Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Source: 1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
“I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again / I am to see to it that I do not lose you”
On character building in “Wearing the Words: An Interview with Anna Deavere Smith” https://tricycle.org/magazine/wearing-words-interview-anna-deavere-smith/ in the Buddhist Review (Fall 1994)
“I am already late, I fear. What time is it?”
“Time? Why the present, of course.”
The Time Dweller (p. 13)
Short fiction, The Time Dweller (1969)
“My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.”
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)
Original: (la) Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum.
Book I, epistle i, line 11
Letter to a friend (November 1920), as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 428
Source: The Mark of the Golden Dragon: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, Jewel of the East, Vexation of the West, and Pearl of the South China Sea
"Trefusis Blasphemes" radio broadcast, as published in Paperweight (1993)
1990s
Context: I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.
Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Introduction (1969)
Context: Those, no doubt, are in some way fortunate who have brought themselves, or have been brought by others, to obey some ultimate principle before the bar of which all problems can be brought. Single-minded monists, ruthless fanatics, men possessed by an all-embracing coherent vision do not know the doubts and agonies of those who cannot wholly blind themselves to reality.
Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, May 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 591), p 25
1880s, 1889
