“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece”
Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita
Variant: Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Source: Lolita
Pt. II, ch. 1, sec. 1.
Source: 1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece”
Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita
Variant: Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Source: Lolita
Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic
"The Limits of Mother Love", in The New York Times Book Review, March 31, 1985
“Ideal goals are a menace in themselves, as much in more modern philosophers as in Plato.”
Moses I. Finley (1912–1986) American historian
Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 6
William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Four, Hebraism And Hellenism, p. 70
Harold Innis (1894–1952) Canadian professor of political economy
Minerva's Owl (1947), an address to the Royal Society of Canada, published in The Bias of Communication (1951) p. 10.
The Bias of Communication (1951)
Sir Richard Temple, 1st Baronet (1826–1902) British politician
"Oriental experience; a selection of essays and addresses delivered in various occasions" in Shourie, Arun (1994). Missionaries in India: Continuities, changes, dilemmas. New Delhi : Rupa & Co, 1994 https://archive.org/stream/orientalexperien00tempuoft/orientalexperien00tempuoft_djvu.txt