Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
ATTRIBUTION:
George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824), British poet. Manfred, in Manfred, act 1, sc. 1 (1817).
Manfred’s opening speech. According to Michael Foot’s biography, The Politics of Paradise: A Vindication of Byron, ch. 5 (1988), this speech was considered by Nietzsche to be “immortal,” for stating the terrible fact that a man might bleed to death through the truth that he recognizes.
