1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Variant: Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
“The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped,
deserves to be whipped.”
Source: Venus in Furs (1870)
Context: "And the moral of the story?" I said to Severin when I put the manuscript down on the table.
"That I was a donkey," he exclaimed without turning around, for he seemed to be embarrassed. "If only I had beaten her!"
"A curious remedy," I exclaimed, "which might answer with your peasant-women-"
"Oh, they are used to it," he replied eagerly, "but imagine the effect upon one of our delicate, nervous, hysterical ladies--"
"But the moral?"
"That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work."
"At present we have only the choice of being hammer or anvil, and I was the kind of donkey who let a woman make a slave of him, do you understand?"
"The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped."
1873. Quoted in A Holy Life: St. Bernadette of Lourdes (2005) by Patricia McEachern, [//books.google.com/books?id=ESX7DQAAQBAJ&pg=PT18 ch. 2].
1990s, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992)
Context: Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be. Any individual who is able to raise $25 million to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent oil, or aerospace, or banking, or whatever moneyed entities are paying for him. Certainly he will never represent the people of the country, and they know it. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress.
Variant: The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 15 (p. 130)
Context: "We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true." [said Obierika]
"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"
“The twenty-first century is, and will remain, the Age of Insecurity.”
Source: From Optimism to Hope (2004), p. 71
“Händel is the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel on his grave.”
Händel ist der größte Komponist, der je lebte. Ich würde meine Kopfbedeckung abnehmen und auf seinem Grab knien.
Beethoven, speaking to J. A. Stumpff in the autumn of 1823. Published in Friedrich Kerst Beethoven der Mann und der Künstler, wie in seinen Eigenen Words enthüllt no. 112 http://www.bucheralle.org/6C76626D613131/ch35.html; Friedrich Kerst (trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel) Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words (1964), p. 54.
Criticism
Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)
“The mestizo dog is an intense allegory of the Latin American condition.”
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
“A stray dog listens to what no one says and sees what is hidden, making him a privileged narrator.”
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
“From the margins, one can speak with irony, tenderness, and rage.”
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
“What society refuses to see is what most strongly defines it.”
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
“In the most vulnerable, there can be dignity, memory, and poetry.”
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
“Chile hides its wounds with order and progress; Mexico displays them with folklore.”
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
“Good literature should disturb the status quo, not preach.”
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
“The Chilean silence is one of repression; the Mexican, of resignation.”
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
