“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”
Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
6th Public Talk, Saanen, Switzerland (29 July 1971)
1970s
“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”
Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
Robert Menzies (1894–1978) Australian politician, 12th Prime Minister of Australia
1949 election campaign speech https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1949-robert-menzies, delivered in Melbourne on November 10, 1949 <br class="br">Wilderness Years (1941-1949)
Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt
Book 9: "Nsara", § 5
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
"Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party", New Leader (24 June 1939)
James Cromwell (1940) American actor and producer
"Tribeca Film Festival Interview: John and James Cromwell of A .45 at 50th" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cynthia-ellis/tribeca-film-festival-int_b_561477.html by Cynthia Ellis, in HuffingtonPost.com (4 July 2010)
Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist
Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 7 : Passion for Form, p. 127
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 70.
1924
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Originally delivered as a lecture (late 1927); Pure Poetry: Notes for a Lecture The Creative Vision (1960)
Context: For the musician, before he has begun his work, all is in readiness so that the operation of his creative spirit may find, right from the start, the appropriate matter and means, without any possibility of error. He will not have to make this matter and means submit to any modification; he need only assemble elements which are clearly defined and ready-made. But in how different a situation is the poet! Before him is ordinary language, this aggregate of means which are not suited to his purpose, not made for him. There have not been physicians to determine the relationships of these means for him; there have not been constructors of scales; no diapason, no metronome, no certitude of this kind. He has nothing but the coarse instrument of the dictionary and the grammar. Moreover, he must address himself not to a special and unique sense like hearing, which the musician bends to his will, and which is, besides, the organ par excellence of expectation and attention; but rather to a general and diffused expectation, and he does so through a language which is a very odd mixture of incoherent stimuli.
Irving Caesar (1895–1996) American composer and lyricist
This is actually James Branch Cabell from The Silver Stallion (1926)
Misattributed