Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France
Source: An Essay on Old Age, 1732, p. 136
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Stray Birds (1916)
Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France
Source: An Essay on Old Age, 1732, p. 136
Franz Liszt (1811–1886) Hungarian romantic composer and virtuoso pianist
Source: As quoted in Col. E. N. Sanctuary’s Are These Things So?, p. 278.
Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor
Quote from The Power of Mystery (7 December 1957), a London Observer interview with John Richardson, as quoted in Braque: The Late Works (1997), by John Golding, Introduction, p. 10
unsourced variant translation: I made a great discovery. I don't believe in anything anymore. Objects do not exist for me, except that there is a harmonious relationship among them, and also between them and myself. When one reaches this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual void. This was everything becomes possible, everything becomes legitimate, and life is a perpetual revelation. This is true song.
1946 - 1963
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi
The Zookeeper's Wife (2008)
Context: I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.
Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman
Memorandum, 'The Peace Settlement in Europe' (November 1916), quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 325
First Lord of the Admiralty
“How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
Variant: How ridiculous and unrealistic is the man who is astonished at anything that happens in life.
Source: Meditations
“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”
Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)