Quotes about finisher

page 10

The Pitch (Apr. 12, 2001)

Source: The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two, (1979), p. 462-463

Source: 1946 - 1963, Cahiers d'art', 1954, p. 14

1962, Address at Independence Hall

Interview with Roy Howard of the United Press of America (28 September 1916), quoted in The Times (29 September 1916), p. 7
Secretary of State for War
Context: The British soldier is a good sportsman. He enlisted in this war in a sporting spirit—in the best sense of that term. He went in to see fair play to a small nation trampled upon by a bully. He is fighting for fair play. He has fought as a good sportsman. By the thousands he has died a good sportsman. He has never asked anything more than a sporting chance. He has not always had that. When he couldn't get it, he didn’t quit. He played the game. He didn’t squeal, and he has certainly never asked anyone to squeal for him. Under the circumstances the British, now that the fortunes of the game have turned a bit, are not disposed to stop because of the squealing done by Germans or done for Germans by probably well-meaning but misguided sympathizers and humanitarians... During these months when it seemed the finish of the British Army might come quickly, Germany elected to make this a fight to a finish with England. The British soldier was ridiculed and held in contempt. Now we intend to see that Germany has her way. The fight must be to a finish—to a knock-out.

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VIII, Sec. 7
Context: Our workmen, in their hurry to finish, devote themselves only to the facings of the walls, setting them upright but filling the space between with a lot of broken stones and mortar thrown in anyhow. This makes three different sections in the same structure; two consisting of facing and one of filling between them. The Greeks, however, do not build so; but laying their stones level and building every other stone lengthwise into the thickness, they do not fill the space between, but construct the thickness of their walls in one solid and unbroken mass from the facings to the interior. Further, at intervals they lay single stones which run through the entire thickness of the wall. These stones... by their bonding powers... add very greatly to the solidity of the walls.

Notes from Devotional Authors of the Middle Ages (1873-1874)
Context: That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics — as is more particularly set forth in a definition of the 16th century: "True religion is to have no other will but God's." Compare this with the definition of Religion in Johnson's Dictionary: "Virtue founded upon reverence of God and expectation of future rewards and punishments"; in other words on respect and self-interest, not love. Imagine the religion which inspired the life of Christ "founded" on the motives given by Dr. Johnson!
Christ Himself was the first true Mystic. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work." What is this but putting in fervent and the most striking words the foundation of all real Mystical Religion? — which is that for all our actions, all our words, all our thoughts, the food upon which they are to live and have their being is to be the indwelling presence of God, the union with God; that is, with the Spirit of Goodness and Wisdom.

This has also appeared in paraphrased form as: "If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him. I often have a suspicion that God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished."
The Paris Review interview (1981)

"Conserving Forest Communities".
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)
Context: By this time, the era of cut-and-run economics ought to be finished. Such an economy cannot be rationally defended or even apologized for. The proofs of its immense folly, heartlessness, and destructiveness are everywhere. Its failure as a way of dealing with the natural world and human society can no longer be sanely denied. That this economic system persists and grows larger and stronger in spite of its evident failure has nothing to do with rationality or, for that matter, with evidence. It persists because, embodied now in multinational corporations, it has discovered a terrifying truth: If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant. If you control people’s choices as to whether or not they will work, and where they will work, and what they will do, and how well they will do it, and what they will eat and wear, and the genetic makeup of their crops and animals, and what they will do for amusement, then why should you worry about freedom of speech? In a totalitarian economy, any "political liberties" that the people might retain would simply cease to matter. If, as is often the case already, nobody can be elected who is not wealthy, and if nobody can be wealthy without dependence on the corporate economy, then what is your vote worth? The citizen thus becomes an economic subject.

Review of Nabokov's Lolita (1958).
Context: Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly.

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)
Context: The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to finish — if it has a finish. It is a war of choice, not of necessity, as President Bush claims. It goes without saying that Saddam was a tyrant, and it is good to be rid of him. But in invading Iraq as we did, without a second UN resolution, we violated international law. By mistreating and even torturing prisoners, we violated the Geneva conventions. President Bush has boasted that we do not need a permission slip from the international community, but our disregard for international law has endangered our security, particularly the security of our troops.

On the Financial crisis of 2008 The Colbert Report (6 October 2008)
Context: The market is not finished. The market still has over nine thousand points to drop. We'll get to Christmas at least.

Source: Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938), Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes"
Context: Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no Utopia of a perfect social order, as it has so often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human living conditions, which are always straining after higher forms of expression, and to which for this reason one can assign no definite terminus nor set any fixed goal. The worst crime of any type of state is just that it always tries to force the rich diversity of social life into definite forms and adjust it to one particular form, which allows for no wider outlook and regards the previously exciting status as finished. The stronger its supporters feel themselves, the more completely they succeed in bringing every field of social life into their service, the more crippling is their influence on the operation of all creative cultural forces, the more unwholesomely does it affect the intellectual and social development of any particular epoch.

Heretics and Heresies (1874)
Context: By this time the whole world should know that the real Bible has not yet been written, but is being written, and that it will never be finished until the race begins its downward march, or ceases to exist.
The real Bible is not the work of inspired men, nor prophets, nor apostles, nor evangelists, nor of Christs. Every man who finds a fact, adds, as it were, a word to this great book. It is not attested by prophecy, by miracles or signs. It makes no appeal to faith, to ignorance, to credulity or fear. It has no punishment for unbelief, and no reward for hypocrisy. It appeals to man in the name of demonstration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of being read, of being contradicted, of being investigated and understood. It does not pretend to be holy, or sacred; it simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all, and implores every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth, with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the eternal witnesses of its truth.

Hagakure (c. 1716)
Context: A certain swordsman in his declining years said the following: In one's life. there are levels in the pursuit of study. In the lowest level, a person studies but nothing comes of it, and he feels that both he and others are unskillful. At this point he is worthless. In the middle level he is still useless but is aware of his own insufficiencies and can also see the insufficiencies of others. In a higher level he has pride concerning his own ability, rejoices in praise from others, and laments the lack of ability in his fellows. This man has worth. In the highest level a man has the look of knowing nothing. These are the levels in general;. But there is one transcending level, and this is the most excellent of all. This person is aware of the endlessness of entering deeply into a certain Way and never thinks of himself as having finished. He truly knows his own insufficiencies and never in his whole life thinks that he has succeeded. He has no thoughts of pride but with self-abasement knows the Way to the end. It is said that Master Yagyu once remarked, "I do not know the way to defeat others, but the way to defeat myself." Throughout your life advance daily, becoming more skillful than yesterday, more skillful than today. This is never-ending.

Lyrics, Misc.

Source: Arrive at Easterwine (1971), Ch. 6
Context: Gaetan had always had a terrible finality about him. Was this his great sin — that he was already completed? I will intercede for him tonight in my own not entirely mechanical way. To be completed is to be finished in so many ways! May that twinkling man Gaetan be undone a little and saved.

"A Poet of the Actual", p. 265
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader's business.

Letter to his brother Jeff from Guadalcanal (28 January 1943); p. 25
To Reach Eternity (1989)
Context: I wasn't hit very badly — a piece of shrapnel went thru my helmet and cut a nice little hole in the back of my head. It didn't fracture the skull and is healed up nicely now. I don't know what happened to my helmet; the shell landed close to me and when I came to, the helmet was gone. The concussion together with the fragment that hit me must have broken the chinstrap and torn it off my head. It also blew my glasses off my face. I never saw them again, either, but I imagine they are smashed to hell. If I hadn't been lying in a hole I'd dug with my hands and helmet, that shell would probably have finished me off. The hole was only six or eight inches deep, but that makes an awful lot of difference, and it looked like a canyon.

In Berlin, (March 1821); Book IV, Chapter 1: Berlin – Potsdam – Frederick.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)

Cultural Confinement, 1972

Letter to Mercy Warren (1789)
Context: I little thought, when the war was finished, that any circumstances could possibly have happened, which would call the General into public life again. I had anticipated that, from this moment, we should have been left to grow old, in solitude and tranquillity, together. That was, my dear madam, the first and dearest wish of my heart; but in that I have been disappointed. I will not, however, contemplate, with too much regret, disappointments that were inevitable. Though the General's feelings and my own were perfectly in unison, with respect to our predilection for private life, yet I cannot blame him, for having acted according to his ideas of duty, in obeying the voice of his country. The consciousness of having attempted to do all the good in his power, and the pleasure of finding his fellow-citizens so well satisfied with the disinterestedness of his conduct, will doubtless be some compensation for the great sacrifices, which I know he has made.

Source: The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 36
Context: From 1789 to late in 1791 the French Revolution was an orderly process, and from the summer of 1794 the Republic was an orderly and victorious state. The Terror was not the work of the whole country, but of the town mob which owed its existence and its savagery to the misrule, and social injustice of the ancient regime... More lives were wasted by the British generals alone on the opening day of what is known as the Somme offensive of July, 1916 than in the whole French Revolution from start to finish.

Ch 12
A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
Context: A finished life — a life which has made the best of all the materials granted to it, and through which, be its web dark or bright, its pattern clear or clouded, can now be traced plainly the hand of the Great Designer; surely this is worth living for? And though at its end it may be somewhat lonely; though a servant's and not a daughter's arm may guide the failing step; though most likely it will be strangers only who come about the dying bed, close the eyes that no husband ever kissed, and draw the shroud kindly over the poor withered breast where no child's head has ever lain; still, such a life is not to be pitied, for it is a completed life. It has fulfilled its appointed course, and returns to the Giver of all breath, pure as He gave it. Nor will He forget it when He counteth up His jewels.

As quoted in Total Baseball : The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball (2001) by John Thorn, p. 2468
Context: In the end it all comes down to talent. You can talk all you want about intangibles, I just don't know what that means. Talent makes winners, not intangibles. Can nice guys win? Sure, nice guys can win — if they're nice guys with a lot of talent. Nice guys with a little talent finish fourth, and nice guys with no talent finish last.

"Coming from Your Inner Self", Conversation with W. Brian Arthur, Xerox PARC (16 April 1999) http://web.archive.org/web/20071011023150/http://www.dialogonleadership.org/Arthur-1999.html, by Joseph Jaworski, Gary Jusela, C. Otto Scharmer
Context: Complexity theory is really a movement of the sciences. Standard sciences tend to see the world as mechanistic. That sort of science puts things under a finer and finer microscope. In biology the investigations go from classifying organisms to functions of organisms, then organs themselves, then cells, and then organelles, right down to protein and enzymes, metabolic pathways, and DNA. This is finer and finer reductionist thinking.
The movement that started complexity looks in the other direction. It’s asking, how do things assemble themselves? How do patterns emerge from these interacting elements? Complexity is looking at interacting elements and asking how they form patterns and how the patterns unfold. It’s important to point out that the patterns may never be finished. They’re open-ended. In standard science this hit some things that most scientists have a negative reaction to. Science doesn’t like perpetual novelty.

Conclusion
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Context: A conquest of this kind is never finished; the contingency remains, and, so that he may assert his will, man is even obliged to stir up in the world the outrage he does not want. But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.

Afterword to his short story "The Children's Story" (1963).
The Children's Story (1982)
Context: I asked all kinds of people of every age, "You know the 'I pledge allegiance…'" but before I could finish, at once they would all parrot it, the words almost always equally blurred. In every case discovered that not one teacher, ever — or anyone — had ever explained the words to any one of them. Everyone just had to learn it to say it. The Children's Story came into being that day. It was then that I realized how completely vulnerable my child's mind was — any mind for that matter — under controlled circumstances. Normally I write and rewrite and re-rewrite, but this story came quickly — almost by itself. Barely three words were changed. It pleases me greatly because it keeps asking me questions … Questions like what's the use of "I pledge allegiance" without understanding? Like why is it so easy to divert thoughts and implant others? Like what is freedom and why is it so hard to explain? The Children's Story keeps asking me all sorts of questions I cannot answer. Perhaps you can — then your children will…

Holidays in Hell (1989)

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), II
Context: Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it!

BBC radio broadcast, February 9, 1941. In The Churchill War Papers : 1941 (1993), ed. Gilbert, W.W. Norton, pp. 199–200
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Context: Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: Put your confidence in us. … We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.

Morning in the Burned House (1995), The Loneliness of the Military Historian
Context: Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, valour sometimes counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right —
though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,
is decided by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes,
or the absence of them.

A Girl's World interview (2006)
Context: Don't worry about that depressing old dictum "Write what you know". If you need to know something, look it up. Learn how to find out what you need to know to make it right. Be passionate, be picky, have enough self-criticism to demand of yourself your best and not sort of let it slide by. And remember that the greatest defect any piece of fiction can have is not to be finished.

As quoted in "The Rides of Passage" in Via magazine (July 2005)
Context: Disneyland is something that will never be finished. It's something that I can keep developing. It will be a live, breathing thing that will need change. A picture is a thing, once you wrap it up and turn it over to Technicolor, you're through. Snow White is a dead issue with me. But I can change the park, because it's alive.

Phlogiston interview (1995)
Context: When I started writing my first novel,... And Call Me Conrad, they always say: "Write about what you know" and I said "Well, if I get a nice sort of combination SF and Fantasy with these resonances from Greek Mythology it might be pretty good. It would also give me a chance to start filling in my background on all those things I don't know much about but should if I want to be an SF writer."
So I sat down and made a list of everything I felt I should know more about. Astrophysics, oceanography, marine biology, genetics... Then when I'd finished the list I read one book in each of these areas. When I'd finished I went back and read a second book until I'd read ten books in each area. I thought that it wouldn't turn me into a terrific, fantastic expert but I'd at least have enough material there to know if I was saying something wrong. And I'd also know where to turn to get the information I want to make it right.
While I was doing this, to keep the words and cheques flowing I wrote books involving mythology. And once I started picking up things involving astrophysics I'd write stories that played with those sorts of things. So that's why I started out with mythology.

The Outsider (1953)

2005
Context: I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.
But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9-11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief.
With a huge gaping hole in lower Manhattan, I'm not sure why we have to keep reminding people, but we are at war. (Perhaps it's because of the media blackout on images of the 9-11 attack. We're not allowed to see those because seeing planes plowing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon might make us feel angry and jingoistic.)
Among the things that war entails are: killing people (sometimes innocent), destroying buildings (sometimes innocent) and spying on people (sometimes innocent).
That is why war is a bad thing. But once a war starts, it is going to be finished one way or another, and I have a preference for it coming out one way rather than the other.

"The Absolute Collective", an essay first published in The Criterion on The Absolute Collective : A Philosophical Attempt to Overcome Our Broken State by Erich Gutkind, as translated by Marjorie Gabain
The Wisdom of the Heart (1941)
Context: All about us we see a world in revolt; but revolt is negative, a mere finishing-off process. In the midst of destruction we carry with us also our creation, our hopes, our strength, our urge to be fulfilled. The climate changes as the wheel turns, and what is true for the sidereal world is true for man. The last two thousand years have brought about a duality in man such as he never experienced before, and yet the man who dominates this whole period was one who stood for wholeness, one who proclaimed the Holy Ghost. No life in the whole history of man has been so misinterpreted, so woefully misunderstood as Christ's. If not a single Man has shown himself capable of following the example of Christ, and doubtless none ever will for we shall no longer have need of Christs, nevertheless this one profound example has altered our climate. Unconsciously we are moving into a new realm of being; what we have brought to perfection, in our zeal to escape the true reality, is a complete arsenal of destruction; when we have rid ourselves of the suicidal mania for a beyond we shall begin the life of here and now which is reality and which is sufficient unto itself. We shall have no need for art or religion because we shall be in ourselves a work of art. This is how I interpret realistically what Gutkind has set forth philosophically; this is the way in which man will overcome his broken state. If my statements are not precisely in accord with the text of Gutkind's thesis, I nevertheless am thoroughly in accord with Gutkind and his view of things. I have felt it my duty not only to set forth his doctrine, but to launch it, and in launching it to augment it, activate it. Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery. I am one man who can truly say that he has understood and acted upon this profound thought of Gutkind's —“the stupendous fact that we stand in the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful than anything we do."

"If At First You Don't Appease — Cry, Cry Again" (4 April 2007) http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/printer_friendly.cgi?article=177.
2007
Context: These people can't even wrap up genocide. We've been hearing about this slaughter in Darfur forever — and they still haven't finished. The aggressors are moving like termites across that country. It's like genocide by committee. Who's running this holocaust in Darfur, FEMA? This is truly a war in which we have absolutely no interest. But liberals want our boys to go fight scimitar-wielding dervishes.

Letter to David Hilbert (2 October 1897)
Context: The totality of all alephs cannot be conceived as a determinate, well-defined, and also a finished set. This is the punctum saliens, and I venture to say that this completely certain theorem, provable rigorously from the definition of the totality of all alephs, is the most important and noblest theorem of set theory. One must only understand the expression "finished" correctly. I say of a set that it can be thought of as finished (and call such a set, if it contains infinitely many elements, "transfinite" or "suprafinite") if it is possible without contradiction (as can be done with finite sets) to think of all its elements as existing together, and to think of the set itself as a compounded thing for itself; or (in other words) if it is possible to imagine the set as actually existing with the totality of its elements.

O interview (2003)
Context: I wanted to win it for one specific reason — to send the Oscar to the Frida Kahlo House in Mexico, where Frida herself once lived. It's going to bring a tear to my eye now. I wanted every Mexican who walked into that museum to remember that what motivated me to make this movie, to dream this dream, had everything to do with where I came from — and I didn't stop dreaming until I finished the film. But the dream was the movie, not the Oscar.

Dandelion Mind (2010)

As quoted in Conversations with Edward Albee (1988) by Philip C. Kolin, p. 176
Context: I have been both overpraised and underpraised. I assume by the time I finish writing — and I plan to go on writing until I'm 90 or gaga — it will all equal itself out... You can't involve yourself with the vicissitudes of fashion or critical response. I'm fairly confident that my work is going to be around for a while. I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do.

Mon siège est fait.
As quoted in Balzac's La Vendetta (1830).
Vertot's reply "when some documents were brought to him for his History of the Order of Malta and the Siege of Rhodes. He had already finished his history and said, when the documents arrived, J'en suis fâché mais, etc. (I am sorry but, etc.)" — as reported in Famous Sayings and Their Authors (1906) by Edward Latham, p. 152; source given is "d'Alembert Réflexions sur l'histoire, read to the French Academy, Jan. 19, 1761."

(29 January 2005)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2005
Context: At some point, I stopped and made the following note to myself: I have never finished a story. I'm beginning to see that now. I don't think that there's ever a point where a story or novel is just exactly right. There are only finer and lesser degrees of refinement, and even those are probably subjective. You might think it's perfect for a time, but read it a year or five years later, and you'll see you were mistaken. There's always something I can make better, every time I read one of my stories. Usually there are dozens of somethings. And I once thought this wasn't true, that a story reached a certain point and beyond that point you were only changing things, making them different, not making them better. Indeed, I thought, beyond a point, you risk screwing it all up. I don't think that anymore. You risk screwing it all up right from the start, and no story is ever as perfect as it can be. Perfection is always one or two polishes away from the writer.

Source: Dark Age Ahead (2004), Chapter One, The Hazard, p. 3
Context: This is both a gloomy and a hopeful book.
The subject itself is gloomy. A Dark Age is a culture's dead end. We in North America and Western Europe, enjoying the many benefits of the culture conventionally known as the West, customarily think of a Dark Age as happening once, long ago, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. But in North America we live in a graveyard of lost aboriginal cultures, many of which were decisively finished off by mass amnesia in which even the memory of what was lost was also lost. Throughout the world Dark Ages have scrawled finis to successions of cultures receding far into the past.

Context: … at several times we have thought that optics was a finished science, where the last word had been said, or almost. Each time the discovery of new facts, the overthrow or extension of accepted theories, reminded us that science is never finished.
The impression that science is over has occurred many times in various branches of human knowledge, often because of an explosion of discoveries made by a genius or a small group of men in such a short time that average minds could hardly follow and had the unconscious desire to take breath, to get used to the unexpected things that came to be revealed. Dazzled by these new truths, they could not see beyond. Sometimes an entire century did not suffice to produce this accommodation.

Gothamist interview (2006)
Context: The biggest challenge in a simul is finding the right shoes! I want to look good in front of fifty people, but really sneakers are the best bet. I try to finish a simul as quickly as possible and don’t worry if I lose a game or two along the way. It becomes a manic workout. I’m literally running around playing moves as fast as my fingers and legs will go. My brain usually follows.
The simul is a great chess illusion. It makes the simul-giver seem like a genius, when really they’re just speaking their language. Chessplayers rely so heavily on instincts developed from years of training and practice. Chess is not all about thinking, there’s a lot of feeling involved.

Source: The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)
Context: Then he turned to Jabez Stone and showed him as he was — an ordinary man who'd had hard luck and wanted to change it. And, because he'd wanted to change it, now he was going to be punished for all eternity. And yet there was good in Jabez Stone, and he showed that good. He was hard and mean, in some ways, but he was a man. There was sadness in being a man, but it was a proud thing too. And he showed what the pride of it was till you couldn't help feeling it. Yes, even in hell, if a man was a man, you'd know it. And he wasn't pleading for any one person any more, though his voice rang like an organ. He was telling the story and the failures and the endless journey of mankind. They got tricked and trapped and bamboozled, but it was a great journey. And no demon that was ever foaled could know the inwardness of it — it took a man to do that.
The fire began to die on the hearth and the wind before morning to blow. The light was getting gray in the room when Dan'l Webster finished. And his words came back at the end to New Hampshire ground, and the one spot of land that each man loves and clings to. He painted a picture of that, and to each one of that jury he spoke of things long forgotten. For his voice could search the heart, and that was his gift and his strength. And to one, his voice was like the forest and its secrecy, and to another like the sea and the storms of the sea; and one heard the cry of his lost nation in it, and another saw a little harmless scene he hadn't remembered for years. But each saw something. And when Dan'l Webster finished he didn't know whether or not he'd saved Jabez Stone. But he knew he'd done a miracle. For the glitter was gone from the eyes of the judge and jury, and, for the moment, they were men again, and knew they were men.

Global Ideas from Pluto's Challenger (May 21, 2009)
Context: The best educators are the ones that inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they're teaching. Most commonly, that person spent their lives studying that subject, and they bring an infectious enthusiasm to the audience.I think many people have that enthusiasm, but they are prevented from being teachers because they didn't go through the teacher mill. Now you have teachers who have been through the teacher mill, yet they have no capacity to inspire anyone at all. It's the inspired student that continues to learn on their own. That's what separates the real achievers in the world from those who pedal along, finishing assignments.

(20 July 2007)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2007
Context: Bad writing days are days when you mean to write and can't, or are interrupted so frequently that nothing gets done. I'm disheartened at how often I see the blogs of aspiring writers bemoaning how slowly a book or story is coming along. They have somehow gotten it in their heads that writing is a thing done quickly, efficiently, like an assembly line with lots of shiny robotic workers. The truth, of course, is that writing is usually slow, and inefficient, and more like trying to find a cube of brown Jello that someone's carelessly dropped into a pig sty. Five hundred words in a day is good. So is a thousand. Or fifteen hundred. A good writing day is a day when one has written well, and the word counts be damned. Finishing is not the goal. Doing the job well is the goal. And I say that as someone with no means of financial support but her writing, as someone who is woefully underpaid for her writing, and as someone with so many deadlines breathing down her neck that she can no longer tell one breather from the other. Sometimes, I forget this, that daily word counts are irrelevant, that writing is not a race to the finish line. One need only write well if one wishes to be a writer. A day when one does not do her best merely so that more may be written, that's a bad writing day.

"Summer Reading" (9 September 2010) http://www.jmdematteis.com/2010/09/theres-something-about-summerthe.html
J.M. DeMatteis's CREATION POINT (2009 – present)
Context: I seriously considered putting Nine Lives aside (I no longer feel compelled, as I did when I was younger, to finish every book I start). I’m happy I stuck with it: as I continued reading, the lives chronicled — in clear, compassionate prose — became more and more fascinating, and, on occasion, heartbreaking: The collision between ancient and modern culture in India threatens to wipe away traditions that have gone on, uninterrupted, for thousands of years and most of Dalrymple’s seekers struggle with that knowledge in some way. There’s a lovely chapter about a Sufi devotee in southern Pakistan — she’s known as the Red Fairy — that illuminates the lyrical, mystical side of Islam. Considering the current mood in the United States, it should be compulsory reading for every American who thinks the Taliban and Al-Qaeda represent the totality of Muslim life.

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Leader of the Opposition
Source: Speech to the executive committee of the City of London Conservative Association announcing his resignation as party leader (8 November 1911), quoted in The Times (9 November 1911), p. 10

On the endings of her works in “Maylis de Kerangal by Jessica Moore” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/maylis-de-kerangal/ in Bomb Magazine (2015 Dec 15)

Janaki Bakhle quoted in Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 (2019)

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/chris-martin-coldplay-interview-jann-wenner-920912/ source
On the X&Y album.

Book Two in 'Time to Go! Time to Go!', B/O, here Woland is speaking to the Master about Pontius Pilate
The Master and Margarita (1967)

2000s, Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)

Dec. 22, 1968
Directives on the Cultural Revolution (1966-1972)

Source: The Laundry Files, The Atrocity Archives (2004), Chapter 7, “Bad Moon Rising” (p. 163)

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

"Advice to Young Men" in Prejudices: Third Series (1922).
1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922)

The Year of the Jackpot (p. 644)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Burden of Dreams (1982)

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXVI: On Various Aspects of Virtue

Source: Rainbow Valley (1919), Ch. 13

Zbigniew Herbert, Spinoza's Bed [original in Polish]
G - L

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jacob Maris, in het Nederlands: Een schilderij is af als men zien kan wat het voorstelt.
as cited by G.H. Marius, in 'Jacob Maris', in Het Schildersboek. Nederlandsche Schilders der Negentiende eeuw, Amsterdam 1898, p. 11

Jeet Thayil: Confessions of an Indian Opium-Eater

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

"Console yourself, madam, with the thought that God will no doubt send him more."
Idries Shah, The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin (1973), ISBN 0525473548, p. 134

http://cantheyscore.com/2011/05/31/paul-scholes-50-quotes-that-define-a-legend/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SportBullet%2Ffeed+%28Sport+Bullet%29&utm_content=Google+UK
Dimitar Berbatov

Frank Lloyd Wright
letter to Tafel 1932, SUNY library Collection
About Martinez

Emerson Fittipaldi, after Alonso took his record as Formula One's youngest champion. http://www.theage.com.au/news/motorsport/former-recordholder-hails-alonso/2005/09/26/1127586768600.html

Preston and England legend Sir Tom Finney

Kaka Quoted in Kaka:Steven Gerrard has The Heart Of a Lion http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/85/england/2009/11/12/1620429/kaka-steven-gerrard-has-the-heart-of-a-lion Goal, 12 November 2009

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch.65

A Letter from Cuba (1934)

If I could make albums quicker, I'd be on a roll wouldn't I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don't know why. Time… evaporates.
MOJO interview (2005)

"I never closed my eyes at all – I saw that ship sink. And I saw that ship break in half.
Interview from 1993, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5J43Z9AWI, quoted in New York Times, 16 February 1996

José Rizal's last words, quoted by Austin Coates, in Rizal: Philippine Nationalist and Martyr, Oxford University Press, (1968)
Original: (la) Consummatum est

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service

Book 1 “Light Underground”, Chapter 6 “Kazir and Ferazhin” (p. 64)
Tales from the Flat Earth, Night’s Master (1978)

1940s, Excerpt, A Propos of Measuring a Mobile (1943)

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 609
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Source: CEO Talk | Brunello Cucinelli, Founder and Chief Executive https://www.businessoffashion.com/amp/articles/ceo-talk/ceo-talk-brunello-cucinelli-founder-chief-executive-brunello-cucinelli Imran Amed, Business of Fashion, 1 July 2014

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

"Conserving Forest Communities"
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)

On pushing a book that he’s published out of his mind so that he may start a new one in “YORKSHIRE CALLING: AN INTERVIEW WITH CARYL PHILLIPS” https://www.publicbooks.org/yorkshire-calling-an-interviewwith-caryl-phillips/ in Public Books (2015 May 1)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Jan Mankes, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb een vrij groot schilderij af, de geit https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mankes_Jonge_witte_geit.jpg; over het plan daartoe sprak ik u wel eens. Het is dunkt me volkomen een schilderij geworden, en heel compleet.

Quote of Jan Mankes (1914) in a letter to A.A.M. Pauwels in The Hague; as cited by J.R. de Groot in 'De bekoring van het gewone - Het werk van Jan Mankes' https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_ons003199001_01/_ons003199001_01_0014.php, p. 104

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mankes_Jonge_witte_geit.jpg
1909 - 1914

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag brief, in het Nederlands:) Wat ik daar gemaakt heb - zo'n jaar of wat geleden, dat krijg je nooit meer te zien! Da's uit, met Scheveningen is 't gedaan. En als ik 't niet alles nog wist van vroeger, uit die schetsen, waarachtig dan was 't [zijn schilderen] afgelopen.

Quote of Mesdag, as cited by nl:Marie Joseph Brusse, in his article 'Onder de menschen. Een gouden schilders-bruiloft', in Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 23 March 1906

In 1904 the first harbour of Scheveningen was opened, with a direct entrance to the sea for the newer fishing boats, the luggers
after 1880

mystic poetry and spirituality