“A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in….”

— Henry Miller , book Sexus

The Rosy Crucifixion I : Sexus (1949), Chapter 1. (New York: Grove Press, c1965, p. 17-18)

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Henry Miller 187

American novelist 1891–1980

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“He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

Context: A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in....

The Rosy Crucifixion I : Sexus (1949), Chapter 1. (New York: Grove Press, c1965, p. 17-18)

“When a man's bogged down, when the thing he is trying to do isn't working out, then he has to damn good and well change his way of living.”

Sterling Hayden (1916–1986) American actor

Book V : Abysmal Voyage, Ch. 79
Wanderer (1963)
Context: I'll make no bones about it, I'm thinking of quitting analysis. When a man's bogged down, when the thing he is trying to do isn't working out, then he has to damn good and well change his way of living. If you would only hold out some hope to me, then it might be different.
I'll say this, too, that if it hadn't been for you I wouldn’t have turned into a stoolie for J. Edgar Hoover. I don't think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself since the day I did that thing.

“The superior man, while there is anything he has not studied, or while in what he has studied there is anything he cannot understand, Will not intermit his labor. While there is anything he has not inquired about, or anything in what he has inquired about which he does not know, he will not intermit his labor. While there is anything which he has not reflected on, or anything in what he has reflected on which he does not apprehend, he will not intermit his labor. While there is anything which he has not discriminated or his discrimination is not clear, he will not intermit his labor. If there be anything which he has not practiced, or his practice fails in earnestness, he will not intermit his labor. If another man succeed by one effort, he will use a hundred efforts. If another man succeed by ten efforts, he will use a thousand. Let a man proceed in this way, and, though dull, he will surely become intelligent; though weak, he will surely become strong.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

“He writes the page of every day of his life who has the courage to live his dreams.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Scrive la pagina di ogni giorno della sua vita colui che ha il coraggio di vivere i propri sogni.
Source: prevale.net

“Try to imagine a man setting out for the day without a single prejudice. … Inevitably he would be in a state of paralysis. He could not get up in the morning, or choose his necktie, or make his way to the office, … or, to come right down to the essence of the thing, even maintain his identity.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Life without prejudice,” p. 12.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

“If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

72
Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Variant: It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

“I remember a picture I saw in a paper not long before the wall came down. There was a man standing holding a very young daughter, my guess was that she was only about one or two years old. She had on a rather plain dress, he had on a coat and a tie and he was carrying probably a cardboard suitcase. And my guess is that everything he owned in the world was in that suitcase. And he was weeping. He wasn't weeping because he left his car and the rest of his family back on the other side of that Iron Curtain; he was weeping because he was free. He was weeping because now he had opportunity, he had the chance to choose for the first time in his life, and his daughter whom he was holding in his hands had a future, whereas before she would not have had one. That struck me as a very, very vivid picture of what this all meant.”

Leighton W. Smith, Jr. (1939) United States Navy admiral

On the end of the Cold War, in part 7: The End of the Cold War http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/LWSmith/lwsmith-con02.html
Interview at USC Berkeley (1997)

“It took man thousands of years to put words down on paper, and his lawyers still wish he wouldn't.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“A philosopher may try to prove the truth of something he believed before he was a philosopher, but even if he succeeds, his belief never regain the untroubled character, and the settled place in his mind, which it had at first.”

David Stove (1927–1994) Australian philosopher

The Rationality of Induction, Oxford: Clarendon, 1986. Page 99, first paragraph.

“He was pretty. His eyes were kind and young. One had to wonder whether he was fourteen years old, or a thousand, being so smooth and untouched. A little boy peered out of the man's face. He was funny… I was bewildered… a man, responsible for the life and death of thousands, and yet there was no trace on him? One could be frightened of less, and yet so harmlessly innocent? Yes, innocent was the word… I knew I would remember this meeting the rest of my life, because I had never before met an emptyness like this.”

Ingeborg Refling Hagen (1895–1989) Norwegian writer

On Dwight Eisenhower, volume III
Memoirs

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