cavil [ˈkævəl] v. i.
1.) To find fault unnecessarily; raise trivial objections.
cavil v. t.
1.) To quibble about; detect petty flaws in.
cavil n.
1.) A carping or trivial objection (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language).
Etymology: French caviller, from Old French, from Latin cavillari, to jeer, from cavilla, a jeering.
"Inexplicable
Thy Justice seems; yet to say truth, too late,
I thus contest; then should have been refusd
Those terms whatever, when they were propos'd:
Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good,
Then cavil the conditions?" (Paradise Lost, John Milton, 1667).
(The Temptation and Fall of Eve, William Blake, 1808)
memento mori [məˈmɛntoʊ ˈmɔraɪ] n.
1.) A reminder of death or mortality, especially a death's-head.
2.) A reminder of human failures or errors (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language).
Etymology: New Latin memento mori, be mindful of dying : Latin memento, sing. imperative of meminisse, to remember + Latin mori, to die.
"—Bardolph: Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.
—Falstaff: No, I'll be sworn; I make as good use of it as many
a man doth of a Death's-head or a memento mori: I
never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire and
Dives that lived in purple; for there he is in his
robes, burning, burning" (Henry IV Part One, William Shakespeare, 1597)
(Youth with a Skull, Frans Hals, ~1627)
ataraxia [ˌætəˈræksiə] also ataraxy n.
1.) Freedom from disturbance of mind or passion; stoical indifference (O.E.D. 2nd Ed.).
Etymology: Latin ataraxia, adoption of Greek ἀταραξία, impassiveness, from ἀ, privative + ταράσσ-ειν, to disturb, stir up. Cf. French ataraxie.
"All science (and not just astronomy alone, the humiliating and degrading effects of which Kant singled out for the remarkable confession that 'it destroys my importance' ...), all science, natural as well as unnatural—this is the name I would give to the self-critique of knowledge—is seeking to talk man out of his former self-respect as though this were nothing but a bizarre piece of self-conceit; you could almost say that its own pride, its own austere form of stoical ataraxy, consisted in maintaining this laboriously won self-contempt of man as his last, most serious claim to self-respect (in fact, rightly so: for the person who feels contempt is always someone who 'has not forgotten how to respect'...)" (On the Genealogy of Morality by Friedrich Nietzsche, Carol Diethe (trans.), 1994).
(The Triumph of Marcus Aurelius, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, ~1770)
