Fable X, "The Elephant and the Bookseller"
Fables (1727)
“When not prompted by vanity, we say little.”
On parle peu quand la vanité ne fait pas parler.
Variant translation: We say little when vanity does not make us speak.
Maxim 137.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
"Markings", p. 438
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Jane (Ch. 23)
Jane Eyre (1847)
“Science fiction … means what we point to when we say it.”
[In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction, 1956, Advent Publishers, page 1, ISBN 0911682074]
“Crashing out of Europe with no deal risks being a national disaster.”
Brexit: Jeremy Corbyn meets Michel Barnier for 'useful' talks https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45660640, BBC News, 27 September 2018
2010s, 2018
Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (1994) Chapter Six: "Fictional Protocols"
Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness (1976)
Context: The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
“Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast, and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart.”
Ambitio multos mortales falsos fieri subegit, aliud clausum in pectore, aliud in lingua promptum habere, amicitias inimicitiasque non ex re, sed ex commodo aestimare, magisque vultum quam ingenium bonum habere.
Variant translation: It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will.
Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter X, section 5
“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;
Real becomes not-real when the unreal's real.”
Jia zuo zhen shi zhen yi jia,
Wu wei you chu you huan wu.
Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5
Source: The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays
