“Ruthven surmised that he had hit upon some of the central deceptions which had wrecked him and reduced him and so many of his colleagues to this condition. To surmise was not to conquer, of course; he was as helpless as ever but there was a dim liberation in seeing how he had been lied to, and he felt that at least he could take one thing from the terrible years through which he had come: he was free of self-delusion.”

— Barry N. Malzberg

Source: Corridors (1982), p. 145 in The Nebula Awards 18 edited by Robert Silverberg

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Ruthven surmised that he had hit upon some of the central deceptions which had wrecked him and reduced him and so many …" by Barry N. Malzberg?

Barry N. Malzberg photo

Barry N. Malzberg 4

American novelist, short story writer 1939

Related quotes

“Ulysses, he thought, had not told him all the truth about the Talisman. He had told him that it had disappeared and that the galaxy was without it, but he had not told him that for many years its power and glory had been dimmed by the failure of its custodian to provide linkage between the people and the force.”

Clifford D. Simak book Way Station

Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 30
Context: Ulysses, he thought, had not told him all the truth about the Talisman. He had told him that it had disappeared and that the galaxy was without it, but he had not told him that for many years its power and glory had been dimmed by the failure of its custodian to provide linkage between the people and the force. And all that time the corrosion occasioned by that failure had eaten away at the bonds of the galactic cofraternity.

“Thus he had a double thought: the one by which he acted as king, the other by which he recognized his true state, and that it was accident alone that had placed him in his present condition.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

“After visiting these places, you can easily understand how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

After visiting such Nazi strongholds as were found in Berchtesgaden and Kehlsteinhaus; Personal diary (1 August 1945); published in Prelude to Leadership (1995)
Pre-1960

“No one cared enough to criticise, except himself who soon began to suffer from reaching his own limits. He found that he could not be this — or that — or the other; always precisely the things he wanted to be. He had not wit or scope or force. Judges always ranked him beneath a rival, if he had any; and he believed the judges were right. His work seemed to him thin, commonplace, feeble. At times he felt his own weakness so fatally that he could not go on; when he had nothing to say, he could not say it, and he found that he had very little to say at best.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader

“From his childhood, Narendra was introspective and loved solitude. Once when he was only nine years, he had an inner experience which profoundly affected him. He saw that the sky with its myriad stars entered into him. He felt wide, free and detached, like the sky. … he became the sadhaka of the Void.”

Anirvan (1896–1978) Indian Hindu philosopher

Inner yoga (antaryoga): Anirvan. (1988). New Delhi: Voice of India. From the Introduction by Ram Swarup.

“He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.”

Flannery O’Connor book Wise Blood

Source: Wise Blood

“Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed … Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.”

Philip K. Dick book A Maze of Death

A Maze of Death (1970)

“He was not satisfied with the way things stood now; he was a man who had come in sight of a goal, then had won it, and in winning it had seen just within his grasp another goal, higher, greater. He had learned to shout and had shouted and no ear had heard him; he had just learned to walk and was walking but could not see the ground beneath his feel; he had long been yearning for weapons to hold in his hands and suddenly found that his hands held weapons that were invisible.”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

"Flight", pp.125, Harper Row 1966
Native Son (1940)

“Of course he could only describe his impressions very lamely, for they were purely of the mind, and he had no material peg to hang them on, so that I could realise them. But the gist of it was that he had been gradually becoming conscious of what he called 'Presences' in his world. They had no effect on Space — did not leave footprints in its corridors, for instance — but they affected his mind. There was some mysterious contact established between him and them. I asked him if the affection was unpleasant and he said 'No, not exactly.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

But I could see a hint of fear in his eyes.
Space (1912)

Related topics