"Veni Creator" (1961), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Pinsky
City Without a Name (1969)
Context: I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore call one man, anyone on earth,
not me — after all I have some decency —
and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.
“I am a man for whom the visible world exists.”
Je suis un homme pour qui le monde visible existe.
Remark, May 1, 1857, reported in the Journal des Goncourts (Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1888) vol. 1, p. 182; translation from Joanna Richardson Théophile Gautier: His Life & Times (London: Max Reinhardt, 1958) p. 14.
written in her Journal, 1905
Quote of Werefkin's Journal, 1905; in Briefe an einen Unbekannten, ed. Clemens Weiler, Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont, 1960, p. 50
1895 - 1905
As quoted in The Quotable Woman (1978) by Elaine Partnow, p. 390
“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
Source: Evidence: Poems
Si je savais une chose utile à ma nation qui fût ruineuse à une autre, je ne la proposerais pas à mon prince, parce que je suis homme avant d’être Français, parce que je suis nécessairement homme, et que je ne suis Français que par hasard
I.
Pensées et Fragments Inédits de Montesquieu (1899)
“I am only an average man, but by George, I work harder at it than the average man.”
“A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of an authentic democracy.”
In 'The Observer' (London), 'Sayings of the Week'
