“Every man's memory is his private literature.”

— Aldous Huxley

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Aldous Huxley 290

English writer 1894–1963

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“The sense of liberty and power, and of belief in the capacity and destiny of man, which was quickened by the new discoveries, distinguishes the literature of the Elizabethan age from the great backward-looking periods of romance. It is a literature of youth and hope, with none of the subtle and poignant flavours that are to be tasted in a literature of regret and memory.”

Walter Raleigh (professor) (1861–1922) British academic

p. 174 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002032470974;view=1up;seq=190
English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century (1906)

“Every libel, which is called famosus libellus, is made either against a private man, or against a public person. If it be against a private man, it deserves a severe punishment.”

Edward Coke (1552–1634) English lawyer and judge

77 Eng. Rep. 250 (1605).

“Literature, like memory, selects only the vivid patches.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

As quoted in Notes of T E Hulme, Imagism & Imagists (1931) by Glenn Hughes

“Let every man in mankind's frailty
Consider his last day; and let none
Presume on his good fortune until he find
Life, at his death, a memory without pain.”

Sophocles (-496–-406 BC) ancient Greek tragedian

Variant: Look upon him, O my Thebans, on your king, the child of fame!
This mighty man, this Œdipus the lore far-famed could guess,
And envy from each Theban won, so great his lordliness—
Lo to what a surge of sorrow and confusion hath he come!
Let us call no mortal happy till our eyes have seen the doom
And the death-day come upon him—till, unharassed by mischance,
He pass the bound of mortal life, the goal of ordinance.
[ Tr. E. D. A. Morshead http://books.google.com/books?id=i7wXAAAAYAAJ (1885)]
Variant: People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.
He solved the famous riddle, with his brilliance,
he rose to power, a man beyond all power.
Who could behold his greatness without envy?
Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.
Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,
count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.
[quoted by Thomas Cahill in Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea]
Source: Oedipus Rex, Line 1529, Choragos.

“Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Walter Savage Landor, from The Dial, XII

“Every man creates his own private hell,… Brutal men believe they may challenge the mighty, and when they fall, they become embittered or befriend a shallow grave.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Ferret: The Reluctant King (2020), p. 138

“Literature is no one’s private ground, literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

“Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 14
Context: Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.

“Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 14

“Every man's memory is his private literature.”

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Aldous Huxley 290

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