Irony from 16th-century Italy (56 of 254)
Published by marco on
The post Filosofia monosillabica by Mark Liberman (Language Log) included the image reproduced to the left.
Taking some artistic license, this translates roughly to:
Who can, will not
Who wills[1], cannot
Who knows, does not
Who does, knows not
And so the world
goes badly
[1] I use “will” in both cases in the will-to-live sense, when perhaps “wants” would be a more appropriate modern translation. But “wants” would impose a messy “doesn’t want to” translation.↩