“If only I'd chosen an easy work!”
On his unfinished work Hérodiade, in a letter to Henri Cazalis (15 January 1865), as translated in Mallarmé : The Poet and his Circle ([1999] 2005) by Rosemary Lloyd, p. 48.
Observations
Context: If only I'd chosen an easy work! But, precisely, I, who am sterile and crepuscular, have chosen a terrifying subject, whose sensations, if they are strong, reach the point of atrocity, and if they are vague, have the strange attitude of mystery. And my Verse hurts me at times, and wounds me as if it were of iron! I have, moreover, found an intimate and unique way of painting and noting down the very fleeting impressions. I should add, which is even more terrifying, that all these impressions follow one another as in a symphony, and I often have entire days when I ask myself if this impression can accompany that one, what is their relationship and effect … You can guess that I write few lines in a week.
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Stéphane Mallarmé 36
French Symbolist poet 1842–1898Related quotes
“I knew that I had been chosen as God's instrument for the work of the healing of the nation.”
Letter from 1938, as quoted in My Father : The True Story (1955) by A. W. Baldwin, pp. 327 - 328
1938
Source: Code Name Verity
“You could do with a day's work, I'd say.”
To a man in Athlone who had lost his job in the recession after being self-employed for 29 years.
Enda Kenny To Protester: “You Could Do With A Day’s Work, I’d Say.” http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/05/15/enda-kenny-to-protester-you-could-do-with-a-days-work-id-say/ Broadsheet, 2012-05-15.
Taoiseach's jibe at Athlone protester http://www.westmeathindependent.ie/news/roundup/articles/2012/05/14/4010403-taoiseachs-jibe-at-athlone-protester/ Westmeath Independent, 2012-05-14.
2010s
“Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.”
Cornell Chronicle interview (1999)
Prof. Barus' Retirement dinner speech, Brown University (1926) as quoted by in One of the 999 about to be Forgotten: Memoirs of Carl Barus, 1865-1935 (2005) ed., Axel W.-O. Scmidt.
Context: [L]et me refer to my original work. Naturally, if a student has been hammering away ever since 1979... he must have accumulated a lot of litter, much of which, perhaps, should have long since been swept away. But the fates are not to be bribed either by pother or importunity. Out of 1,000 men who are called, one (probably the ratio is much smaller) is chosen to do glorious scientific work. The others? Their lot is failure. They may be equally or even more industrious, they may have equal or even greater brain power—the other 999 exist merely to make the illustrious one in whom they culminate, possible. After that, the world will say to each in words of poetic brevity: "The man has done his duty, the man can go." And they do, pretty quickly, to a gentler lethe, flowing between the banks of amaranth and asphodel.
Gentlemen, I am one of the 999 about to be forgotten.
Source: Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community
“I was born. It was easy. My mother did all the hard work.”
Source: Blow Me Down