“Whatever else he was during his life, he was never dull, and the world forgives almost anything but stupidity.”

Act III, sc. i
Wilhelm Tell (1803)

Self-written "Obituary" (24 March 1932), published 16 years prior to his actual death, as quoted in The Voice of Small-Town America : The Selected Writings of Robert Quillen, 1920-1948 (2008) by John Hammond Moore, p. 181
Context: He was a writer of paragraphs and short editorials. He always hoped to write something of permanent value, but the business of making a living took most of his time and he never got around to it. In his youth he felt an urge to reform the world, but during the latter years of his life he decided that he would be doing rather well if he kept himself out of jail. … When the last clod had fallen, workmen covered the grave with a granite slab bearing the inscription: "Submitted to the Publisher by Robert Quillen."

Source: Dreaming of You

Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; 1991)

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 17, “Dead Voices” (p. 171)

The Illiterate Digest (1924), p. 228

Latif Yahia, double for Uday Saddam Hussein, in I knew… Saddam (31 July 2007) Al Jazeera English
Attributed