“The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.”

— Blaise Pascal , Pensées

Source: Pensées

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first." by Blaise Pascal?

Blaise Pascal photo

Blaise Pascal 144

French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Chri… 1623–1662

Related quotes

“The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

“I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“I see the work as a whole first. Then I compose the details.”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Austrian-American composer

As quoted in an interview with José Rodriguez (c. 1936) in Schoenberg‎ (1971) by Merle Armitage, p. 149
after 1930
Context: I see the work as a whole first. Then I compose the details. In working out, I always lose something. This cannot be avoided. There is always some loss when we materialize. But there is compensating gain in vitality.

“Tchaikovsky thought of committing suicide for fear of being discovered as a homosexual, but today, if you are a composer and not homosexual, you might as well put a bullet through your head.”

Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929) Russian art critic

In Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), 260:2

“When the last word is always the one that offers itself first, the work becomes difficult.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.”

William Beebe (1877–1962) American ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, and explorer

The Bird (1906)

“Columbus was not the first one to discover America, only the first to patent it.”

Andrzej Majewski (1966) Polish writer and photographer

Nie Kolumb pierwszy odkrył Amerykę, ale pierwszy ją opatentował.
Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)

“To discover the various use of things is the work of history.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 1, pg. 42.
(Buch I) (1867)

“I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.”

Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987) Lithuanian violinist

Heifetz official web site http://www.jaschaheifetz.com/about/quotes.html

“Of course the modern detective story puts off its best tricks till the last, but Doyle always put his best tricks first and that's why they're still the best ones.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Rex Stout, page 251
Invitation to Learning

Related topics