“Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualism. One knows only that he has passed into it and lives beyond us, in a condition not ours.”
“The Bankrupt Man,” Hugging the Shore
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John Updike240
American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, an… 1932–2009Related quotes
André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist
Detached Pages, entry for 1913
Journals 1889-1949
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States
1930s, Speech to the Democratic National Convention (1936)
Context: The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor — these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age — other people's money — these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in. Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities. Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)
José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager
http://trivela.uol.com.br/mourinho-50-anos-as-melhores-frases-do-special-one/ <br class="br">2003
E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer
The Wild Flag (1943)
Context: I don't see how a strong foreign policy can be built around a wild flag which is the same for everybody,' complained the Latvian.
'It can't be,' said the Chinese. 'That is one of the virtues of my little flag. I should remind you that the flag was once yours, too. It is the oldest flag in the world, the original one, you might say. We are now, in an original condition again, you might say. There are very few of us.'
The German delegate arose stiffly. 'I would be a poor man indeed,' he said, 'did I not feel that I belonged to the master race. And for that I need a special flag, natürlich.'
'At the moment,' replied the Chinaman, 'the master race, like so many other races, is suffering from the handicap of being virtually extinct. There are fewer than two hundred people left in the entire world, and we suffer from a multiplicity of banner.
Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright
"A Reply to Kenneth Tynan: The Playwright's Role" in The Observer (29 June 1958)
Context: I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding.
If I may be allowed to express myself paradoxically, I should say that the truest society, the authentic human community, is extra-social — a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias. The whole history of the world has been governed by nostalgias and anxieties, which political action does no more than reflect and interpret, very imperfectly. No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) French philosopher
The Theory Of Intuition In Husserls Phenomenology 1963, 1995 p. 9
“it’s not conditions but decisions that determine our lives.”
Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker
MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom