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Literary notes about sapience (AI summary)

In literature, the term sapience is often employed to signify a profound, sometimes divine wisdom that distinguishes the truly knowledgeable. Poetic works frequently associate sapience with the majestic and the transcendent, as when it is linked with divine love and creative power [1, 2, 3]. At the same time, writers have used it with a measure of irony or satire to comment on both human and animal intellect, suggesting a spectrum from innate, noble understanding to a more mundane, even borderline, acumen [4, 5, 6]. Whether describing the exalted quality of divine insight or the everyday claim to intellectual merit, sapience remains a versatile term reflecting an evolving notion of wisdom and erudition [7, 8, 9].
  1. Of Majestie Divine, Sapience and Love Immense, and all his Father in him shon.
    — from Paradise Lost by John Milton
  2. In its archetype it is the Divine wisdom, or sapience, manifested in the creation.
    — from The World's Greatest Books — Volume 13 — Religion and Philosophy
  3. O sovran, virtuous, precious of all trees In Paradise! of operation blest To sapience, hitherto obscured, infamed.
    — from Paradise Lost by John Milton
  4. How were it, for better or worse, didst thou grunt Contented with sapience—the lot of the swine
    — from The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert BrowningCambridge Edition by Robert Browning
  5. Five minutes later and she would have escaped said police sapience.
    — from Anthony Trent, Master Criminal by Wyndham Martyn
  6. “I think they’re sapient, myself,” Gerd van Riebeek said, “but that’s not as important as the fact that they’re on the very threshold of sapience.
    — from Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper
  7. wisdom , n. lore , learning , sapience, erudition , knowledge , enlightenment.
    — from Putnam's Word Book A Practical Aid in Expressing Ideas Through the Use of an Exact and Varied Vocabulary by Louis A. (Louis Andrew) Flemming
  8. “I’ll suggest, just to keep the argument going, that speech couldn’t have been invented without pre-existing sapience,” Jack said.
    — from Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper
  9. Though Sapia nam'd In sapience I excell'd not, gladder far Of others' hurt, than of the good befell me.
    — from The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated, Purgatory, Complete by Dante Alighieri

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