
“After all, in private, we're all misfits”
Source: Watermark
“After all, in private, we're all misfits”
Source: Interview. Torreblanca, M. E. Entrevista al escritor José Baroja. Fondo de Cultura Económica. https://www.fondodeculturaeconomica.com/Noticia/706
Everything Has to Do with Hardness and Softness (1969)
"Why We Remain Jews" (1962)
Context: Science, as the positivist understands it, is susceptible of infinite progress. That you learn in every elementary school today, I believe. Every result of science is provisional and subject to future revision, and this will never change. In other words, fifty thousand years from now there will still be results entirely different from those now, but still subject to revision. Science is susceptible of infinite progress. But how can science be susceptible of infinite progress if its object does not have an inner infinity? The belief admitted by all believers in science today — that science is by its nature essentially progressive, and eternally progressive — implies, without saying it, that being is mysterious. And here is the point where the two lines I have tried to trace do not meet exactly, but where they come within hailing distance. And, I believe, to expect more in a general way, of people in general, would be unreasonable.
What sort of show then do I already make in the sight of Almighty God, who sees every man exactly as he is?
P. 276.
Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Part Three, Ch. 11
Source: On the Road (1957)
Context: In 1942 I was the star in one of the filthiest dramas of all time. I was a seaman, and went to the Imperial Café on Scollay Square in Boston to drink; I drank sixty glasses of beer and retired to the toilet, where I wrapped myself around the toilet bowl and went to sleep. During the night at least a hundred seamen and assorted civilians came in and cast their sentient debouchements on me till I was unrecognizably caked. What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)