“His insatiable passion for singular odds and ends had a meaning in it; he was groping towards a scientific ordering of phenomena; but the twilight of his age was too confusing, and he could rarely distinguish between a fact and a fantasy.”

— John Aubrey

Lytton Strachey Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1931) p. 24.
Criticism

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John Aubrey 20

English writer and antiquarian 1626–1697

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) British writer

12. "The Ordinary Hairpins"
Trent Intervenes (1938)

“He had a passion for historical accuracy, saying that it is useless to write when one is not sure of the facts. It will only be adding confusion to an already confused world.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

The Manila Tribune. April 19, 1928.
BALIW

“My friend returned to the gallery, looked once more at the adorable imprint of the most innocent, the most passionate of caresses. A mirror hung near by, where he could compare his present with his former face, the man he was with the man he had been. He never told me and I never asked what his feelings were at that moment. Did he feel that he was too culpable to have inspired a passion in a young girl whom he would have been a fool, almost a criminal, to marry? Did he comprehend that through his age which was so apparent, it was his youth which this child loved? Did he remember, with a keenness that was all too sad, that other, who had never given him a kiss like that at a time when he might have returned it? I only know that he left the same day, determined never again to see one whom he could no longer love as he had loved the other, with the hope, the purity, the soul of a man of twenty.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Pierre Fauchery, as quoted by the character "Jules Labarthe"
The Age for Love

“If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.”

George Reisman (1937) American economist

“Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian,” lecture delivered at the Mises Institute’s “The Economics of Fascism: Supporters Summit 2005” in Auburn, Alabama (October 8, 2005) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsaG-pJ_4RA&list=PLOCWSOHhjJPUQ9kkhBKV9js9tFJTPp3yC&index=3&t=0s

“Man discerns three great things in the All: he finds there his body, he finds there his soul—and then there is the rest of the world. Between these things there is an unceasing commerce, and sometimes even a confusion arises; but always after a certain time has elapsed, these three things come to be clearly distinguished from one another.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 128
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

“The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

Freud and Literature
The Liberal Imagination (1950)

“The little boy I watched throwing pebbles into the empty fountain […] You could tell that he had too much wisdom for his age. Probably he believed that he wasn't made for this world. I wanted to say to him: If not you, who?”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 351

“Commitment often means that a woman achieves her primary fantasy, while a man gives his up. In exchange for forfeiting his primary fantasy, what does he hope to fulfill? His primary need: intimacy.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 150.

“What becomes decisive to a Justice's functioning on the Court in the large area within which his individuality moves is his general attitude toward law, the habits of the mind that he has formed or is capable of unforming, his capacity for detachment, his temperament or training for putting his passion behind his judgment instead of in front of it. The attitudes and qualities which I am groping to characterize are ingredients of what compendiously might be called dominating humility.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Foreward, to "Memorial issue for Robert H. Jackson", 55 Columbia Law Review (April, 1955) p. 436; quoted by United States Senator Howell Heflin during the confirmation debate for Justice David Souter, on September 24, 1990, S13540.
Other writings

“I knew something was up when he couldn't go to his right. He said he was living his fantasy, and I said it was my fantasy to get his [rear] off the field.”

Tommy Lasorda (1927) American baseball player and coach

Obituary http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-barry-bremen-20110707,0,2935425.story, LA Times, 2011-07-07
Describing how he caught "Great Imposter" Barry Bremen in a Mets uniform shagging balls in the outfield before the 1986 All-Star Game at the Houston Astrodome.

“His insatiable passion for singular odds and ends had a meaning in it; he was groping towards a scientific ordering of phenomena; but the twilight of his age was too confusing, and he could rarely distinguish between a fact and a fantasy.”

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