“Vereker’s secret, my dear man — the general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.”

— Henry James

The Figure in the Carpet http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/fgcpt10h.htm (1896).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Vereker’s secret, my dear man — the general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried tr…" by Henry James?

Henry James 154

American novelist, short story author, and literary critic 1843–1916

Related quotes

“Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

A Persian Song of Hafiz, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "'T was he that ranged the words at random flung, Pierced the fair pearls and them together strung", Eastwick: Anvari Suhaili. (Translated from Firdousi).

“Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to by which the merchant will sell all his goods.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Costly Grace, p. 45.

“These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
FitzGerald strung them on an English thread.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

In a Copy of Omar Khayyam.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
FitzGerald strung them on an English thread.

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.”

Joseph Hall (1574–1656) British bishop

Christian Moderation, introduction.

“My intention was to give a general outline, to sketch a general division and, as it were, a provisional plan of a domain that has not been studied so far and which should be the result of work for many generations of linguists. The reader is therefore requested to consider this book a simple introduction to the science which I propose to call semantics.”

Michel Bréal (1832–1915) French philologist

Source: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 9 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962:3).

“The man who invented the red carpet needed his head examined.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

About to disembark on state visit to Brazil (November 1968), as quoted in The Reality of Monarchy (1970) by Andrew Duncan
1960s

“With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Shipbuilding, written by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer
Song lyrics, Punch the Clock (1983)
Context: The boy said 'Dad they're going to take me to task
But I'll be back by Christmas'
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
Somebody said that someone got filled in
For saying that people get killed in
The result of this shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls.

“He never invested his whole moral capital in a man, a book, or a cause, but treasured up wisdom wherever it could be picked up, always with scrupulous acknowledgment”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

Source: Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943), IV
Context: He never invested his whole moral capital in a man, a book, or a cause, but treasured up wisdom wherever it could be picked up, always with scrupulous acknowledgment … His eclecticism saving him from the cycle of hope-disillusion-despair, his highest effectiveness was as a skirmisher in the daily battle for light and justice, as a critic of new doctrine and a refurbisher of old, as a voice of warning and encouragement. That his action has not been in vain, we can measure by how little Shaw's iconoclasm stirs our blood; we no longer remember what he destroyed that was blocking our view.

“Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

“Vereker’s secret, my dear man — the general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Henry James 154

Related quotes

Related topics