“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.”
Pt. I.
The Aran Islands (1907)
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John Millington Synge16
Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folk… 1871–1909Related quotes
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator
"If Only This Could Be Said" To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays by Czesŀaw Miŀosz (2001) edited and translated by Bogdana Carpenter and Madeline G. Levine <!-- publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux -->
Context: Evil grows and bears fruit, which is understandable, because it has logic and probability on its side and also, of course, strength. The resistance of tiny kernels of good, to which no one grants the power of causing far-reaching consequences, is entirely mysterious, however. Such seeming nothingness not only lasts but contains within itself enormous energy which is revealed gradually.
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician
Letter to M.V. Kiseleva (September 29, 1886)
Letters
“Mama was crying, and the rain made it seem as if the whole world was crying.”
Lois Lowry book Number the Stars
Source: Number the Stars
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1912, as quoted in Clark The life of Bertrand Russell (1976), p. 174
1910s