Quotes about letter (1028 quotes, page 6)

“in a letter to Constantijn Huygens (Amsterdam, February 1636) on a Passion Cycle of 3 paintings, commissioned already in 1635 by the imperial court, as quoted in The Rembrandt Documents, Walter Strauss & Marjon van der Meulen - Abaris Books, New York 1979, p. 129”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) Dutch 17th century painter and etcher

What Rembrandt is referring to in his phrase "I cannot refrain from presenting you, [dear] Sir, my latest work." is very probably one or more recent etchings, Rembrandt made.
1630 - 1640

Books , Quotes , Passion , Painting

“Hardly is there anywhere in the United States a church possessing originality which has been built after 1840. The houses of God are usually misplaced gothic or romanesque imitations squeezed in between dismal railway stations or surging skyscrapers. It is even more shocking to see the abortive efforts of town planning, or the utopian habit of naming streets after mere numbers or letters. A cultured man cannot possibly live in room 6489 on the sixty-fourth floor of a house on the corner of 109th Street and 10th Avenue. This may be fitting for one of the unfortunate creatures in Huxley's Brave New World but not for man created in the image of God.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Pgs 268-269
The Menace of the Herd (1943)

God , World , Effort , Housing

“A violent propaganda campaign was launched by Carey and his associates against Hinduism in Bengal which seemed to them to be in a state of dissolution. But Hindu orthodoxy reacted vigorously and Lord Minto felt obliged to prohibit such propaganda in Calcutta. Minto's letter to the Court of Directors is worth quoting: `Pray read the miserable stuff addressed specially to the Gentoos (Hindus) in which... the pages are filled with hell fire, and hell fire and with still hotter fire, denounced against a whole race of men, for believing in the religion which they were taught by their fathers and mothers...”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Men , Religion , Quotes , Hell

“[few of Sancho's letters were actually intended for publication, but here is one sample, written during a military recruiting crisis] The vast bounties offered for able-bodied men sheweth the zeal and liberality of our wise lawgivers- yet indicateth a scarcity of men. Now, they seem to me to have overlooked one resource (which appears obvious); a resource which would greatly benefit the people at large (by being more usefully employed), and which are happily half-trained already for the service of their country, by being- powder proof- light, active, young fellows: I dare say you have anticipated my scheme, which is to form ten companies at least, out of the very numerous body of hair-dressers…”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 65: 29 Apr 1780, to the General Advertiser newspaper)

Men , People , Light , Appearance

“In either event he could only adhere to the letter of the law, but then for every yea in the law there was a nay, and it always boiled down to simple expediency. Like a psychiatric diagnosis, it could always be juggled around to fit anything you chose.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 79.

Law

“the reality beyond language is not completely reality, a reality that does not speak or say is not reality;
and the moment I say that, the moment I write, letter by letter, that a reality stripped of names is not reality, the names evaporate, they are air, they are a sound encased in another sound and in another and another, a murmur, a faint cascade of meanings that fade away to nothingness:
the tree that I say is not the tree that I see, tree does not say tree, the tree is beyond its name, a leafy, woody reality: impenetrable, untouchable, a reality beyond signs, immersed in itself, firmly planted in its own reality: I can touch it but I cannot name it, I can set fire to it but if I name it I dissolve it:
the tree that is there among the trees is not the tree that I name but a reality that is beyond names, beyond the word reality, it is simply reality just as it is, the abolition of differences and also the abolition of similarities;
the tree that I name is not the tree, and the other one, the one that I do not name and that is there, on the other side of my window, its trunk now black and its foliage still inflamed by the setting sun, is not the tree either, but, rather, the inaccessible reality in which it is planted:
between the one and the other there appears the single tree of sensation which is the perception of the sensation of tree that is vanishing, but
who perceives, who senses, who vanishes as sensations and perceptions vanish?”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Reality , Sense , Tree , Appearance

“[…] the dragon got three cartsful of angry letters from the Pope (which he dismissed as a load of bulls) […]”

Tom Holt book Paint Your Dragon

( c. 4
Paint Your Dragon (1996)

“A few specimens should suffice to show the quality of this man’s mind. In letter No. 163 he wrote: “The honour of Islam lies in insulting kufr and kafirs. One who respects the kafirs dishonours the Muslims… The real purpose of levying jiziya on them is to humiliate them to such an extent that they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It is intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honour and might of Islam.” In Letter No. 81 he said: “Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs may probably agree to pay jiziya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice.” After Guru Arjun Deva had been tortured and done to death by Jahangir, he wrote in letter No. 193 that “the execution of the accursed kafir of Gobindwal is an important achievement and is the cause of the great defeat of the Hindus.””

Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) Indian philosopher

S.A.A. Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Agra, 1965, pp. 248-249. Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262
From his letters

Death

“I ruled out any discussions on the subject [on the constitutional issue of raising any issue on the exchange of letters between Prime Minister and the President, in the Parliament], upholding the principle of confidentiality of communication between the President and the Prime Minister …a significant constitutional precedent.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.128.

Communication

“…the real truth. Now, you must have heard that the English – or as they are better known the Englishmen – took away our country, the Transvaal, or, as they say, annexed it. We then talked nicely for four years, and begged for our country. But no; when an Englishman once has your property in his hand, then is he like a monkey that has its hands full of pumpkin-seeds — if you don't beat him to death, he will never let go – and then all our nice talk for four years did not help us at all. Then the English commenced to arrest us because we were dissatisfied, and that caused the shooting and fighting. Then the English first found that it would be better to give us back our country. Now they are gone, and our country is free, …
— The Transvaal from Within, 1899, J. P. Fitzpatrick.
:Letter to Lobengula, dated March 8, 1882, which Fitzpatrick, writing from Pretoria jail, attributes to Joubert. The letter was found by Francis Thompson at Lobengula’s kraal, while negotiating on behalf of C. J. Rhodes.”

Piet Joubert (1834–1900) Boer politician and general

Death , Truth , Help , Fight

“A painter who loves his art must be careful not to see too much of critics and men of letters. These gentlemen, however unconsciously, distort everything, thinking that they are explaining it—the artist's thought, sensibility, and intensions. They take away his strength, just as Delilah took away Samson's. They have no gift for nuances, and they have an instinctive aversion for everything that is beyond their reach and baffles them.”

Georges Rouault (1871–1958) French painter

Soliloques. (1944)
Quotes, 1940-1950

Love , Men , Art , Thinking

“So everyone, through Christ and with Him and in Him, must fulfil the Old Testament in himself. Only then have we passed from the kingdom of the shadows of the Old Testament into the kingdom of the light of the Gospel, from the letter of the service of God to the spirit of Divine sonship, from Judaism to Christianity…”

Michael von Faulhaber (1869–1952) German Roman Catholic Cardinal

Sermon 1

God , Light , Christ

“Extract from The Abolition of the Slave Trade quoted in a letter: "To The Editor Of The Times." Times [London, England] 30 Apr. 1810: 2. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.”

Elizabeth Benger (1775–1827) British writer

Quotes , Time

“As the sun came up, we/saw the leaves peer out, shivering.’ ( Letter from the Hills )”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)

Sun

“I started to work on this book in 1954, when, having been called to active duty in the Navy, I was relieved of the burdens of a full-time psychoanalytic practice… Within a year of its publication, the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene demanded, in a letter citing specifically 'The Myth Of Mental Illness', that I be dismissed from my university position because I did not "believe" in mental illness.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Preface to the Second Edition.
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961)

Books , Universe , Time

“In 1454 he [Prince Henry the Navigator] received from the Pope Nicholas V the right to all discoveries up to India. The Bull, which is of fundamental importance and is the first of three which determines the Portuguese monopoly in the East, is quoted below:…‘We, after careful deliberation, and having considered that we have by our, apostolic letters conceded to King Affonso, the right, total and absolute, to invade, conquer and subject all the countries which are under rule of the enemies of Christ, Saracen or Pagan, by our apostolic letter we wish the same King Affonso, the Prince, and all their successors, occupy and possess in exclusive rights the said islands, ports and seas undermentioned, and all faithful Christians are prohibited without the permission of the said Affonso and his successors to encroach on their sovereignty. Of the conquests already made, or to be made, all the conquests which extend to Cape Bajador and Cape Non to the coast of Guinea and all the Orient is perpetually and for the future the sovereignty of King Affonso.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Faith , Quotes , Future , Christ

“There were a lot of people who were willing to write a letter for me. Not because I was academically inclined, but because I worked hard.”

Leighton W. Smith, Jr. (1939) United States Navy admiral

On his admission to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1958 as an appointment of US congressman Frank W. Boykin, as quoted in Afterburner : Naval Aviators and the Vietnam War (2004) by John Darrell Sherwood, Ch. 20 : Leighton Warren Smith and the Fall of Thanh Hoa, p. 272

People

“Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope. In art it is not often possible to make direct use of your dreams of tomorrow and your excuses for yesterday.In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires — this is a benevolent form. The ideal self expressed in letters is not a crudely sugary affair except in dreary personalities; in any case the ideal is very much a part of the character, having its twenty-four hours a day to get through, and being no less unique in its combinations than one's fingerprints.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Anderson, Millay and Crane in Their Letters" (p. 133)
American Fictions (1999)

Dreams , Hope , Art , Communication

“…letters of a burning book
dance in flame not every time
and not every time literally.”

Anatoly Kudryavitsky (1954) a Russian/Irish novelist, poet, literary translator and magazine editor

Poems, Shadow of Time (2005)

Books , Time , Dance

“"Letters to the Times: Mrs. Nhu Defends Stand", The New York Times, 14 August 1963”

Madame Nhu (1924–2011) First lady of South Vietnam

References

Time

“The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best after all. All parents do their best job when they have a natural, easy confidence in themselves. Better to make a few mistakes from being natural than to try to do everything letter-perfect out of a feeling of worry.”

Benjamin Spock book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care

Ch. 1. http://books.google.com/books?id=AEk0AAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+more+people+have+studied+different+methods+of+bringing+up+children+the+more+they+have+come+to+the+conclusion+that+what+good+mothers+and+fathers+instinctively+feel+like+doing+for+their+babies+is+usually+best+after+all%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage
Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945)

Children , People , Feeling , Confidence

“And swear
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star), stanzas 2-3

Falseness

“But my father he didn’t read moon, he didn’t speak moon, and he didn’t write moon. So there was no letter found next to his body in the garage when he chose to leave this place on purpose without saying where he was goin’ or why. There are still days you can catch me tape-recording eternal silence and playing it backwards for an empty room just so I can listen to his dying wish. Shh.”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

Human the Death Dance
Poetry

Silence , Reading

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

Love , Life , Death , Pleasure

“I remember staring at the computer screen--light green letters on dark--then at the clock, and finally at my outstretched fingers held a foot in front of my face. And then it dawned on me: selling the hours of my life was no different from selling my fingers one by one. We've only so many hours, so many fingers; when they're gone, they're gone for good.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

A Language Older Than Words (2000)

Life , Light

“I want to defend society and its inhabitants from all ideologies, science included. All ideologies must be seen in perspective. One must not take them too seriously. One must read them like fairy-tales which have lots of interesting things to say but which also contain wicked lies, or like ethical prescriptions which may be useful rules of thumb but which are deadly when followed to the letter.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

How To Defend Society Against Science (1975)

Science , Reading

“Americans are well aware that there has been a revolution. In morals. In manners. In speech. In crime rates. In riots. In violence. In drugs. In sex. In pornography. In politics. In movies. In education. In music. What most of us failed to realize at the moment was how important the music revolution would become. It turned out to be the catalyst for all the rest. It became the prod to promote drugs, the advertiser of sex in the hedonism manner, the mind-conditioner for four-letter gutter speech, and eventually the blatant propaganda funnel for political subversion. It also became the seductive Jezebel for a modern philosophy of no God, of Man as merely a graduate beast of the jungle, of Jesus Christ as a phoney actor--a superstar, of peace and prosperity being possible only under communism, of America as the enemy of the world, of Russia as the hope of the world.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

Preface to Rock 'N' Reality: Mirrors of Rock Music--Its Relationship to Sex, Drugs, Family and Religion (1971)

God , World , Education , Peace

“We had to dispel the notion that the way to economic success lies through a sort of fiscal levitation. That was the abiding post-war delusion—that governments could spend and borrow their way to prosperity, and fine-tune the performance of the economy through something known pretentiously as demand management…It used to be an establishment nostrum that you need a budget deficit to get economic growth. That was the belief which lay behind the notorious letter by 364 economists in March 1981. We have given the lie to that, decisively. There can no longer be any argument about it. Everyone—or almost everyone—now accepts that the proper role of macro-economic policy is to keep downward pressure on inflation and to maintain a stable framework in which the private sector can expand.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Nigel Lawson, Tax Reform: The Government's Record (Conservative Political Centre, June 1988).

War , Lie , Way , Decision

“Each word is pumped up with consonant cholesterol. It's full of fat words. The pages cream with subcutaneous fat. New letters are gilded like showy teeth, making comprehension constipated and exorbitantly metalled.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the fifth book, "The Book of the Exhibitionist"
The Pillow Book

“More important than what I think about Hitler’s performance as a soldier during the war is what the other members of Hitler’s unit thought of him. A letter I found through serendipity in the US National Archives testifies that frontline soldiers in the trenches considered Hitler an Etappenschwein (‘rear area pig’), as they thought that, unlike them, he had landed a cushy job with regimental HQ a few miles behind the front. The reason this is so important is because it puts a lie to the orthodox view that Hitler was a typical product of his wartime unit.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Paul Lay, “Interview: Thomas Weber on Hitler's First War", History Today, 22nd September 2011, http://www.historytoday.com/blog/2011/09/interview-thomas-weber-hitlers-first-war

War , Lie , Thinking

“It would be the greatest disaster which could befall our House if any untoward accident befall you, which may God avert! Do not hesitate to open letters addressed to me. Your love for me and the absolute confidence between us make me feel that I cannot have any secrets from you.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

William talking to his brother John, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison p. 54

Love , God , Secret , Feeling

“Epifanio de los Santos, greatest connoisseur of Filipiniana, foremost Filipino historian and biographer, and the first Filipino to become member of the Spanish Academy of Letters.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

Esteban de Ocampo's eulogy ( Former Head, Department History, U.B.).
BALIW

“Wilson was not, in the academic sense, a scholar or historian. He was an enormous reader, one of those readers who are perpetually on the scent from book to book. He was the old-style man of letters, but galvanized and with the iron of purpose in him.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

V. S. Pritchett, The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980) [Random House, ISBN 0-394-74683-X], "Edmund Wilson: Towards Revolution," p. 141
The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980)

Books , Sense

“They think the privateer’s life one of nothing but adventure, violence, evasion, and escape. But, between letters of marque, bills of lading, rosters, inventories, and plunder contracts, it involves, in fact, more paperwork than any thing else.”

David D. Levine (1961) science fiction writer

Source: Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017), Chapter 9, “Fleur de Lys” (p. 135)

Life , Thinking

“Your letter is received, accompanied by a newspaper clipping which discusses the possibility that a colored man may be the Republican nominee for Congress from one of the New York districts.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Letter to Charles F. Gardner (1924)

Color

“Most of our political leaders are not engineers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am not aware of a single political leader in the U. S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research — or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for major engineering projects. … Men reached the moon in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost. Today's aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an editorial http://www.nationalreview.com/article/278758/end-future-peter-thiel published by National Review (2011)

Men , Money , War , Health

“The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent.”

Alfred Brendel (1931) Austrian pianist, poet, and author

Cited in: Karen Offord. Dare to Dream: Your Journey of a Lifetime, 2014, p. 115.

“Quote in Munch's letter (1885); as cited in Edvard Munchs Brev, Familien, Oslo: Tanum, 1949, p. 57”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

1880 - 1895

Quotes

“Today I walked into the sunset — to mail some letters —... But some way or other I didn't seem to like the redness much so after I mailed the letters I walked home — and kept walking - The Eastern sky was all grey blue — bunches of clouds — different kinds of clouds — sticking around everywhere and the whole thing — lit up — first in one place — then in another with flashes of lightning — sometimes just sheet lightning — and some times sheet lightning with a sharp bright zigzag flashing across it -. I walked out past the last house — past the last locust tree — and sat on the fence for a long time — looking — just looking at — the lightning — you see there was nothing but sky and flat prairie land — land that seems more like the ocean than anything else I know — There was a wonderful moon. Well I just sat there and had a great time by myself — Not even many night noises — just the wind —... I wondered what you were doing - It is absurd the way I love this country — Then when I came back — it was funny — roads just shoot across blocks anywhere — all the houses looked alike — and I almost got lost — I had to laugh at myself — I couldn't tell which house was home - I am loving the plains more than ever it seems — and the SKY — Anita you have never seen SKY — it is wonderful”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas (September 11, 1916), pp. 183-184
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Love , Way , Home , Tree

“I've never claimed that this is investment art. When we first started out, all the art colleges and universities across the country would sort of badmouth what we were doing. It's funny that a lot of them now are sending us letters saying, 'We may not totally agree with the way you paint, but we appreciate what you're doing, because you're sending literally thousands of people into art colleges.”

Bob Ross (1942–1995) American painter, art instructor, and television host

(1990) reported in Associated Press (July 7, 1995) "Bob Ross, Painting Instructor to Millions, Dead at 52".

People , Art , Way , Universe

“Thales, the Milesian, is said to be the first author of it1; who used to say, that, for a man to know himself, is the hardest thing in the world2. It was afterwards adopted by Chylon the Lacedemonian; and is one of those three precepts which Pliny affirms to have been consecrated at Delphos in golden letters. It was afterwards greatly admired, and frequently used by others1; till at length it acquired the authority of a divine oracle; and was supposed to have been given originally by Apollo himself. Of which general opinion Cicero gives us this reason; "because it hath such a weight of sense and wisdom in it, as appears too great to be attributed to any man*." And this opinion, of its coming originally from Apollo himself, perhaps was the reason that it was written in golden capitals over the door of his temple at Delphos.
And why this excellent precept should not be held in as high esteem in the Christian world as it was in the heathen, is hard to conceive. Human nature is the same now as it was then: the heart as deceitful; and the necessity of watching, knowing, and keeping it, the same.”

John Mason (1706–1763) English Independent minister and author

A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)

Wisdom , World , Nature , Sense

“The misinformation promulgated by wolf advocacy groups ranges from minor technical errors to major deception and fraud. Technical biological misinformation, though bothersome to professionals working with wolves, is not as serious as deception about such issues as the status and trends in wolf populations. This latter type of misinformation tends to motivate well-meaning wolf advocates to press their causes through letter-writing campaigns, public meetings, lobbying, and lawsuits. For example, animal welfare and wolf advocacy groups have been advertising for funds in major national newspapers for years, claiming that wolves were threatened in Denali National Park and other parts of Alaska, despite documentation to the contrary. These misrepresentations have even made it into conference proceedings. In the non-peer-reviewed proceedings of a nonprofit citizen organization, "Defenders of Wildlife's Restoring the Wolf Conference," undocumented claims were made the the wolf has been eliminated from "95% of its former range" and "95% of its historic range in Noth America."”

L. David Mech (1937) American Biologist , Ecologist

The actual figures are closer to 30% of its global range and 40% of its North American range.
Wolf Restoration to the Adirondacks: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Public Participation in the Decision, (2001).

Error , Motivation , Fraud , Wolf

“When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2010s

Justice , Law , Feeling , Search

“In London, aside from bit parts, I was unlucky in my career but I was lucky in love. There was a theatrical club much frequented by all the young lions on their way up. They all gathered to eat inexpensively and be made blissful by the lethal house cider. It was there I met Ken Tynan, recently down from Oxford, and already the enfant terrible of Britain’s drama critics. Mutually magnetized, we married three months later. I sent a wire to my parents in New York: "Have married Englishman. Letter follows."”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

I was madly in love with him and stepped happily into the Wonderland of his fame.
Afterword to The Dud Avocado (2006)

Love , Way , Parent , Parting

“A wonderfully funny letter was sent to me signed by a fraternity in Boston, Massachusetts, U. S., medical school; the fraternity for doctors had voted me the body on which they would most like to operate.”

Dyanne Thorne (1943–2020) American actress

Interview, Fabian Paffendorf, wicked-vision.com, November, 2003, 2007-09-30 http://www.wicked-vision.com/artikel/thorne/e_interview.php,
( also available in German http://www.wicked-vision.com/artikel/thorne/d_interview.php).

School

“If they’ve really caught the #GoldenStateKiller I hope I get to visit him. Not to gloat or gawk — to ask him the questions that @TrueCrimeDiary wanted answered in her “Letter To An Old Man” at the end of #IllBeGoneInTheDark.”

Patton Oswalt (1969) stand-up comedian

25 April 2018 tweet https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/status/989124477530320896

Hope , Question

“There are three kinds of writing in economics: Greek-letter, up-and-down, and airport. Greek-letter writing formal, theoretical, mathematical is how professors communicate. Like any academic field, economics has its fair share of hacks and phonies, who use complicated language to hide the banality of their ideas; it also contains profound thinkers, who use the specialized language of the discipline as an efficient way to express deep insights. […] Up-and-down economics is what one encounters on the business pages of newspapers, or for that matter on TV. It is preoccupied with the latest news and the latest numbers, hence its name. […] Finally, airport economics is the language of economics bestsellers. These books are most prominently displayed at airport bookstores, where the delayed business traveler is likely to buy them. Most of these books predict disaster: a new great depression, the evisceration of our economy by Japanese multinationals, the collapse of our money. A minority have the opposite view, a boundless optimism: new technology or supply-side economics is about to lead us into an era of unprecedented economic progress. Whether pessimistic or optimistic, airport economics is usually fun, rarely well informed, and never serious.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Preface
The Age of Diminished Expectations (1990; 1994; 1997)

Money , Books , Way , Travel

“Our memory is like that burning scrap of paper. We use it to light up the past. First of all our own, and then we ask old people to tell us what they remember. After that we look for letters written by people who are already dead. And in this way we light our way back. There are buildings that are just for storing old scraps of paper that people once wrote on – they are called archives. In them you can find letters written hundreds of years ago. In an archive, I once found a letter which just said: 'Dear Mummy, Dear Mummy, Yesterday we ate some lovely truffles, love from William.”

Ernst Gombrich book A Little History of the World

William was a little Italian prince who lived four hundred years ago.
Source: A Little History of the World (2005), p. 2.

Love , People , Way , Light

“I hav studdyed mi own karakter, and mi own impulses for 39 years clussly, and i kant tell to day (to save a bet) whether i am an honest and trew man or not--if thare iz enny boddy who knows about this matter i wish they would address me a letter, enklosing a postage blister.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

“And here I cannot help mentioning a very ridiculous show of a learned pig, which of late days attracted much of the public notice, and at the polite end of the town. This pig, which indeed was a large unwieldy hog, being taught to pick up letters written upon pieces of cards, and to arrange them at command, gave great satisfaction to all who saw him, and filled his tormenter's pocket with money. One would not have thought that a hog had been an animal capable of learning: the fact, however, is another proof of what may be accomplished by assiduity; for the showman assured a friend of mine, that he had lost three very promising brutes in the course of training, and that the phenomenon then exhibited had often given him reason to despair of success.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 248
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Money , Learning , Success , Help

“I recently received a touching letter that says a lot about the state of America in these difficult times, a letter from a fourth grade girl with a father in the military. As much as I don't want my dad to fight, she wrote, I'm willing to give him to you. This is a precious gift. The greatest she could give. This young girl knows what America is all about.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Invasion of Afghanistan (October 2001)

Girl , Time , Fight

“These buildings are just right for the excesses of post-modernism -- decorative, frivolous -- serving to obviously excite and attract -- every feature using the architectural vocabulary freely without too much regard for serious function -- open glass atriums and shining metals and expensive and artificial marbles, zany letterings and excess neon.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

8 1/2 Women

“Goethe said, “The author whom a lexicon can keep up with is worth nothing”; Somerset Maugham says that the finest compliment he ever received was a letter in which one of his readers said: “I read your novel without having to look up a single word in the dictionary.””

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

These writers, plainly, lived in different worlds.
"The Obscurity of the Poet", p. 13
No Other Book: Selected Essays (1999)

World , Reading

“I've had letters from Chinese scientists at the peak of the SARS epidemic who said the problem is a hybridization between the viruses planted into GMO feed, which is then fed to animals, then the virus jumped from the animals to humans. We're going to see more and more of these kinds of risks. I think the whole issue of the H1N1 virus was the fact that it had genes for three influenza types--human, chicken, pig. All of these crossings are becoming possible because of the crossing of genes across species barriers.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

On the SARS epidemic, as quoted in " A Visit to My Kitchen: Vandana Shiva http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maria-rodale/a-visit-to-my-kitchen-van_b_775298.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in", The Huffington Post (28 October 2011)

Problem , Thinking , Animals

“The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien cults. They invoke divine sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Hindu View of Life (1960)

God , War , People , History

“On Aka, god is a word without referent. No capital letters. No creator, only creation. No eternal father to reward and punish, justify injustice, ordain cruelty, offer salvation. Eternity not an endpoint but a continuity. Primal division of being into material and spiritual only as two-as-one, or one in two aspects. […] The Akan system is a spiritual discipline with spiritual goals, but they're exactly the same goals it seeks for bodily and ethical well-being. Right action is its own reward. Dharma without karma.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Telling (2000), Ch. 4, §3 (p. 94)

God

“Arabic writing at the beginning of Islam was, therefore, not of the best quality nor of the greatest accuracy and excellence. It was not (even) of medium quality, because the Arabs possessed the savage desert attitude and were not familiar with crafts. One may compare what happened to the orthography of the Qur’an on account of this situation. The men around Muhammad wrote the Qur’an in their own script which, was not of a firmly established, good quality. Most of the letters were in contradiction to the orthography required by persons versed in the craft of writing…. Consequently, (the Qur’anic orthography of the men around Muhammad was followed and became established, and the scholars acquainted with it have called attention to passages where (this is noticeable). No attention should be paid in this connection with those incompetent (scholars) that (the men around Muhammad) knew well the art of writing and that the alleged discrepancies between their writing and the principles of orthography are not discrepancies, as has been alleged, but have a reason. For instance, they explain the addition of the alif in la ‘adhbahannahU "I shall indeed slaughter him" as indication that the slaughtering did not take place ( lA ‘adhbahannahU ). The addition of the ya in bi-ayydin "with hands (power)," they explain as an indication that the divine power is perfect. There are similar things based on nothing but purely arbitrary assumptions. The only reason that caused them to (assume such things) is their belief that (their explanations) would free the men around Muhammad from the suspicion of deficiency, in the sense that they were not able to write well. They think that good writing is perfection. Thus, they do not admit the fact that the men around Muhammad were deficient in writing.”

Ibn Khaldun book Muqaddimah

Muqqadimah, ibn Khaldun, vol. 2, p. 382
Muqaddimah (1377)

Men , Art , Thinking , Sense

“That is to say, within less than twenty years after the Constitution was formed, and in obedience to that general opinion of the time which condemned slavery as a sin in morals and a blunder in economy, eight of the States had abolished it by law — four of them having already done so when the instrument was framed; and Mr. Douglas might as justly quote the fact that there were slaves in New York up to 1827 as proof that the public opinion of the State sanctioned slavery, as to try to make an argument of the fact that there were slave laws upon the statute-books of the original States. He forgets that there was not in all the colonial legislation of America one single law which recognized the rightfulness of slavery in the abstract; that in 1774 Virginia stigmatized the slave-trade as 'wicked, cruel, and unnatural'; that in the same year Congress protested against it 'under the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love of country'; that in 1775 the same Congress denied that God intended one man to own another as a slave; that the new Discipline of the Methodist Church, in 1784, and the Pastoral Letter of the Presbyterian Church, in 1788, denounced slavery; that abolition societies existed in slave States, and that it was hardly the interest even of the cotton-growing States, where it took a slave a day to clean a pound of cotton, to uphold the system. Mr. Douglas incessantly forgets to tell us that Jefferson, in his address to the Virginia Legislature of 1774, says that 'the abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state'; and while he constantly remembers to remind us that the Jeffersonian prohibition of slavery in the territories was lost in 1784, he forgets to add that it was lost, not by a majority of votes — for there were sixteen in its favor to seven against it — but because the sixteen votes did not represent two thirds of the States; and he also incessantly forgets to tell us that this Jeffersonian prohibition was restored by the Congress of 1785, and erected into the famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was re-enacted by the first Congress of the United States and approved by the first President.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Love , God , Books , Law

“But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

God , Thinking , Help

“He saw in a vision his eldest son (then a child and at London) appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension of his fantasy at which he should not be disjected; in the meantime comes there letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him (he said) of a manly shape, and of that growth that he thinks he shall be at the resurrection.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

Death , God , Boy , Thinking

“The operation of the imagination in life is more significant than its operation in or in relation to works of art… in life what is important is the truth as it is, while in arts and letters what is important is truth as we see it.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Necessary Angel (1951), Imagination as Value

Life , Truth , Art , Imagination

“This morning I received a letter from de Bellio. He writes that he does not believe scientific research into the nature of color and light can help the artist, neither can anatomy nor the laws of optics. He wants to discuss these questions with me and find out my views. Now everything depends on how this knowledge is to be used. But surely it is clear that we could not pursue our studies of light with much assurance if we did not have as a guide the discoveries of Chevreul and other scientists. I would not have distinguished between local color and light if science had not given us the hint; the same holds true for complementary colors, contrasting colors, etc. 'Yes', he will tell me: 'but these have always been taken into account, look at Monet' It is at this point that the question becomes serious!”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, in a letter, Eragny, 23 February 1887, to his son Lucien; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 99
1880's

Law , Color , Question , Nature

“My dear soul, I can stand on my own feet, but so poorly that I don't know if my head is on my shoulders. I have no appetite or desire to do anything at all. Only your letters cheer me up – only yours. I don't know what will become of me now that I have lost sight of you; I who idolize you have given up hope that you'll ever glance at these blurred lines and get consolation from them.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Martín Zapater https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3915977 and https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Francisco_de_Goya_-_Portrait_of_Mart%C3%ADn_Zapater_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg, March 1793; from: 'Francisco de Goya. MS Letters to Martín Zapater 1774-99', Collection of Prado - published as Cartas a Martín Zapater; ed, X. de Salas & M. Agueda, Madrid 1982, p. 211; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 127
Goya started to become deaf then, had fainting fits and spells of semi-blindness. From 1793 onward [he was 46] he became functionally deaf, till his death
1790s

Hope , Soul

“In the meantime, to all suits, to all entreaties, to all letters, to all tricks, I will be deaf as an adder, blind as a beetle, lay mine ear to the ground, and lock mine eyes i' my hand against all temptations.”

Ben Jonson Eastward Hoe

Act v, scene ii, lines 68-70
Eastward Hoe (1605)

“The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

War , Children , Age , Peace

“Charles went towards the table, but he had no lady-like powers of filling four sheets with nothing, and the letter was soon sealed.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

“Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, (1963)

Thinking , Time

“I liked the room [his new place in London, c. 1906] the moment I saw it, so here I am set up as a swell... Don't you take this to be a trap set up for the unwary, you know you're always touching a sore spot when you talk painting, and drag my suicides before the public, the right name for potboilers, one has to give up all aim for any good intention, and do the technical skill and cleverness to please those with halfpennies and farthings in their pocket, to be favoured to live... I just got a letter from somebody, saying: but with potboiling one can make money, money always considered to be the principal. I told him he was greatly mistaken, when a little honesty remains, one can scarcely ask anything for them.”

Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) Dutch painter

in a letter to David Croal Thomson (1907), as cited in: The Brothers Maris (James – Matthew – William), ed. Charles Holme; text: D.C. Thomson https://ia800204.us.archive.org/1/items/cu31924016812756/cu31924016812756.pdf; publishers, Offices of 'The Studio', London - Paris, 1907, p. BMxv

Money , Suicide , Painting

“As absurd as it might sound, there's a strange synergy between very bad movies and very good ones. That's because films on either extreme of the quality scale have the ability to burrow deep into the subconscious, with unpredictable and occasionally remarkable results. Great works of art can cause euphoria, touch a deep emotional chord, or, in rare cases, affect fundamental changes in a person's outlook on life. Conversely, viewing unwatchable tripe can be damaging, possibly resulting in psychotic episodes, an appreciation of '70s fashion, or leaping to the defense of Pauly Shore. There's something almost profound about enduring a horrifically inept piece of cinema, and Coyote Ugly, living up to every letter in its name, offers the opportunity for such an experience.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1611 of Coyote Ugly (2000).
One-star reviews

Life , Art , Fashion , Change

“.. he brought a sanity of perception and appraisal to his criticism of our prose productions, our plays, our linguistics, and what ever in letters that touches vitally the life of his people. The country has lost a truly great man in the death of Epifanio de los Santos Cristobal. He wrought for himself a destiny of glory which is the glory of his native land.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

Zaide, Gregorio F. 1965. Epifanio de los Santos: Great among the great Filipino scholars. In Great Filipinos in history. 88 p. 581.
BALIW

Life , Death , People , Country

“We have also sound houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise divers trembling and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear to do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as if it were tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in tubes and pipes, in strange lines and distances…”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

New Atlantis http://www.constitution.org/bacon/new_atlantis.htm (1627)

Music , Bird , Time , Help

“Those who look for contradictions will be amply satisfied. The profession of a performer is full of paradoxes, and he has to learn to live with them. He has to forget himself and control himself; he has to observe the composer's wishes to the letter and create the music on the spot; he has to be part of the music market and yet retain his integrity.”

Alfred Brendel (1931) Austrian pianist, poet, and author

Alfred Brendel (1976), as cited in: Benny Shanon (2013). The Representational and the Presentational. p. 380.

Music , Learning , Parting , Forgetting

“Five sail of British ships have got into Newport within two days past. We have heard nor seen no thing of the fleet of transports your Excellency mentioned, in your letter to General Sullivan of the 23d. If they arrive with a large reenforcement, our expedition is at an end, unless it is by way of blockade, and that will depend upon the French fleet's being superior to that of the British, General Sullivan has done every thing that could be expected, and had the fleet cooperated with us as was at first intended, and agreeably to the original plan of the expedition, we must have been successful.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Way , Success , Past , Dependency

“If a friend in Texas seals a silver coin in one envelope and a gold coin in another and mails the envelopes to Tokyo and London, the instant you open you envelope in Japan you know the contents of my envelope in England. But opening your letter causes no physical change in England (faster-than-light or otherwise) but merely involves a change in your knowledge concerning something happening far away and outside your control.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 9, Four Quantum Realities, p. 171 ( See also: Principle of locality)

Knowledge , Light , Change

“M. Révérony said immediately: "Most Holy Father, this is a child who wants to enter Carmel at fifteen, but the superiors are considering the matter at this moment." (The good pope is so old that one would say he is dead; I would never have pictured him like this.) The Holy Father said simply:"If God wills it, you will enter." [-]I was crying a lot when writing this letter; my heart is heavy. However, God cannot give me trials that are above my strength. He has given me the courage to bear this trial. I am the Child Jesus' little ball; if He wishes to break His toy, He is free. Yes, I will all that He wills.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

Thérèse's account of the papal audience, November 20,1887
General Correspondence

God , Courage , Heart , Cry

“Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

"Trout Fishing in Europe" The Toronto Star Weekly (17 November 1923)

Girl , Fish

“Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History

Way , Boy , Nature , Light

“"The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African", Penguin Classics (1998) ISBN 0140436375.”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

References

“Truth', written 'in capital letters', is an orphan in this world, without power and influence… ['Reason'] cannot stand diverging opinions - it calls them 'lies'; it puts itself 'above' the real lives of human beings, demanding, in a way characteristic of all totalitarian ideologies, the right to rebuild the world from the height of 'what it should be', i. e. in accordance with its own 'invincible' precepts. It refuses to recognize the many ideas, actions, feelings, laws, institutions, racial features which separate one nation (culture, civilization) from another… The reason of ordinary people trying to create a better and safer world for themselves and their children (which is reason with a small 'r' and not Reason 'written in capital letters') has very little in common with these ignorant dreams of domination.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

pg 102.
Farewell to Reason (1987)

Children , People , Truth , World

“In April 1667, four revenue collectors (qanungos), who had been dismissed for various faults, were reinstated on their accepting the Muhammadan faith.39 Aurangzeb’s declared policy of “Qanungo basharte Islam” (Qanungoship on the condition of conversion to Islam) brought many converts and many Muslim families in Punjab still retain the letter of reinstatement on conversion or fresh appointment of Muslims in place of Hindu Qanungos who were retrenched because they would not convert.”

K. S. Lal book Indian Muslims: Who Are They

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

Family , Faith

“There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walking

Walking (June 1862)

Learning

“I was noodling around Rotten Tomatoes, trying to determine who played the bank's security chief, and noticed the movie had not yet been reviewed by anybody. Hold on! In the "Forum" section for this movie, "islandhome" wrote at 7:58 a. m. Jan. 8: "review of this movie … tonight i'll post." At 11:19 a. m. Jan. 10, "islandhome" was finally back with the promised review. It is written without capital letters, flush left like a poem, and I quote it verbatim, spelling and all:
:hello sorry i slept when i got back
:well it was kinda fun
:it could never happen in the way it was portraid
:but what ever its a movie
:for the girls most will like it
:and the men will not mind it much
:i thought it was going to be kinda like how to beat the high cost of living
:kinda the same them but not as much fun
:ill give it a 4 0ut of 10
I read this twice, three times. I had been testing out various first sentences for my own review, but somehow the purity and directness of islandhome's review undercut me. It is so final. "for the girls most will like it/and the men will not mind it much."”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

How can you improve on that? It's worthy of Charles Bukowski. ...The bottom line is some girls will like it, the men not so much, and I give it 1½ stars out of 4.
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-money-2008 of Mad Money (17 January 2008)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Men , Way , Quotes , Girl

“If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Love

“Those who proclaim and apply to poetic works a "theory of criticism," a "theoretical hermeneutic" are, today, the masters of the academy and the exemplars in the high gossip of arts and letters. Indeed, they have clarioned "the triumph of the theoretical." They are, in truth, either deceiving themselves or purloining from the immense prestige and confidence of science and technology an instrument ontologically inapplicable to their own material. They would enclose water in a sieve.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), II: The Broken Contract, Ch. 3 (p. 75).

Truth , Art , Confidence , Water

“The Impressionists were the first [painters] to reject the absolute value of the subject and to consider its value to be merely relative... In Paul Cezanne's letters I notice ideas like these: 'Objects must turn, recede, and live. I wish to make something lasting from impressionism, like the art in the museums'....'For an impressionist, to paint after nature is not to paint the object, but to express sensations'....'After having looked at the old masters, one must take haste to leave them and to verify in one's self the instincts, the sensations that dwell in us.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 11
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Art , Idea , Nature , Painting

“I do not see how the Creation can be turned into words, let alone letters, hardly even a fiction. History is always entirely different to what has happened. The facts are all fled from you before you start the story. History is simply a fact on its own. And the closer you try to approach the facts through history, the deeper you sink into fiction.”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

History

“Charity without faith is meaningless, and faith without charity remains a dead letter.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Quoted in Elise Harris, " Priest Swaps Clerical Hats with 'Sharp, Healthy' Benedict XVI http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/priest-swaps-clerical-hats-with-sharp-healthy-benedict-xvi", National Catholic Register (11 February 2013)
2013

Faith , Dead

“…during a period in history psychology was still a branch of academic philosophy. The psychological concepts developed by philosophers of mind, such as “dominant ideas” (akin to the automatic thoughts of Beck’s cognitive therapy) “habit and association” (a subjective precursor of Pavlovian conditioning), and “imitation and sympathy” (which we now call “role-modelling” and “empathy”), are repeatedly mentioned by Braid as the theoretical framework upon which his science of hypnotism, “neuro-hypnology”, was built. Braid’s friend and collaborator, Prof. William B. Carpenter, discusses the theoretical principles of this in his Principles of Mental Physiology (1889), especially in the chapter ‘Of Common Sense’ which concludes by quoting an approving letter from the philosopher John Stuart Mill sent to Carpenter in 1872. Mill agrees with Carpenter’s contention that “common sense”, by which he means a kind of intellectual intuition analogous to the ancient Greek concept of nous, is a combination of innate and acquired judgements, which have a “reflexive” or “automatic” quality and appear to consciousness as “self-evident” truths.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

James Braid, in The Original Philosophy of Hypnotherapy (from The Discovery of Hypnosis) http://ukhypnosis.wordpress.com/category/james-braid-the-founder-of-hypnotherapy/page/2/.

Truth , Quotes , History , Idea

“The one Lord who created the world is the Lord of all.
Fortunate is their advent into the world, whose hearts remain attached to God's service.
O foolish man, why hast thou forgotten Him?
When thou adjustest thine account, my friend, thou shalt be deemed educated.
The Primal Being is the Giver; He alone is true.
No account shall be due by the pious man who understandeth by means of these letters.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Life Of Guru Nanak: Chapter I

God , World , Education , Heart

“Listening to the neoconservatives, Bush invaded Iraq, united the Arab world against us, isolated us from Europe, and fulfilled to the letter bin Laden's prophecy as to what we were about.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

World

“When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However [Dr. Rush] observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice. Rush observes he never did say a word on the subject in any of his public papers except in his valedictory letter to the Governors of the states when he resigned his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of the benign influence of the Christian religion. I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

The Anas (February 1, 1800). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 1 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-01_Bk.pdf, pp. 352–353
1800s

Secret , Religion , Departure

“Bureau of Ordnance, Richmond
January 17, 1864
General Lee:
I have the honor to present to you with this letter Mr. Andries Rhoodie of Rivington, North Carolina, who has demonstrated in my presence a new rifle, which I believe may prove to be of the most significant benefit conceivable to our soldiers. As he expressed the desire of making your acquaintance & as the Army of Northern Virginia will again, it is likely, face hard fighting in the months ahead, I send him on to you that you may judge both him & his remarkable weapon for yourself. I remain,
Your most ob't servant,
Josiah Gorgas
Colonel”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 5

Fight

“Here was the worldly environment with which Fauchery is so often reproached. But the books and papers that littered the table bore witness that the present occupant of this charming retreat remained a substantial man of letters. His habit of constant work was still further attested by his face, which I admit, gave me all at once a feeling of remorse for the trick I was about to play him. If I had found him the snobbish pretender whom the weekly newspapers were in the habit of ridiculing, it would have been a delight to outwit his diplomacy. But no! I saw, as he put down his pen to receive me, a man about fifty-seven years old, with a face that bore the marks of reflection, eyes tired from sleeplessness, a brow heavy with thought, who said as he pointed to an easy chair, "You will excuse me, my dear confrère, for keeping you waiting."”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

I, his dear confrère! Ah! if he had known!
The Age for Love

Books , Feeling , Waiting

“We Scots derive a strong sense of identity from our nationhood. Scotland has always retained a unique culture and character - not defined in opposition to our neighbours, but by ourselves and our basic values. We Scots have made great contributions in the world of philosophy, economics, science and letters. We were the first country in the world to adopt free education for all. And our legal system is a unique hybrid of the civil and common law traditions.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Vision for Scotland in the European Union (December 12, 2007)

World , Education , Law , Sense

“General Sullivan granted me leave to come here upon the business of my department. I expect to return in a few days. Major Gibbs is with me, and is going to Portsmouth. This is the third letter I have wrote since I have had a line from your Excellency. Should be glad to hear from you when at leisure.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (September 1778)

Business

“Even though leading scholars … recognize that Paul's letters were not theological treatises, they still construct Pauline Christianity as if it were an already existing definable religion. And apparently because religion in the modern West is separate from political and economic affairs—indeed, more or less subject to an agreement not to conflict with political and economic affairs—scholarly constructions often simply ignore (or avoid) implications in the sources of engagement with political-economic affairs, particularly any implications of conflict with the dominant political-economic order.”

Richard A. Horsley (1939) Biblical scholar

"Paul's assembly in Corinth: an alternative society," in Urban Religion in Corinth (Harvard: 2005), pp. 374-375.

Religion

“We have found that our great philosophers and our great men of action are optimists. So, too, our most potent men of letters have been optimists in their books and in their lives. No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius, and many optimistic writers have been read and admired out of all measure to their talents, simply because they wrote of the sunlit side of life.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Life , Men , Books , Reading

“Yesterday I received a letter from my father [ Dutch landscape-painter J. W. Bilders. ] He told me to come at once, to paint the goats in a rather large forest landscape-painting he just finished, which has to be sent away at once [to Saint Petersburg, Russia]. I earn back my travelling [from Leiden to Amsterdam, probably by travel coach] but will loose one day studying in open air. When my goats will succeed, and they are not too stubborn, I'll be back here [in Leiden] tomorrow at one o'clock in the afternoon.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

Source: 1850's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), p. 30 - quote of Bilder's letter to Johannes Kneppelhout, from Leiden, August 1859

Travel , Study , Painting

“Tarzan sat in a brown study for a long time after he finished reading the letter. It was filled with so many new and wonderful things that his brain was in a whirl as he attempted to digest them all.
So they did not know that he was Tarzan of the Apes. He would tell them.
In his tree he had constructed a rude shelter of leaves and boughs, beneath which, protected from the rain, he had placed the few treasures brought from the cabin. Among these were some pencils.
He took one, and beneath Jane Porter's signature he wrote: I am Tarzan of the Apes”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 18 : The Jungle Toll

Tree , Study , Time , Reading

“Proper evaluations of words and letters in their phonetic and associated sense can bring the people of earth to the clear light of pure cosmic wisdom.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

Liner notes for Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy (1966)

Wisdom , People , Sense , Light

Quotes about letter page 6

Quotes about letter
page 6