“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness.”
John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer
Accepting Edward MacDowell Medal (September 8, 1979).
Letter 216, to Florence Barger, 11 February 1922
Selected Letters (1983-1985)
“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness.”
John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer
Accepting Edward MacDowell Medal (September 8, 1979).
“For it must needs that offences come, but woe to him through whom the offence cometh.”
Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist
The crimes of the future are the harvests sown of the ruling classes of the present. Woe to the tyrant who shall cause the offense!
Sometimes I dream of this social change. I get a streak of faith in Evolution, and the good in man. I paint a gradual slipping out of the now, to that beautiful then, where there are neither kings, presidents, landlords, national bankers, stockbrokers, railroad magnates, patentright monopolists, or tax and title collectors; where there are no over-stocked markets or hungry children, idle counters and naked creatures, splendor and misery, waste and need. I am told this is farfetched idealism, to paint this happy, povertyless, crimeless, diseaseless world; I have been told I "ought to be behind the bars" for it.
Remarks of that kind rather destroy the white streak of faith. I lose confidence in the slipping process, and am forced to believe that the rulers of the earth are sowing a fearful wind, to reap a most terrible whirlwind. When I look at this poor, bleeding, wounded World, this world that has suffered so long, struggled so much, been scourged so fiercely, thorn-pierced so deeply, crucified so cruelly, I can only shake my head and remember:
The giant is blind, but he's thinking: and his locks are growing, fast.
In the first line presented here de Cleyre quotes an admonition of Jesus Christ, and in the last line, the giant she refers to is the blinded Samson.
The Economic Tendency of Freethought (1890)
John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…
John 17:3 http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/b/r1/lp-e/nwt/E/2013/43/17#h=115:287-115:408, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures <br class="br">Gospel of John
“Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.
Linus Pauling”
Linus Pauling (1901–1994) American scientist
Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement
Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader
Ram Lila Grounds, Delhi, India, October 29, 1966 (translated from Hindi) - Published in Divine Light (UK) April 1, 1973, Volume 2, Issue 7
1960s
“May all your dreams but one come true, for what is life without a dream?”
David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy
Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic
Epilogue (p. 687)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)