“After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them & invent others that (one is fairly sure) don't exist — or exist in a less measure.”
Letter to Robert Grant (19 November 1907)
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Edith Wharton 103
American novelist, short story writer, designer 1862–1937Related quotes
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 21
Context: If thought exists, I who think and the world about which I think also exist; the one exists but for the other, having no possible separation between them. Therefore, the world and I are both in active correlation; I am that which sees the world, and the world is that which is seen by me. I exist for the world and the world exists for me. … One sure and primary and fundamental fact is the joint existence of a subject and of its world. The one does not exist without the other. I acquire no understanding of myself except as I take account of objects, of the surroundings. I do not think unless I think of things — and there I find myself.
“Isn't it bewildering … that everything is so beautiful, despite all the horrors that exist?”
As quoted in O<sub>2</sub> : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, p. 223; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote.
Disputed
Context: Isn't it bewildering … that everything is so beautiful, despite all the horrors that exist? Lately I've noticed something grand and mysterious peering into my sheer joy in all that is lovely — the sense of a Creator whom innocent creation worships with its beauty. Only man can be hateful or ugly, because he possesses a free will to cut himself off from the chorus of praise. It often seems that he will succeed in drowning out this chorus with his cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy. But it has become clear to me this spring that he cannot. And so I must try to throw myself on the side of the victor.
“One of the sure signs of maturity is the ability to rise to the point of self criticism.”
1960s, The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)
“If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.”
“Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time.”
Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 8
Variant: We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate one another.
"What must be an essential feature of any future fundamental physics?" Letter to Max Born (March 1948); published in Albert Einstein-Hedwig und Max Born (1969) "Briefwechsel 1916-55"<!-- p. 223 Nymphenburger, Munich-->, and in Potentiality, Entanglement and Passion-at-a-Distance: Quantum Mechanical Studies for Abner Shimony, Volume Two edited by Robert Cohen, Michael Horn, and John Stachel (1997), p. 121 http://books.google.com/books?id=DsNoIcQemTsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q&f=false
1940s