“Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.”

— John Irving, book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently." by John Irving?

John Irving97

American novelist and screenwriter 1942

Related quotes

“The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.”

Philip Larkin book The Whitsun Weddings

"Love Songs in Age" (1 January 1957)
The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

“There is nothing man will not attempt when great enterprises hold out the promise of great rewards.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book IV, sec. 35
History of Rome

“Because practice is subjective, theory which is always the theory of an object, can't access to the reality of this practice, what it is in itself, but only represent it, in such a way that this representation lets out of itself the real being of practice, the effectivity of the doing. Theory does nothing.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Marx I. une philosophie de la réalité, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Nrf », 1976, p. 353
Books on Economy and Politics, Marx. A Philosophy of Human Being (1976)
Original: (fr) Parce que la pratique est subjective, la théorie qui est toujours la théorie d’un objet, ne peut atteindre la réalité de cette pratique, ce qu’elle est en elle-même, sa subjectivité précisément, mais seulement se la représenter, de telle manière que cette représentation laisse hors d’elle l’être réel de la pratique, l’effectivité du faire. La théorie ne fait rien.

“I could scarcely bear to look at her eyes. They promised such intimacies.”

V.S. Naipaul book Half a Life

Half a Life (2001)

“What I want to accomplish artistically amounts to nothing more than fulfilling the promise of the American Revolution.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

Statement of purpose, L. Neil Smith's "The Webley Page" http://www.lneilsmith.org/

“Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.”
Adeo nihil est miserum nisi cum putes, contraque beata sors omnis est aequanimitate tolerantis.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Prose IV, line 18
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book II

“The study and practice of poetry can equip you to 'boldly go where no man has gone before,' but it's not enough to go there—you have to be able to bear witness. Without witnessing, experience dissolves into nothing.”

Ariana Reines (1982) American writer

On the practice of poetry in “Ariana Reines Knows That Not All Surrender Is Bad” https://nylon.com/ariana-reines-sand-book-interview in Nylon Magazine (2019 Oct 15)