“He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.”

—  Douglas Adams

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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English writer and humorist 1952–2001

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Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) English poet, forger

William Hazlitt Lectures on the English Poets (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1818) p. 243.
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“Words on the paper mix with blood,
The extraordinary labor of ten years!”

Cao Xueqin (1724–1763) Chinese writer during the Qing dynasty

(zh-TW) 字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常 。

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Couplet in the preface to Dream of the Red Chamber, 1754 Jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本); the couplet is "generally considered to be written by Cao Xueqin" according to Wong Kwok-pun in Dreaming across Languages and Cultures (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), footnote on p. 71, but Zhou Ruchang attributes it to Red Inkstone in Between Noble and Humble, trans. Liangmei Bao (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 181. note: Variant translations: note: Every word [in the novel] which one looks at is a drop of blood. The ten years ' painstaking labour is no commonplace.
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version in original Dutch / citaat van Jacob Maris, in het Nederlands: Thijs wist alles uit zich zelf, hij was een genie.
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Context: The concept which assumes that everything in the Church is irrevocably set for all times appears to me to be a false one. It would be naive to disregard that the Church has a history; the Church is a human institution and like all things human, was destined to change and evolve; likewise, its development takes place often in the form of struggles. Most of the definitions of dogma are conclusive results of preceding intellectual conflicts lasting for decades and even centuries. The same is true of ecclesiastical law, liturgical forms — especially all objective forms reflecting our spiritual life.

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