“The two of them joined together left me no answerable argument; their dream was a grand one but it was exactly that — a dream. They both lived to know this and I learned it from them, but it has not changed my love for them or my lifelong sympathy for the cause to which they devoted their lives — to ameliorate the anguish that human beings inflict on each other — the never-ending wrong, forever incurable.”
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
Context: Far away and long ago, I read Emma Goldman's story of her life, her first book in which she told the grim, deeply touching narrative of her young life during which she worked in a scrubby sweatshop making corsets by the bundle. At the same time, I was reading Prince Kropotkin's memoirs, his account of the long step he took from his early princely living to his membership in the union of the outcast, the poor, the depressed, and it was a most marvelous thing to have two splendid, courageous, really noble human beings speaking together, telling the same tale. It was like a duet of two great voices telling a tragic story. I believed in both of them at once. The two of them joined together left me no answerable argument; their dream was a grand one but it was exactly that — a dream. They both lived to know this and I learned it from them, but it has not changed my love for them or my lifelong sympathy for the cause to which they devoted their lives — to ameliorate the anguish that human beings inflict on each other — the never-ending wrong, forever incurable.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Katherine Anne Porter 43
American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist… 1890–1980Related quotes
On Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo, in "So You Think You Can Dance" host Cat Deeley dishes on her colleagues.mp4 interview for The Los Angeles Times (May 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hekmnJWg1k
Source: Tonio Kröger (1903), Ch. 9, as translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan
Variant translation: But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the fair-haired and the blue-eyed, the bright children of life, the happy, the charming and the ordinary.
Ch. 9, as translated by David Luke
Context: What I have done is nothing, not much — as good as nothing. I shall do better things, Lisaveta — this is a promise. While I am writing, the sea's roar is coming up to me, and I close my eyes. I am looking into an unborn and shapeless world that longs to be called to life and order, I am looking into a throng of phantoms of human forms which beckon me to conjure them and set them free: some of them tragic, some of them ridiculous, and some that are both at once — and to these I am very devoted. But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the bright-spirited living ones, the happy, amiable, and commonplace.
Do not speak lightly of this love, Lisaveta; it is good and fruitful. There is longing in it and melancholy envy, and a tiny bit of contempt, and an unalloyed chaste blissfulness.
“It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.”
Julien Levy exhibition catalog (April 1945)
"Two Lives" (song)
("Two Lives", Official video on YouTube)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn60dbD0CsE
(+ "Two Lives", a lyrics version on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLKlbUZYd_o
Studio albums, Won't Go Quietly (2010)
“We've devoted our lives to learning about them!" Miro said.
Ender stopped. "Not from them.”
Source: Speaker for the Dead
