
Short fiction, The White Horse Child (1979)
Source: Fool
Short fiction, The White Horse Child (1979)
“When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.”
In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
Context: By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.
“Personally, I like to defiantly split my infinitives.”
[199708271551.IAA10211@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997
Pavle Ivić in: Linguistics http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/342418/linguistics#ref411727, britannica.com, 9 April 2013.
“He who does not expect will not find out the unexpected, for it is trackless and unexplored.”
Fragment 18, as quoted in The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 105
Variants:
He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it out.
The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 129
He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it, since it is trackless and unexplored.
As quoted in Helen by Euripides, edited by William Allan (2008), p. 278
Unless you expect the unexpected, you will not find it, for it is hidden and thickly tangled.
Rendering ἐὰν μή "unless" is more English-friendly without being inaccurate. As for the last clause, the point is that you can neither find it nor navigate your way through it. The alpha-privatives suggest using similar metaphoric adjectives to keep the Greek 'feel.' (S. N. Jenks, 2014)
Numbered fragments
“It is the treason that finds favour, and not the traitor who is guilty of it.”
Pt. II, Lib. II, Ch. X.
Guzmán de Alfarache (1599-1604)