Source: House of Leaves
"The Immortal", § IV, in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Variant: To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.
“It had been a whim, and there was nothing Magnus attached more importance to than a whim.”
Source: The Runaway Queen
“Nothing's worse than a woman know-it-all.”
April 4, 2006.[citation needed]
2000s
“Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.”
Forbes: "5 Obstacles That Inspired Me To Innovate" https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2018/06/28/5-obstacles-that-inspired-me-to-innovate/#8f06bb42b77f (28 June 2018)
“Nothing but truth is immortal.”
Source: The Ghosts and Other Lectures
Stanza 7
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale
Context: Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
“I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!”
To think of Time, 9
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse”
As translated in Haiku : Spring (1950) by Reginald Horace Blyth
Context: In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse;
The flowering branches are
of themselves, some short, some long.
