“Few books today are forgivable.”
Source: The Politics of Experience (1967), p. 1 of Introduction
Context: Few books today are forgivable. Black on canvas, silence on the screen, an empty white sheet of paper are perhaps feasible. There is little conjunction of truth and social "reality". Around us are pseudo-events, to which we adjust with a false consciousness adapted to see these events as true and real, and even as beautiful. In the society of men the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth, and beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie. What is to be done? We who are still half alive, living in the often fibrillating heartland of a senescent capitalism — can we do more than reflect the decay around and within us? Can we do more than sing our sad and bitter songs of disillusion and defeat? The requirement of the present, the failure of the past, is the same: to provide a thoroughly self-conscious and self-critical human account of man.
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Ronald David Laing 30
Scottish psychiatrist and author 1927–1989Related quotes
“I forgive the many for the sake of the few, the living for the dead.”
Lucius Cornelius Sulla
(-138–-78 BC) Ancient Roman general, dictator
On calling an end to the sacking of Athens, after a plea on its behalf by two Athenians loyal to Rome, as quoted in The Story of Rome : From the Earliest Times to the Death of Augustus (1900) by Mary Macgregor; also said to be in a translation of Plutarch's works.
“Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care”
Leonard Cohen
(1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.”
Samuel Paterson
(1728–1802) English bookseller and auctioneer
Joineriana: or The Book of Scraps (London: 1772), Vol. I, p. 40
Boris Yeltsin
(1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR
1990s, Farewell speech (1999)
Context: Today, on this day that is so extraordinarily important for me, I want to say just a few more personal words than usual.
I want to ask for your forgiveness.
For the fact that many of the dreams we shared did not come true. And for the fact that what seemed simple to us turned out to be tormentingly difficult. I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich, civilized future. I myself believed in this, that we could overcome everything in one spurt.
I turned out to be too naive in something. In some places, problems seemed to be too complicated. We forced our way forward through mistakes, through failures. Many people in this hard time experienced shock.
“A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.”
Martin Farquhar Tupper
(1810–1889) English writer and poet
Of Reading.
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1849)
“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything.”
Walter Bagehot
(1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist
Shakespeare
Literary Studies (1879)
Context: The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.