Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic
Original: (fr) ...je puis goûter une œuvre, mais il m'est difficile de la juger indépendamment de la connaissance de l'homme même, et je dirais volontiers: tel arbre, tel fruit.
Letter 65:26. To Hildebrand, "archdeacon and immobile pillar of the Apostolic See," Dec. 1059. Op. Cit., p. 39. http://books.google.com/books?id=9smLdu9BvK0C&pg=PA39&dq=%22if+I+have+erred+in+anything,+I+gladly+come+before+the+teaching+authority%22&hl=en&ei=soXDTKrlNoGB8gbTqujZBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22if%20I%20have%20erred%20in%20anything%2C%20I%20gladly%20come%20before%20the%20teaching%20authority%22&f=false
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic
Original: (fr) ...je puis goûter une œuvre, mais il m'est difficile de la juger indépendamment de la connaissance de l'homme même, et je dirais volontiers: tel arbre, tel fruit.
Marty Feldman (1934–1982) British actor and comedian
As quoted in He Who Laughs Lasts by Shawn Lovley, p. 51.
“I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand therefore that I lay down no precepts.”
Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic
The Universal Message (1958)
Context: I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand therefore that I lay down no precepts.
Throughout eternity I have laid down principles and precepts, but mankind has ignored them. Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion He taught, man has waged crusades in His name. Instead of living the humility, purity and truth of his words, man has given way to hatred, greed and violence.
Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric form I observe Silence. You have asked for and been given enough words — it is now time to live them.
Larry Niven book N-Space
The smartest of my pupils would get all my attention, and the rest would have to fend for themselves. And I can’t handle being interrupted.
Writing is the answer. Whatever I have to teach, my students will select themselves by buying the book. And nobody interrupts a printed page.
Foreword: Playgrounds for the Mind (pp. 26-27)
Short fiction, N-Space (1990)
E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist
Letter 311, to Robert J. Buckingham, 17 December 1935
Selected Letters (1983-1985)
André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist
Maurice in “Characters,” p. 298
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)
Context: In my present insistence on high standards you will see that there is less self-indulgence than resolve and application. I do not let the Christian monopolize the ideal of perfection. I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite.
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays
Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 4, p. 289