“Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!”
Source: The Book of Disquiet
“Ah, who will write the history of what might have been?”
Fernando Pessoa (as Álvaro de Campos), quoted by José Saramago in The Stone Raft (1986), p. 9
Misattributed
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José Saramago 138
Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in … 1922–2010Related quotes
Book II, Ch. 10. Of Books
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Jim Bishop
(1907–1987) American journalist and author
As quoted by Lewis Nichols http://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/30/obituaries/lewis-nichols-times-drama-critic-during-world-war-ii-dead-at-78.html in "Talk With Jim Bishop" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F03EEDE133AE53BBC4E53DFB466838E649EDE, The New York Times (6 February 1955).
John F. Kennedy
(1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
1963, American University speech
Context: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different. We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world. To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility. For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people — but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.
“Ah, Fist, it’s the curse of history that those who should read them, never do.”
Source: Deadhouse Gates
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar
The Philosophy of History (1852), Lecture I.
“What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.”
Edward Gorey
(1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator
Source: Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey
“A writer who writes straight is the architect of history.”
John Dos Passos
(1896–1970) novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, painter
Introduction to 1932 Modern Library edition of Three Soldiers
Context: The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history. A writer who writes straight is the architect of history.
“People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.”
Ernest Hemingway
(1899–1961) American author and journalist