“The psycho-analyst infers the monstrous and abnormal from a trifle; it is often safe to reverse the process. If a man dreams that he has committed a sin before which the sun hid his face, it is often safe to conjecture that, in sheer forgetfulness, he wore a red tie, or brown boots with evening dress.”
"The Children of the Pool", in The Children of the Pool and Other Stories (New York: Arno Press, [1936] 1976) p. 83.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Arthur Machen 10
Welsh author and mystic 1863–1947Related quotes
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Context: Of the fifty or hundred systems of philosophy that have been advanced at different times of the world's history, perhaps the larger number have been, not so much results of historical evolution, as happy thoughts which have accidently occurred to their authors. An idea which has been found interesting and fruitful has been adopted, developed, and forced to yield explanations of all sorts of phenomena. … The remaining systems of philosophy have been of the nature of reforms, sometimes amounting to radical revolutions, suggested by certain difficulties which have been found to beset systems previouslv in vogue; and such ought certainly to be in large part the motive of any new theory. … When a man is about to build a house, what a power of thinking he has to do, before he can safely break ground! With what pains he has to excogitate the precise wants that are to be supplied. What a study to ascertain the most available and suitable materials, to determine the mode of construction to which those materials are best adapted, and to answer a hundred such questions! Now without riding the metaphor too far, I think we may safely say that the studies preliminary to the construction of a great theory should be at least as deliberate and thorough as those that are preliminary to the building of a dwelling-house.
As quoted in World Unity, Vol. IX, 3rd edition (1931), p. 190
1930s
“Even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins.”
161
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
1 Corinthians 6:18
First Epistle to the Corinthians
“The vanity of teaching often tempteth a Man to forget he is a Blockhead.”
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections
“He has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts.”
Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
“Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives whom we call dead.”
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Resignation
