note from asker:
| I have to say that the Latin is close enough and the Lipatov translation has served the purpose. Many, many thanks. |
Peer comments on this reference comment:
| agree |
philgoddard
: Though I don't feel this proves that the writer said Aristotle when they meant St Basil the Great. It's just a truism that has probably been said and written millions of times, ascribed to Aristotle to make it sound more profound :-)
26 mins
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Comment in discussion
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| agree |
Muriel Vasconcellos
4 hrs
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Thanks, Muriel :-)
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Discussion
Esta expresión resume la frase de Lucio Anneo Séneca (Hercules furens, acto II, v 437) Non est ad astra mollis e terris via; no es fácil el camino que de la tierra lleva a los astros, entendiéndolo así:
el éxito es el final de un camino lleno de obstáculos que se consigue sólo con esfuerzo, por eso cuánto más díficil es un objetivo mayor es la satisfacción al alcanzarlo.
http://clasicascheste.blogspot.com/2007/01/per-aspera-ad-ast...
So I think we must be dealing here with a saying that has a Spanish source, from which it has been endlessly copied. The Spanish saying could have been coined as is or could have been translated from a more remote source in Latin (as I believe). I've only been able to trace it back to Argentina in the 1940s from online sources. Who knows how far back it goes.
It can't be proved, and it certainly could be a coincidence. But the sermon-collection-to-florilegium theory is not as implausible as it might sound; both these genres were hugely popular a few centuries ago. And things got copied and recopied, much as they are today. The Internet can't solve this: the missing links may well exist but if so they're not in Google Books.
I found a Chilean page that gave authentic Aristotle quotations in Greek and Spanish, with exact references, and then a few unidentified ones attributed to Aristotle at the bottom, including this one. The attribution really seems phony to me.
I really am pretty sure Aristotle didn't write this. Does anyone have another possible source?
There were many anthologies of sentences of this kind in earlier centuries (certainly in Spain), for people to quote so as to make themselves seem learned. They were copied from each other, and the attributions were sometimes lost. I am sure that the source of this particular Spanish tag is St Basil the Great.
I am also virtually certain that St Basil is not quoting anybody. When patristic authors are quoting, they say so.
The gloss on the Talmud you have quoted is pretty close to the same statement, but it says "effort you expend on something" rather than acquiring it by effort, and of course it's a modern gloss; the Talmud text itself expresses a similar thought but there's no verbal resemblance.
http://www.isralight.org/assets/Text/RBF_sukkot11.pdf
I'm not sure I agree with it - I love my dog, and the interest on my bank account, neither of which cost me any effort to acquire :-)
https://books.google.es/books?id=mAXnAAAAMAAJ&q="Lo que con ...
If the can't be identified but it still needs to be translated, the matter is discussed here:
https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/lo-que-con-mucho-tra...
Aristotle believes that moral virtue is the result of habit and you can become good through practice -- if one practices good moral virtues, one will have good moral habits. We are born with the capacity to be good and bad, but it takes time to develop this. Hence, practice makes perfect.
https://www.google.pt/search?q="practice makes perfect" aris...