“You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative”

—  William S. Burroughs , book Naked Lunch

Atrophied Preface
Naked Lunch (1959)

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 "You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be…" by William S. Burroughs?
William S. Burroughs photo
William S. Burroughs 110
American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, a… 1914–1997

Related quotes

Paracelsus photo

“What maintains the marriage and what is it? Only the knowledge of the hearts, that is its beginning and end.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)

“You have conquered only the enchantments of evil. That was the easiest of your tasks, only a beginning, not an ending.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 21
Context: “Dyrnwyn is yours,” Gwydion said, “as it was meant to be.”
“Yet Arawn is slain,” Taran replied. “Evil is conquered and the blade’s work done.”
“Evil conquered?” said Gwydion. “You have learned much, but learn this last and hardest of lessons. You have conquered only the enchantments of evil. That was the easiest of your tasks, only a beginning, not an ending. Do you believe evil itself so quickly overcome? Not so long as men still hate and slay each other, when greed and anger goad them. Against these even a flaming sword cannot prevail, but only that portion of good in all men’s hearts whose flame can never be quenched.

Omar Khayyám photo

“And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press
End in what All begins and ends in — Yes;
Think then you are To-day what Yesterday
You were — To-morrow You shall not be less.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Samuel Beckett photo

“The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)

T. B. Joshua photo

“If you are with God in truth and faith, whatever comes as a blessing or trial will be what God allows. If you are called by God, from beginning to the end, your journey has been documented. Nothing outside your documentary will happen without God’s knowledge.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

Answering a question on challenges via Facebook - "TB Joshua Answers Questions On Marriage, Deliverance And Anointing Through Facebook" http://www.nigeriadailynews.news/news/89320-t-b-joshua-answers-questions-on-marriage-deliverance-anointing-through-facebook.html Nigeria Daily News (January 13 2014)

Rusty Schweickart photo

“What it is you identify with begins to shift. When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognise that your identity is with that whole thing.”

Rusty Schweickart (1935) American astronaut

Source: Quoted in "The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution" by Frank White

“Death is hard on your trail in this wilderness–
the end of you and all that you amass.
Suffering at the beginning, regret at the end,
and in the end your attachment trample you.”

Sarmad Kashani (1590–1661) Persian mystic, poet and saint

Source: Sarmad, Martyr to Love Divine, p. 240 (2005)

LeBron James photo

“You have to do what's best for you and what's going to make you happy at the end of the day, because no one can live with the consequences or anything that comes with your decision besides you.”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player
William Thomson photo

“I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.”

William Thomson (1824–1907) British physicist and engineer

Lecture on "Electrical Units of Measurement" (3 May 1883), published in Lectures Vol. I, p. 73 https://archive.org/stream/popularlecturesa01kelvuoft#page/73/mode/1up|Popular

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“The moment you know love, you have ceased to love. Love is beyond time; it has no beginning and no end, whereas knowledge has; and when you say, “I know what love is”, you don’t. You know only a sensation, a stimulus. You know the reaction to love, but that reaction is not love.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. XI, p. 288
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: We know only fragmentarily this extraordinary thing called life; we have never looked at sorrow, except through the screen of escapes; we have never seen the beauty, the immensity of death, and we know it only through fear and sadness. There can be understanding of life, and of the significance and beauty of death, only when the mind on the instant perceives “what is”. You know, sirs, although we differentiate them, love, death, and sorrow are all the same; because, surely, love, death, and sorrow are the unknowable. The moment you know love, you have ceased to love. Love is beyond time; it has no beginning and no end, whereas knowledge has; and when you say, “I know what love is”, you don’t. You know only a sensation, a stimulus. You know the reaction to love, but that reaction is not love. In the same way, you don’t know what death is. You know only the reactions to death, and you will discover the full depth and significance of death only when the reactions have ceased.

Related topics