
“Write in the sand the flaws of your friend.”
As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary
Quote from Prospectus aux amateurs de tout genre, Jean Dubuffet; Paris: Gallimard, 1946; translated in: Mildred Glimcher, ed., Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality; New York: Abbeville Press 1987; as cited in 'Dubuffet, Lévi-Strauss, and the Idea of Art Brut', Kent Minturn http://www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/faculty/Minturn/Dubuffet-Levi-Strauss.pdf, from RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 46, Polemical Objects (Autumn, 2004), p. 250
Dubuffet is describing the (contemporary) for him of the footprints of the Bedouins.
1940's
“Write in the sand the flaws of your friend.”
As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary
“Don't waste your tremendous voice writing messages in the sand.”
Speaking at Bringing the Circle Together.
“I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter.”
His reason for not pursuing a literary career
Unsourced
“If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge.”
Variant: If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it...
Variant: Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.
The West Wing, Season Two Commentary Track: Noel.
“There are no indecipherable writings, any writing system produced by man can be read by man.”
Epigraphic Atlas of Petén Phase 1 http://cemyk.org/pages/en/publications-projects.php
“One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.”
Quoted in The Edmonton Journal (8 March 1999), C3
Song lyrics, Shot of Love (1981), Every Grain Of Sand
Variant: "I am hanging in the balance of a perfect, finished plan" (The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1–3)
letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, from Yosemite Valley (September 1874); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 11: On Widening Currents <!-- Terry Gifford, LLO, page 203 -->
(Presumably paraphrasing from the poem Woodnotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Come learn with me the fatal song / Which knits the world in music strong / … / and the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake / The wood is wiser far than thou".)
(Turlock: Town where Muir changed from railroad to foot travel in this particular journey from Oakland, California, to Yosemite Valley.)
1870s