“I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angles of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.”

Source: House of Leaves

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrific…" by Mark Z. Danielewski?
Mark Z. Danielewski photo
Mark Z. Danielewski 47
Novelist 1965

Related quotes

John Donne photo

“Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 48, preached upon the Day of St. Paul's Conversion, January 25, 1629
LXXX Sermons (1640)

Harry Emerson Fosdick photo

“Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man is his endowment with personal capacities.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

On Being a Real Person (1943)
Context: Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man is his endowment with personal capacities. The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distances.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The Divinity College Address (1838)

Thomas Edison photo

“My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it. What a soul may be is beyond my understanding.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

"Do We Live Again?" an interview with Edison, as quoted in Mr. Edison's New Argument from Design" in The Illustrated London News (3 May 1924).
1920s

Karl Popper photo

“But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.”

Source: Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations"
Context: The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.

Plato photo

“Atheism is a disease of the soul, before it becomes an error of the understanding.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Misattributed to Plato in Laws by Conservapedia http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_Quotes. Actual source: William Fleming, as quoted in Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay by Samuel Austin Allibone, 1816–1889. http://www.bartleby.com/349/authors/74.html
Misattributed

Herbert Spencer photo

“We too often forget that not only is there "a soul of goodness in things evil," but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science; quoting from "There is some soul of goodness in things evil / Would men observingly distil it out", William Shakespeare, Henry V, act iv. sc. i
First Principles (1862)

Related topics