James Branch Cabell quote: “Oh, do the Overlords of Life and Death always provide some obstacle to prevent what all of us have known in youth was p…”

“The true disciple of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood by other men; they do not perceive that he is ever pursuing death and dying; and if this is true, why, having had the desire of death all his life long, should he repine at that which he has always been pursuing and desiring?”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

“I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens of verbal jewelwork. It is not the actual world they tell about, but a vastly superior place where the Dream is realized and everything which in youth we knew was possible comes true. It is a world we have all glimpsed, just once, and have not ever entered, and have not ever forgotten. So people like my little tales.... Do they induce delusions? Oh, well, you must give people what they want, and literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

“No one I have ever known is so brilliant as to have learned the languages of all fields of knowledge equally well. Most of us do not learn some of them at all.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: The question, "How well does one read?" is a bad question... essentially unanswerable. A more proper question is "How well does one read poetry, or history, or science, or religion?" No one I have ever known is so brilliant as to have learned the languages of all fields of knowledge equally well. Most of us do not learn some of them at all.

“Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

“Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be;
Yet oh, how dear it is to us, this life we live and see!”

Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905) Children's writer, novelist, poet, editor

The Two Mysteries (1904).

“For some reason the settlement enterprise is being accused of being an obstacle to peace. Personally, I explain at each possible forum that the obstacle to peace is the objection by the Arabs to it and the fact that they do not want us here.”

Reuven Rivlin (1939) Israeli politician, 10th President of Israel

Israel national news http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/161578#.U5gR5PldXs9, 1 November 2012

“I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens of verbal jewelwork. It is not the actual world they tell about, but a vastly superior place where the Dream is realized and everything which in youth we knew was possible comes true. It is a world we have all glimpsed, just once, and have not ever entered, and have not ever forgotten.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)
Context: I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens of verbal jewelwork. It is not the actual world they tell about, but a vastly superior place where the Dream is realized and everything which in youth we knew was possible comes true. It is a world we have all glimpsed, just once, and have not ever entered, and have not ever forgotten. So people like my little tales.... Do they induce delusions? Oh, well, you must give people what they want, and literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Variant: It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
Source: The Alchemist

“What good, what use, what aim?
What compensation for the throes of birth
And death in all its frame?
What conscious life hath ever paid its cost?
From Nothingness to Nothingness — all lost!”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

From a letter dated 19 October 1879, quoted by Bertram Dobell in The Laureate of Pessimism: A Sketch of the Life, and Character of James Thomson ("BV"); Author of the City of Dreadful Night (1910), p. 38

“Some act till they meet obstacles, others act inspite of obstacles and conquer them; but some act not fearing the possibility of some obstacles, that might arise enroute.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

“Oh, do the Overlords of Life and Death always provide some obstacle to prevent what all of us have known in youth was possible from ever coming true?”

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