“The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.”

—  Max Beerbohm

Comment

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 "The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends." by Max Beerbohm?
Max Beerbohm photo
Max Beerbohm 36
English writer 1872–1956

Related quotes

Daniel Abraham photo

“After a certain point, the past becomes irrelevant.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Abaddon's Gate (2013), Chapter 38 (pp. 387-388)

Zelda Fitzgerald photo

“It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that’s the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

"The magician" by Maya Jaggi in The Guardian (17 December 2005) http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/childrenandteens/story/0,,1669112,00.html
Context: Sometimes one’s very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that’s the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.

Jacques Ellul photo

“Technique is totally irrelevant to this notion and pursues no end, professed or unprofessed.”

Source: The Technological Society (1954), p. 97
Context: A principal characteristic of technique … is its refusal to tolerate moral judgments. It is absolutely independent of them and eliminates them from its domain. Technique never observes the distinction between moral and immoral use. It tends on the contrary, to create a completely independent technical morality.
Here, then, is one of the elements of weakness of this point of view. It does not perceive technique's rigorous autonomy with respect to morals; it does not see that the infusion of some more or less vague sentiment of human welfare cannot alter it. Not even the moral conversion of the technicians could make a difference. At best, they would cease to be good technicians. This attitude supposes further that technique evolves with some end in view, and that this end is human good. Technique is totally irrelevant to this notion and pursues no end, professed or unprofessed.

Dave Matthews photo
Felicia Hemans photo

“Come to the sunset tree!
The day is past and gone;
The woodman’s axe lies free,
And the reaper’s work is done.”

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) English poet

Tyrolese Evening Song, st. 1.

“For the modernist, in contrast, the past is largely irrelevant. The nation is a modern phenomenon, the product of nationalist ideologies, which themselves are the expression of modern, industrial society. The nationalist is free to use ethnic heritages, but nation-building can proceed without the aid of an ethnic past. Hence, nations are phenomena of a particular stage of history, and embedded in purely modern conditions.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

As cited by Eric G.E. Zuelow " Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and the Reconstruction of Nations http://www.nationalismproject.org/what/smith1.htm" on nationalismproject.org. 1999-2007.
Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations. (1994)

Neal Stephenson photo
George E. P. Box photo

“The penalty for scientific irrelevance is, of course, that the statistician's work is ignored by the scientific community.”

George E. P. Box (1919–2013) British statistician

Source: Science and Statistics (1976), p. 798

Related topics