In like manner, he says of the motto of Rousseau, with intense naïveté, “Does any man dare to write under his own portrait, vitam impendere vero? You may wager, without further information, fearlessly, that it is the likeness of a liar.”
1976: Madeleine l’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, page 56 (Ariel Books; →ISBN, 9780440998051)
Mrs. Who’s glasses shone at her gently. “If you want to help your father then you must learn patience. Vitam impendere vero. To stake one’s life for the truth. That is what we must do.”
1983: Howard Joseph, Jack N. Lightstone, and Michael D. Oppenheim (editors), Truth and Compassion: Essays on Judaism and Religion in Memory of Rabbi Dr. Solomon Frank, page 64 (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; →ISBN, 9780889201439)
Starobinski offers here a helpful analysis which begins by citing one of Hegel’s commentators: “The content of the language spoken by the good conscience is the self which knows itself as essence.”³⁵ Vitam impendere vero becomes vitam impendere sibi.
Si de nouvelles raiſons, plus déciſives que celles que vous avoit fournies mon prétendu ſtyle paſtoral, qui eſt la ſeule que vous ayez alléquée, & dont le ridicule vous auroit frappé, ſans ſon air de ſarcaſme, qui a pu vous ſéduire; ſi, dis-je, de nouvelles raiſons ont arrêté ce premier mouvement de juſtice, que la droiture naturelle de votre cœur avoit fait naître, pourquoi ne m’expoſez-vous pas ces raiſons, avec cette franchiſe & cette candeur qu’annonce en vous cette belle deviſe, vitam impendere vero?
Es gehörte zu den herrlichen Bedingungen seiner Existenz, daß er wirklich einer solchen Aufgabe, gemäß seinem Wahlspruche vitam impendere vero, leben konnte und daß keine eigentliche Gemeinheit der Lebensnot ihn niederzwang: – es ist bekannt, in welcher großartigen Weise er gerade dafür seinem Vater dankte; […]
It was one of the high conditions of his existence that he really could live for such a task — according to his motto vitam impendere vero — and none of life’s material needs could shake his resolution; and we know the splendid return he made his father for this.
[…] und sich 1831 grollend nach Frankfurt am Main zurückzog, um hier, wie er selbst sagt, vitam impendere vero, sein ganzes Leben, unbekümmert um die Teilnahmlosigkeit der Zeitgenossen, der Durchführung seiner Gendanken an unzähligen Tatsachen der Natur und des Lebens zu widmen.
[…]and grumbling did he seclude himself to Frankfurt am Main in order to, as he put it, vitam impendere vero, to devote his whole life to the procession of his thoughts on innumerable facts from nature and life here, unconcerned about the lukewarmness of his contemporaries.
