Quotes about letter (1028 quotes, page 8)

“Let me have a plump home-born slave, have a wife not too lettered, have night with sleep, have day without a lawsuit.”
Sit mihi verna satur: sit non doctissima conjux: Sit nox cum somno: sit sine lite dies.

Martial book Epigrammata

Sit mihi verna satur: sit non doctissima conjux:
Sit nox cum somno: sit sine lite dies.
II, 90 (Loeb translation).
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)

Home , Sleep , Night

“From the time of Zeno to Simplicius, a period of about nine hundred years, the Stoic philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men. Finally it became extinct, and we hear no more of it til the revival of letters in Italy.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

M. Aurelius Antoninus

Men , Time

“Well! according to the sketch your picture [which Whistler sent him in a letter] seems well-composed, the lines of sky, sea, the position of the figures all that seems very, very well done[, ] on opening the letter it struck me immediately, an impression of decorative ornamentation which makes a good picture appeal to the eye as well - upside down and any other way up. Arrangement, layout, composition. etc - mysterious words harmonious laws - in no way conventional - needs of the Artist glory of the Raphael's Michelangelo's etc etc - for me a repetition a hesitation, a matter of feeling - which should also be a law, a mathematical thing, like form, like light, colour[. ] I find similarities with the colour method which works by opposing colours to arrive at a harmony that is to say to make a canvas a complete whole, to put into a small space an image with all the forces all the principles of nature - [instead of showing a part of it]..”

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) painter from France

quote from a letter of Fantin-Latour, Paris 7-14 October 1862 to James Whistler; from The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler - Repository: Glasgow University Library http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/display/?cid=1075&nameid=Manet_E&sr=0&surname=&firstname=&rs=1 - System Number: 01075; Call Number: MS Whistler F 6.

Law , Way , Feeling , Mathematics

“I met Beckett at my brother’s [ w:Geert van Velde, also an abstract painter] place. That was a Big meeting [circa 1938, in Paris], in capital letters. It was before war started, life was still normal. That time I was very lonely. We saw each other often. Before the war he had published already something, but his fame came in 1953. We never spoke about his work. He was a taciturn man. Sometimes a word escaped from his mouth. Sure, a word you would never forget. It would stick in your head… This friendship with Beckett is the most important experience in my life. He was fully alive for my way of working. What he could express in words, I did with my paintings.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

About his contact with Beckett in Paris, before and during World War 2.
1970's
Source: article "Schilder Bram van Velde in Dordrecht," in: NRC Handelsblad by Paul Groot, 1979 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)

Life , Friendship , War , Way

“In the Bernstein Manual there is a short chapter on undercover work. The first line says, in capital letters, AVOID UNDERCOVER WORK.”

Eoin Colfer book Half Moon Investigations

Half Moon Investigations (2006)

“It's ten years since I heard, and
Then one day a letter comes.
It's neutral stuff, until I
Delve into the envelope
Again and find your photo,
Handsome still, and not a line
To tell me why you sent it.”

Edward Lucie-Smith (1933) British art critic, writer and curator

Poem A Former Lover

Photo

“Everything you tell me in your last letter, which is to say that to spend more time with me they will give up going to Paris, fills me with the greatest pleasure... I find myself much better, and I hope to be back where I was before... I am happy to be better to receive my most beloved travelers. This improvement I owe to Molina.”

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

letter to Javier (his only son), from Madrid, Summer of 1827; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 401 – note 15
1820s

Pleasure , Hope , Travel , Time

“This is a work that cannot be completed except by a society of men of letters and skilled workmen, each working separately on his own part, but all bound together solely by their zeal for the best interests of the human race and a feeling of mutual good will.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Article on Encyclopedia, as translated in The Many Faces of Philosophy : Reflections from Plato to Arendt (2001), "Diderot", p. 237
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)

Men , Feeling , Parting

“Suppose we a certain Number of things exposed, different each from other, as a, b, c, d, e, &c.; The question is, how many ways the order of these may be varied? as, for instance, how many changes may be Rung upon a certain Number of Bells; or, how many ways (by way of Anagram) a certain Number of (different) Letters may be differently ordered?
Alt.1,21) If the thing exposed be but One, as a, it is certain, that the order can be but one. That is 1.
2) If Two be exposed, as a, b, it is also manifest, that they may be taken in a double order, as ab, ba, and no more. That is 1 x 2 = 2. Alt.3
3) If Three be exposed; as a, b, c: Then, beginning with a, the other two b, c, may (by art. 2,) be disposed according to Two different orders, as bc, cb; whence arise Two Changes (or varieties of order) beginning with a as abc, acb: And, in like manner it may be shewed, that there be as many beginning with b; because the other two, a, c, may be so varied, as bac, bca. And again as many beginning with c as cab, cba. And therefore, in all, Three times Two. That is 1 x 2, x 3 = 6.
Alt.34) If Four be exposed as a, b, c, d; Then, beginning with a, the other Three may (by art. preceeding) be disposed six several ways. And (by the same reason) as many beginning with b, and as many beginning with c, and as many beginning with d. And therefore, in all, Four times six, or 24. That is, the Number answering to the case next foregoing, so many times taken as is the Number of things here exposed. That is 1 x 2 x 3, x 4 = 6 x 4 = 24.
5) And in like manner it may be shewed, that this Number 24 Multiplied by 5, that is 120 = 24 x 5 = 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5, is the number of alternations (or changes of order) of Five things exposed. (Or, the Number of Changes on Five Bells.) For each of these five being put in the first place, the other four will (by art. preceeding) admit of 24 varieties, that is, in all, five times 24. And in like manner, this Number 120 Multiplied by 6, shews the Number of Alternations of 6 things exposed; and so onward, by continual Multiplication by the conse quent Numbers 7, 8, 9, &c.;
6) That is, how many so ever of Numbers, in their natural Consecution, beginning from 1, being continually Multiplied, give us the Number of Alternations (or Change of order) of which so many things are capable as is the last of the Numbers so Multiplied. As for instance, the Number of Changes in Ringing Five Bells, is 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 = 120. In Six Bells, 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 = 120 x 6 = 720. In Seven Bells, 720 x 7 = 5040. In Eight Bells, 5040 x 8 = 40320, And so onward, as far as we please.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

Source: A Discourse of Combinations, Alterations, and Aliquot Parts (1685), Ch.II Of Alternations, or the different Change of Order, in any Number of Things proposed.

Art , Way , Question , Nature

“…I have received your weighty letter…
According to whatever this recluse (meaning himself) has learnt (from the occult world), Ahmad Shah Abdali will come again for putting down the enemies. When this sacred promise is fulfilled, he will most probably stay here, and dedicate his life to the last to (the welfare of) this land. In spite of the crimes that abound and the evils that have multiplied, the work is proceeding according to plan. The reason for this most probably is that Allah wants to destroy the power of his enemies.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

To Shykh Muhammad Ashiq Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, pp. 116-17.
From his letters

Life , World , Evil

“The meeting of their shadows or that meet
In a book in a barrack, a letter from Malay.
But your war ends. And after it you return”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

War , Books

“Little by little his conversation, always instructive and animated, gave a special direction to my tastes, which would have led me by preference towards letters. I resolved to complete my scientific studies and followed the courses in advanced mathematics given by M. [Jean Guillaume] Gamier. It was at the same time agreed by us that, in order to relieve him in his work, I should give some of the other courses with which he was charged. I thus found myself his pupil and his colleague.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

"Notice sur J.G. Garnier," Annuaire de l'acad. roy. de Brux. (1841) Vol. vii pp. 200-201 as quoted in Adolphe Quetelet as Statistician by Frank Hamilton Hankins

Mathematics , Study , Time , Animals

“He sent me a letter from India, where I think he got a fellowship to spend a year or so. He sent me a letter that read, I've just met a wonderful guru who can read minds. "I want you to" — Allen had a way of saying "I want you to do this, I want you to do that" — "I want you to get him a position in the Philosophy Department." I wrote back, "Dear Allen, the members of the Philosophy Department want nothing so little as to have their minds read."”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

On Allen Ginsberg, in "The Man Who Knew Too Much: Jacques Barzun, Idea Man" http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=78886, interview with Roger Gathman, The Austin Chronicle (2000-10-13)

Way , Thinking , Reading

“Knowing Corot's ideas on tone [copy of a private letter, October 28, 1875].. and Couture's precepts on the subtlety of tints (at the time of his exhibition), having been struck by the intuition of Monet and Pissarro... Rood having been brought to my attention in an article by w:Philippe Gille, Figaro 1881, 3.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

Quotes, 1881 - 1890, Letter to Félix Fénéon', June 1890

Idea , Time

“"I'm no gaun to let naebody see the letter," sobbed the boy, "till I gie't to Mr. Lovel, for I am a faithfu' servant o' the office—if it werena for the powny."
"Very right, my little man," said Ochiltree, turning the reluctant pony's head towards Monkbarns; "but we'll guide him atween us." …
[They met Lovel on the way, ] and Davie, who insisted upon a literal execution of his commission by going on to Monkbarns, was with difficulty prevailed upon to surrender the packet to its proper owner, although he met him a mile nearer than the place he had been directed to. "But my minnie said, I maun be sure to get twenty shillings and five shillings for the postage, and ten shillings and sixpence for the express—there's the paper."
"Let me see—let me see," said Oldbuck, putting on his spectacles, and examining the crumpled copy of regulations to which Davie appealed. "Express, per man and horse, one day, not to exceed ten shillings and sixpence. One day? why, it's not an hour—Man and horse? why, 'tis a monkey on a starved cat!"”

Walter Scott book The Antiquary

Vol. I, Ch.15.
The Antiquary (1816), On the postal service

Way , Boy , Cats , Horse

“The cover for Volume 9 seems to be very well liked. I received many letters discussing their opinions regarding it. “Follow me! That’s what it is trying to convey!!” or “Men speak with their backs!!” or “It’s like saying everybody’s fate is resting upon my back, what a great cover!!” and stuff like that…. Can’t bear to say “It’s because drawing the colonel’s face is really troublesome”… Can’t say it… -->”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Men , Fate , Drawing

“It is color, not locally true from the point of view of the stereoscopic realist, but color to suggest any emotion of an ardent temperament. When Paul Mantz saw at the exhibition the violent and inspired sketch of Delacroix…. the 'Barque of Christ' - he turned away from it exclaiming: 'I did not know that one could be so terrible with a little blue and green'. Hokusai wrings the same cry from you [Theo], but he does it by his line, his drawing, when you say in your letter - 'the waves are claws and the ship is caught in them'. Well, if you make the color exact or the drawing exact, it won't give you sensations like that.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, 8 September 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 533) pp. 32-33
1880s, 1888

Color , Christ , Drawing , Cry

“The bearer of this letter is an old friend of mine not quite the right side of the blanket as they say in fact he is the son of a first rate butcher but his mother was a decent family called Hyssopps of the Glen so you see he is not so bad and is desireus of being the correct article.”

Daisy Ashford book The Young Visiters

Source: The Young Visiters (1919), Chapter 5

Family

“There was excitement for us all in the fact that I had a job in the mechanical field, so that my education would count…. Well, I am bound to admit the first sight of my opportunity was disappointing… Not far from a city dump on a weed-grown, marshy plain was an old weather-worn building, like an overgrown barn. In its indefinite yard there was a small mound of coal and a great mound of reddish-gray cinders and ashes; also a disorderly accumulation of discarded machinery… Once the factory had been painted brown. Only one word describes it: "dirty." Smoke from the dump carried an acric odor. Eventually across the wall nearest the railroad track there was lettered in black this legend: HYATT ROLLER BEARING COMPANY”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Adventures of a White-Collar Man. 1941, p. 5 ; About his first job at the , where a year later Sloan would take control.

Education , Disappointment , Painting , Weather

“I also questioned whether it was right to try to impose on the Sudanese the conventions and values of our utterly alien civilization, and sometimes expressed these doubts in letters to my mother. I could not help feeling that other races were entitled to their own customs and moral standards, however much these might differ from ours.”

Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) British explorer

Source: The Life Of My Choice (1987), p. 202.

Feeling , Question , Help

“Rolf Halbritter coughed from the dust the retreating convoy kicked up. He shook his head in wonder not far from awe. The Amis were really and truly going- no, really and truly gone. Which meant… He had a badge pinned on the underside of his collar, where it didn't show. Now he could wear it openly agian. It was round, with a red outer ring that carried a legend in bronze letters: NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHE DEUTSCHE ARBEITERPARTEI. The white inner circle held a black swastika. Every Party member had one just like it. Pretty soon, they'd all be showing it, too.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 528

“There are words agreeable to the eye (in the same way there are words agreeable to the ear). By a fortunate combination of the letters that form them or by the harmony of these letters. For each letter has its shape.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Way

“I saw a lady on T. V. She was born without arms. Literally, she was born with her hands attached to her shoulders… and that was sad, but then they said "Lola does not know the meaning of the word 'can't.'" And that to me was kinda worse… In a way… Y'know? Not only does she not have arms, but she doesn't understand simple contractions. It's very simple, Lola, you just take two words, you put them together, then you take out the middle letter, you put a comma in there and you raise it up!”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Do You Believe in Gosh?

Sadness , Way , Understanding

“Quote in Rembrandt's letter to Constantijn Huygens (Amsterdam, 12 January 1639) on 3 paintings commissioned (in 1635 and started by Rembrandt already in 1635/36) by the imperial court, as cited in Painters on Painting (1963) by Eric Protter, p. 78 / Dutch original text in The Rembrandt Documents, Walter Strauss & Marjon van der Meulen - Abaris Books, New York 1979, p. 161.”

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

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Rembrandt, in Nederlands): Door die grooten lust ende geneegenheijt die ick gepleecght hebbe int wel wtvoeren van die twe/ stuckens die sijn Hoocheijt mijn heeft doen maeken weesende het een daer dat doode lichaem Chrisstij/ in den graeve gelecht werd ende dat ander/ daer Chrisstus van den doode opstaet dat met/ grooten verschrickinge des wachters. Dees selvij/ twe stuckens sijn door stuijdiose vlijt nu meede/ afgedaen soodat ick nu oock geneegen ben om die/ selvijge te leeveren om sijn Hoocheijt daer meede/ te vermaeken want deesen twe sijnt daer die meeste/ ende die naetuereelste beweechgelickheijt . in/ geopserveert is dat oock de grooste oorsaeck is dat/ die selvijge soo lang onder handen sij geweest.
in margin: deessen 12 Januwarij 1639, Mijn heer ik woon op die binnenemster, thuijs is genaemt die suijckerbackerrij [in Amsterdam]. http://remdoc.huygens.knaw.nl/#/document/remdoc/e4458
What Rembrandt meant in his phrase "die meeste ende di naetuereelste beweechgelickheijt" has been the subject of dispute. Variant translations have been proposed:
For in these two paintings "the greatest and most innate emotion has been expressed", which is also the main reason why they have taken so long to execute (c. 3 years!).
The "deepest and most lifelike emotion has been expressed", and that's the reason they have taken so long to execute.
1630 - 1640

Books , Quotes , Painting

“One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could build anything beginning with the letter 'n.”

Stanisław Lem book The Cyberiad

In "How The World Was Saved"
The Cyberiad (1967)

“I rejoiced so greatly when I heard of your answer in the case of some who seemed to be filled with extravagant ambition
for the office of legate, and to hope for it with impudence, even more than I can say. And not only I but all who love your name rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Moreover, when I read your letter written in the cause of the Church of Rodez,
then was my mouth filled with laughter and my tongue with joy. Such things as these are worthy of your Apostleship, they honour the highest See, they are just what is becoming to the Bishop of the world. Whence, also, I bow my knees to the Author of your unique Primacy…
In truth, you have been raised to this chair for the fall and rising again of many.”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

Bernard to Pope Eugene III, letter 240:1, A.D. 1146, concerning the election of a certain unworthy bishop at the Church of Rodez (see letter 328). In The Life and works of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, John Mabillon, Samuel J. Eales, Volume 2, p. 705

Love , Truth , World , Hope

“Christianity, in order to defend itself, puts the brand of infamy on the brow of honesty. Christianity marks with a letter “C,” standing for “convict” every brain that is great enough to discover the frauds.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.

Fraud

“.. how the movement of the passers-by [in his Street scene painting of 191-14] is comprehended in the rhombus of the heads which is twice repeated. In this way life and movement arise from an original geometric form. [Kirchner designed a diagram together with this line in the letter]”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter to Karl Hagemann, 27 February 1937; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 81 - note 31
1930's

Life , Way , Painting

“Halliburton, Richard. (1942). Richard Halliburton: His Story of His Life's Adventure, As told in Letters to his Mother and Father. Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co. (Original work published 1940 by Bobbs-Merrill Co.)”

Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) American writer

References

Life

“It was I who gave the title "J'accuse" to Zola's letter.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Letter (19 June 1902), in which he claims to have chosen the headline title for Émile Zola's famous open letter on the Dreyfus affair, as quoted in Clemenceau (1974) by D. R. Watson, and Brewer's Famous Quotations : 5000 Quotations and the Stories Behind Them (2006) by Nigel Rees

“No statistician present at this moment will have been in doubt about the meaning of my words when I mentioned the common statistical model. It must be a stochastic device producing random results. Tossing coins or a dice or playing at cards are not flexible enough. The most general chance instrument is the urn filled with balls of different colours or with tickets bearing some ciphers or letters. This model is continuously used in our courses as a didactic tool, and in our statistical analyses as a means of translating realistic problems into mathematical ones. In statistical language " urn model " is a standard expression.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: The Concept and the Role of the Model in Mathematics and Natural and Social Sciences (1961), p. 79; Partly cited in: Norman L. Johnson and Samuel Kotz (1977) Urn Models and Their Application: an. Approach to Modern Discrete Probability Theory http://dis.unal.edu.co/~gjhernandezp/sim/hide/Urn%20Models%20and%20Their%20Application%20-%20An%20approach%20to%20modern%20discrete%20probability%20theory_Norman%20L.Johnson(Wiley%201977%20413s).pdf, John Wiley & Sons.

Mathematics , Problem , Chance

“We completely ignore the human value of the information. A selection of 100 letters is given a certain information value, and we do not investigate whether it makes sense in English, and, if so, whether the meaning of the sentence is of any practical importance. According to our definition, a set of 100 letters selected at random (according to the rules of Table 1.1), a sentence of 100 letters from a newspaper, a piece of Shakespeare or a theorem of Einstein are given exactly the same informational value.”

Léon Brillouin (1889–1969) French physicist

[Léon Brillouin, Science and Information Theory, second edition, Academic Press, New York, 1962, 0-48643-918-6, 9]

Sense

“Most Illustrious, &c,— It was not necessary for your Excellency to remind me by letter or the gift of a rich cassock of the pictures, which I have altogether at heart, knowing as I do under what obligation I am for many kindnesses.... Many days have passed since I gave one of the pictures to the ambassador to send to your Excellency. Five others are in a fair way, which I shall finish on hearing that the first was satisfactory, or the reverse, regulating my work accordingly. And so I shall proceed by degrees to the end, when I shall hope to have well served your Excellency. In the meantime, it would be a great favour to me if your Excellency would liberate my benefice from the pension payable upon it, which, besides causing me a loss in money which I pay out yearly, creates not a little trouble and disturbance because of the persons with whom I am pestered, out of whose hands your Excellency alone can save me. I beg, I supplicate your Excellency to do this.... which alone would suffice to make me your Excellency's perpetual slave.”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

In a letter to the Duke of Mantua, from Venice, 6 April 1537; as quoted by J.A.Y. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle in Titian his life and times - With some account..., publisher John Murray, London, 1877, p. 421
1510-1540

Money , Hope , Way , Loss

“That explains why it is the seer and not the scholar who has all along dominated the scene in Sanãtana Dharma. That explains why it is the saint and not the pandit who has always sat at the centre of Hindu society. That explains why it is the mystic and not the man of letters who has ruled the roost in Hindu culture. The most honoured names in Hindu history, above even those of the heroes, are the names of seers, sages, saints, and mystics - Vyasa, Valmiki, Yajnavalkya, the Buddha, Bhagvan Mahavira, Shankara, Ramanuja, Gorakhnath, Kabir, Nanak, Tulsidas, Mira, Ramakrishna, Raman - to mention only the most notable in a galaxy of great names.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

History

“Do you believe in dreams, Uncle Simeon? I do; I believe in nothing else. One night I dreamed that invisible enemies had me tied to a dead cypress. Long red arrows were sticking into me from my head to my feet, and the blood was flowing. On my head they had placed a crown of thorns, and intertwined with the thorns were fiery letters which said: "Saint Blasphemer." I am Saint Blasphemer, Rabbi Simeon. So you'd better not ask me anything else, or I'll start my blasphemies.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ (1951), Ch. 10

Dreams , Night , Dead

“The tempest unleashes an alphabet
letters fall through the apertures of crazy angles
to spell out the future
uprooting the course of invention
and enslaving the masters”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"
1970s

Future

“I have read your letter of October 26th with great care and welcomed the statement of your desire to seek a prompt solution to the problem. The first thing that needs to be done, however, is for work to cease on offensive missile bases on Cuba and for all weapons systems in Cuba capable of offensive use to be rendered inoperable, under effective United Nations arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Second Letter to Nikita Khrushchev

Problem , Reading

“Never answer an anonymous letter.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

Berra expressly denied this widespread attribution in Yogi: It Ain’t Over (1989), p. 11, but later embraced it in The Yogi Book: I really didn’t say everything I said! (1998). Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/13/anon-letter/ traces this saying to the 19th century.
Disputed, Misattributed

“I was sitting in my suite one night after the show, and I looked out at the [Las Vegas] Strip and saw the huge neon billboard with my name on it, spelled out in those giant letters they use. Then I looked across the street at Caesars Palace and saw Frank Sinatra's name, in the same giant letters. And I said to myself, 'Face it, Anne; you're in the business.”

Anne Murray (1945) Canadian singer

On her popularity in Las Vegas, as quoted in "Anne Murray: Facing the Big Time Her Own Way", Section "Her Own Way", by George Anthony, Billboard, Oct 20, 1979

Business , Night

“William I’m sorry I let my brother hoist you up the mast in that crappy jury-rigged bosun’s chair while everybody laughed! William I’m sorry I could build better fires than you could! I’m sorry my stack of Christmas cards was always bigger than yours! … William I’m sorry I invented bop jogging which you couldn’t do! I’m sorry I loved Antigua! I’m sorry my mind wandered when you talked about the army! I’m sorry I was superior in argument! I’m sorry you slit open my bicycle tires looking for incriminating letters that you didn’t find! You’ll never find them! … William! I’m sorry I looked at Sam but he was so handsome, so handsome, who could not! I’m sorry I slept with Sam! I’m sorry about the library books! I’m sorry about Pete! I’m sorry I never played the guitar you gave me! I’m sorry I married you and I’ll never so it again!”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The Apology”.
Great Days (1979)

Love , Books , Christmas

“It is difficult to live up to one's posters…When I pass my name in such large letters I blush, but at the same time instinctively raise my hat.”

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English actor and theatre manager

Page 188.
Beerbohm Tree (1956)

Time

“In physics, I sprung on him as we sat in the Taco Bell drive-through, what does the capital letter W stand for?”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Dreamland (2000)

“And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the present epoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions—students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame,—might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Men , Children , Democracy , Universe

“A childhood can be judged sheltered or not according to which was learned first, the four-letter word or the euphemism.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Learning , Childhood

“It was abundantly clear from his letters that, virtually to the end, he remained deeply interested in national and world events. Yet he never ceased to engage in self-deprecating humor. I have a file containing a decade of correspondence with my dear friend. It is a file that I will keep. Max's death on April 19 was not unexpected and I am sure he would have viewed it as merciful. At the moving funeral service at Fort Meyer, Ambassador Philip Bonsal, a respected diplomat and longtime friend of the Taylors', spoke eloquently of General Taylor's "example", and correctly said that his friendship would remain a constant treasure in the lives of all of us who knew him. His younger son Tom's superb tribute brought tears to the eyes of most of us. He emphasized the closeness of the Taylor family- a closeness not often found in the lives of the world's great leaders. It typifies the mind and spirit that I was privileged to know. Maxwell Taylor's place in history will be a large one.”

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1907–1998) American judge

As quoted in General Maxwell Taylor: The Sword and the Pen (1989) by John Martin Taylor, p. xiv.
1980s

Death , Friendship , World , Family

“From 'Windows Is Shutting Down'
:Windows is shutting down, and grammar are
:On their last leg. So what am we to do?
:A letter of complaint go just so far,
:Proving the only one in step are you.

:Better, perhaps, to simply let it goes.
:A sentence have to be screwed pretty bad
:Before they gets to where you doesn't knows
:The meaning what it must have meant to had.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Poems and song lyrics

“I received a letter from the Reich Ministry of Sports. They want me to split from Joe Jacobs, my manager since 1928…. I really need Joe Jacobs. I owe all my success in America to him.”

Max Schmeling (1905–2005) German boxer

To Adolf Hitler, 1935 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/fight/peopleevents/p_jacobs.html

Sport , Success

“I am out here in the far West, in San Francisco, in a small room on Carl Street, writing a letter to common people, telling them in simple language what they already know.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Seventy Thousand Assyrians (1934)

People

“Without exception, all of the horrors connected with Christianity’s name came from following the letter rather than the spirit of the law, or by insistence upon literal interpretations -- while the spiritual, imaginative concepts beneath were ignored.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 829, Page 140-141
The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, (1981)

Law , Imagination

“The best thing Clinton could do — I think I wrote him a letter about this, but I'm not sure — is to shut up…. He has no discipline.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Washington Post interview (1994)

Thinking

“Five years after Sir Syed’s death in 1898, his successor, Viqar-ul-Mulk, wrote a letter to The Pioneer of Lucknow. He said: “We start with the firm conviction and seek to implant it in the mind of every Indian Musalman that our destiny is now bound up with the presence and permanence of British rule in this country, and that in the government of the day we have got our best and surest friend.””

Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk Kamboh (1841–1917) Politician for India's independence

Letter cited in Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims, Delhi, 1975, p. 139. Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Death , Country

“My friend L___ is in town, and intends trying his fortune among us- as teacher of murder and neck-breaking, alias, fencing and riding.
(from vol 1, letter 17: Charles Street, London, 26 Nov 1774, to Mr S___ ).”

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

Teachers

“If I had done nothing else in India I have written my name here, and the letters are a living joy.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Letter to Mrs Curzon (4 April 1905) on his restoration of the Taj Mahal, quoted in David Gilmour, ‘ Curzon, George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32680’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011, accessed 1 Feb 2014.

Joy

“The Bible is a warm letter of affection from a parent to a child; and yet there are many who see chiefly the severer passages. As there may be fifty or sixty nights of gentle dews in one summer, that will not cause as much remark as one hailstorm of half an hour, so there are those who are more struck by those passages of the Bible that announce the indignation of God than by those that announce His affection.”

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian preacher, clergyman and reformer during the mid-to late 19th century.

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 30.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

God , Parent , Summer , Night

“The letters Z, O and O dominate the front entrance gates of a capital city zoo. They are made of glass and they tower up two giraffes high. They are the width of one elephant and the colour of bottled blue ink.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

A Zed and Two Noughts

“‘ Never speak of a last letter to anbody, doi you hear me? for it may well be your last, if you dwell on it too much!’”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 16 "The Strength of a Ship"

“Goethe, whose letters I've been reading very intensively during the past few weeks, is always stressing Verträglichkeit - agreeing to live and let live - as the most important element of friendship: we shouldn't try to change people, but simply let them be as they are, making the best of even partial concord, instead of trying to force a fictitious perfect harmony.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights p. 82 Diaries 1951-1952

Friendship , People , Change , Reading

“I'm not sure, but I think I might be an adult…. Someone the other day told me I should act more like one, but I don't even know what it is. What's an adult? I blame it on my parents; they caught it before I was even born. When I break things now I have to pay for them. I rarely get cake at parties anymore. When people give me sheets of paper I'm not supposed to draw on 'em. I'm just supposed to put the letters of my name on a line. Where's the fun in that? People get funny when I say the obvious, like "you've got a big nose." All of a sudden I'm supposed to know about the weather. And have plans! I even checked on the internet and no one's working on a cure. I'm not sure I like it.”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/wiki/index.php/the_show:_06-06-06
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

People , Thinking , Parent , Drawing

“Croton River was the only place I could find suitable to the purpose, all circumstances being taken into consideration. I wrote your Excellency what I had done, and where I was, that if you had any thing in charge I might receive your orders. I wrote you the reasons for my not waiting upon you in person were, I had many letters to answer, and many matters to regulate in my department, which prevented me from returning. Besides which, it was almost half a day's ride, the weather exceeding hot, and myself not a little fatigued. And here I must observe, that neither my constitution nor strength is equal to constant exercise.”

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

Letter to George Washington (July 1778)

Exercises , Waiting , Personality , Weather

“As soon as the report came in, [General Lang] sat down at his desk, signed a few final orders, addressed and sealed a letter to his family, then put a bullet through his brain. Bastard. I hate him now even more than I did on the way to Hamburg… he knew this was just the first step of a long war and we were going to need men like him to win it… That's why he deserted us like we deserted those civilians. He saw the road ahead, a steep, treacherous mountain road. We'd all have to hike that road, each of us dragging the boulder of what he'd done behind us. [Lang] couldn't do that. He couldn't shoulder the weight.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z

Men , Hate , War , Family

“I am much obliged to you for your last letter, and the lessons reed, before. I think I now begin to see a little into the nature of modulation and the introduction of flats and sharps; and when we meet you shall hear me play extempore.. [his friend William Jackson of Exeter was composer and organist]”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

1755 - 1769

Nature , Thinking

“The hell with the newspapers. Nobody reads the letters to the editor column except the nuts. It's enough to get you down.”

Philip K. Dick book Confessions of a Crap Artist

Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)

Hell , Reading

“O. K., I'm a rock critic. I also write and record music. I write poetry, fiction, straight journalism, unstraight journalism, beatnik drivel, mortifying love letters, death threats to white jazz critics signed "The Mau Maus of East Harlem," and once a year my own obituary (latest entry: "He was promising…").”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"An Instant Fan's Inspired Notes: You Gotta Listen" (1980), from Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000, ed. Peter Guralnick (Da Capo Press, 2000, ISBN 0306809990), p. 100

Love , Death , Music

“There is … a good deal of empirical evidence for saying that rationalistic men are more intolerant than “prejudiced” men. The former take the position that their judgments are reasoned conclusions, and why should one swerve or deflect from what can be proved to all reasonable men? Such are often the authors of persecutions, massacres, and liquidations. The man who frankly confesses to his prejudices is usually more human and more humane. He adjusts amicably to the idea of his limitations. A limitation once admitted is a kind of monition not to try acting like something superhuman. The person who admits his prejudices, which is to say, his unreasoned judgments, has perspective on himself. … When H. L. Mencken wrote his brilliant series of essays on men, life, and letters, he gave them a title as illuminating as it was honest—Prejudices. What he meant … was that these were views based on such part of experience as had passed under his observation. There was no apology because some figures were praised and others were roundly damned, and there was no canting claim to “objectivity.””

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Mencken knew that life and action turn largely on convictions which rest upon imperfect inductions, or sampling of evidence, and he knew that feeling is often a positive factor.
“Life without prejudice,” p. 10.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Life , Men , Feeling , Idea

“Mahmood having reached Tahnesur before the Hindoos had time to take measures for its defence, the city was plundered, the idols broken, and the idol Jugsom was sent to Ghizny to be trodden under foot…Mahmood having refreshed his troops, and understanding that at some distance stood the rich city of Mutra [Mathura], consecrated to Krishn-Vasdew, whom the Hindoos venerate as an emanation of God, directed his march thither and entering it with little opposition from the troops of the Raja of Delhy, to whom it belonged, gave it up to plunder. He broke down or burned all the idols, and amassed a vast quantity of gold and silver, of which the idols were mostly composed. He would have destroyed the temples also, but he found the labour would have been excessive; while some say that he was averted from his purpose by their admirable beauty. He certainly extravagantly extolled the magnificence of the buildings and city in a letter to the governor of Ghizny, in which the following passage occurs: "There are here a thousand edifices as firm as the faith of the faithful; most of them of marble, besides innumerable temples; nor is it likely that this city has attained its present condition but at the expense of many millions of deenars, nor could such another be constructed under a period of two centuries."…The King tarried in Mutra 20 days; in which time the city suffered greatly from fire, beside the damage it sustained by being pillaged. At length he continued his march along the course of a stream on whose banks were seven strong fortifications, all of which fell in succession: there were also discovered some very ancient temples, which, according to the Hindoos, had existed for 4000 years. Having sacked these temples and forts, the troops were led against the fort of Munj…The King, on his return, ordered a magnificent mosque to be built of marble and granite, of such beauty as struck every beholder with astonishment, and furnished it with rich carpets, and with candelabras and other ornaments of silver and gold. This mosque was universally known by the name of the Celestial Bride. In its neighbourhood the King founded an university, supplied with a vast collection of curious books in various languages. It contained also a museum of natural curiosities. For the maintenance of this establishment he appropriated a large sum of money, besides a sufficient fund for the maintenance of the students, and proper persons to instruct youth in the arts and sciences…The King, in the year AH 410 (AD 1019), caused an account of his exploits to be written and sent to the Caliph, who ordered it to be read to the people of Bagdad, making a great festival upon the occasion, expressive of his joy at the propagation of the faith.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. I, pp. 27-37.
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

Money , God , People , Books

“I am receiving what I suppose to be the usual number of threatening letters on the subject. Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

As quoted in Garfield of Ohio : The Available Man (1970) by John M. Tyler

Death

“I do not know whether it was the will of God, or just an evolutionary accident, but as it happens I am Afrikaans. This is a circumstance with which I am normally perfectly content. The truth is that I actually do not think about it too much, just as I do not think about it too much that I have a liver. The current flutterings about Afrikaans, however, I find disturbing. It is not doing the image of Afrikaners, and hence also of Afrikaans, any good.A mere ten years after the end of apartheid (yes, there was such a thing, and it was evil) to beat one's chest in such a self-justificatory manner, is bad taste morally.…
We are … being called up by certain parties to mobilise for Afrikaans, to fight for the survival of Afrikaans, and for minority rights. The problem is, however, that I do not see myself currently as part of a minority. When, in the 1970s and 1980s, as an Afrikaner, I resisted apartheid – and not in the 1990s when it became fashionable – then I felt myself part of a minority. At present I mainly find myself with an enormous feeling of moral relief. I would now like to carry on with my life and make a constructive contribution at the level of content. I do not wish to have to write letters like this one.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Paul Cilliers. A letter to The Burger, 10 October 2005; Cited in: Chris Brink (2006) No Lesser Place: The Taaldebat at Stellenbosch. p. 133

Life , God , Truth , Feeling

“Ideally, a book of letters should be published posthumously. The advantages are obvious: the editor enjoys a free hand, and the author enjoys a perfect hiding place — the grave, where he is impervious to embarrassments and beyond the reach of libel. I have failed to cooperate with this ideal arrangement. Through some typical bit of mismanagement, I am still alive, and the book has had to adjust to that awkward fact.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Foreword to Letters of E.B. White, edited Dorothy Lobrano Guth (1976)

Books , Perfection

“But while at the bottom of the national life the slime was thus constantly accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply, so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface, overlaid with the varnish of polished manners and universal friendship. All the world interchanged visits; so that in the houses of quality it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted partly in groups, partly en masse at the close—a distinction which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy, is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy; "friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner, the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials; even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship," which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 2, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
On Roman Friendship in the last ages of the Republic.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life , Death , Friendship , War

“Avant-garde art has become habitual, a dead letter with little spiritual consequence, however materially refined.”

Donald Kuspit (1935) American art critic

"Reconsidering the Spiritual in Art" http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n1/gallery/kuspit_d/reconsidering_print.htm, Blackbird (2003).

Art , Dead

“How could Leonardo da Vinci not have painted? How could Shakespeare not have written? In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke tells a young writer to write only if he has to. We are to do what there is a deep psychological and emotional imperative for us to do. That’s our point of power, the source of our brilliance. Our power is not rationally or willfully called forth. It’s a divine dispensation, an act of grace.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power

Painting

“I read his awful name, emblazon'd high
With golden letters on th' illumin'd sky.”

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) English author

Poems (1773), "An Address to the Deity", p. 128.

Reading

“When the physicist speaks of the expanding universe with atheistic wonder, he is feeling the same transcendent pull that Rumi describes: Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript of a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Feeling , Universe

“During the war years, it was my privilege to associate on a number of occasions with prominent personalities, such as Senator Harry S Truman, for whom my battalion staged an artillery demonstration when he visited Fort Bragg in 1941. When I invited him to fire, he did so with confidence. Shaking my hand as he departed, he said that as an old artilleryman he recognized that the fire mission was uncomplicated and that, even so, he suspected the crews had helped him hit the target. "I enjoyed it anyway," he said. When I was in Vietnam, a then former President Truman wrote me a letter of encouragement.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 20.

War , Confidence , Help , Personality

“Robinson (1952) pointed out some limits to approaching map symbolization and design from a purely artistic viewpoint, as he suggested was the guiding perspective at the time. Maps, like buildings that are designed primarily for artistic impact, are often not functional… Robinson (1952) argued that treating maps as art can lead to "arbitrary and capricious" decisions. He saw only two alternatives: either standardize everything so that no confusion can result about the meaning of symbols, or study and analyze characteristics of perception as they apply to maps so that symbolization and design decisions can be based on "objective" rules… Robinson's dissertation, then, signaled the beginning of a more objective approach to map symbolization and design based on testing the effectiveness of alternatives, an approach that followed the positivist model of physical science. In his dissertation, Robinson cited several aspects of cartographic method for which he felt more objective guidelines were required (e. g., lettering, color, and map design). He also suggested that this objective look at cartographic methods should begin by considering the limitations of human perception. One goal he proposed was identification of the "least practical differences" in map symbols”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

e.g., the smallest difference in lettering size that would be noticeable to most readers
Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 2-3

Art , Color , Decision , Study

“You [ Katherine Sophie Dreier; director of the Art Center in New York City; she co-founded with Duchamp and Man Ray the 'Sociéte Anonyme' in Manhattan in 1920] must understand:
My attitude toward the book is based upon my attitude towards 'Art' since 1918 – so I am furious myself that you will accept only partly that attitude [in a new publication by Katherine Dreier]. It can be no more question of my life as an artist’s life: [because] I gave it up ten years ago; this period is long enough to prove that my intention to remain outside of any art manifestation is permanent... The third question is that I want to be alone as much as possible.
This abrupt way to speak of my 'hardening process' is not meant to be mean, but is the result of '42 years of age'....10 000 apologies for this rough letter and affectueusement
Dee”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from a letter to Katherine Sophie Dreier, Paris 11 September 1929; as cted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 158
Duchamp's quote is referring to a new publication of the 'Duchamp Book' and to his famous so-called Art-Silence.
1921 - 1950

Life , Books , Age , Art

“Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible. This competition is the major selective force in the memosphere, and, just as in the biosphere, the challenge has been met with great ingenuity. For instance, whatever virtues (from our perspective) the following memes have, they have in common the property of having phenotypic expressions that tend to make their own replication more likely by disabling or preempting the environmental forces that would tend to extinguish them: the meme for faith, which discourages the exercise of the sort of critical judgment that might decide that the idea of faith was, all things considered a dangerous idea; the meme for tolerance or free speech; the meme of including in a chain letter a warning about the terrible fates of those who have broken the chain in the past; the conspiracy theory meme, which has a built-in response to the objection that there is no good evidence of a conspiracy: "Of course not — that's how powerful the conspiracy is!" Some of these memes are "good" perhaps and others "bad"; what they have in common is a phenotypic effect that systematically tends to disable the selective forces arrayed against them. Other things being equal, population memetics predicts that conspiracy theory memes will persist quite independently of their truth, and the meme for faith is apt to secure its own survival, and that of the religious memes that ride piggyback on it, in even the most rationalistic environments. Indeed, the meme for faith exhibits frequency-dependent fitness: it flourishes best when it is outnumbered by rationalistic memes; in an environment with few skeptics, the meme for faith tends to fade from disuse.”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

Consciousness Explained (1991)

Fate , Truth , Faith , Exercises

“Sometimes girls write me. One girl in Yugoslavia sent me a whole slew of love letters. I don't know how she got my address. She was in a crowd watching me play. She says when I left there the stars fell out of the sky over Yugoslavia, or something like that.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

Love , Girl , Star

“This is a letter from God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting, unto God, the Almighty, the Best Beloved, to affirm that the Bayán and such as bear allegiance to it are but a present from me unto Thee and to express my undoubting faith that there is no God but Thee, that the kingdoms of Creation and Revelation are Thine, that no one can attain anything save by Thy power and that He Whom Thou hast raised up is but Thy servant and Thy Testimony.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Second Tablet to ‘Him Who Will Be Made Manifest’

God , Faith , Help

“Quote of Miró on a visit of Calder who brought with him the small mechanical circus made from wire: a letter by Miro, 17 March 1964 / Correspondence 61; as cited in Calder Miró, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 33”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

1961 and later

Quotes

“Some characteristic expressions he used rather frequently in everyday speech can be seen in letters in his own hand, in which he sometimes writes, when he wants to say that certain men will never pay: "they'll pay on the Greek Kalends." And when he wants to encourage his addressee to put up with present circumstances whatever they are, he says: "Let us be satisfied with the Cato we have."”
Cotidiano sermone quaedam frequentius et notabiliter usurpasse eum, litterae ipsius autographae ostentant, in quibus identidem, cum aliquos numquam soluturos significare vult, "ad Kalendas Graecas soluturos" ait; et cum hortatur ferenda esse praesentia, qualiacumque sint: "contenti simus hoc Catone".

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Augustus, Ch. 87

Men

“… Marx and Bakunin were engaged in a conflict in which it is hard to distinguish political from personal animosities. Marx did his best to persuade everybody that Bakunin was only using the International for his private ends, and in March 1870 he circulated a confidential letter to this effect. He also saw the hand of Bakunin (whom he never met after 1864) on every occasion when his own policies were opposed in the International. Bakunin, for his part, not only combated Marx’ s political programme but, as he often wrote, regarded Marx as a disloyal, revengeful man, obsessed with power and determined to impose his own despotic authority on the whole revolutionary movement. Marx, he said, had all the merits and defects of the Jewish character; he was highly intelligent and deeply read, but an inveterate doctrinaire and fantastically vain, an intriguer and morbidly envious of all who, like Lassalle, had cut a more important figure than himself in public life.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume I, The Founders, pp. 247-8

Life , Intelligence , Revenge , Reading

“Difficult as the course is, the dangers do not come from the difficulties; they come from extremists in India and at home. I will tell you what I mean. I am firmly convinced that such writings as appear in such papers as the Daily Mail will do more to lose India for the British Empire, will do more to cause a revolutionary spirit, than anything that can be done in any way by anyone else. I got many letters, I need hardly say, of all points of view. I had a very characteristic one last week… It was from a colonel; he was an old man, you could tell that by his writing; and he used this phrase: He said, "You and Lord Irwin are negrophiles." Perhaps he was a member of the United Empire party. That is not the way to cement the Empire. This sort of thing, and the spirit behind it, will break up our Empire infallibly, and that is what I am out to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1931/mar/12/india in the House of Commons (12 March 1931).
1931

Way , Home , Appearance , Fight

“In my heart there may be doubt that I deserve the Nobel award over other men of letters whom I hold in respect and reverence — but there is no question of my pleasure and pride in having it for myself.
It is customary for the recipient of this award to offer personal or scholarly comment on the nature and the direction of literature. At this particular time, however, I think it would be well to consider the high duties and the responsibilities of the makers of literature.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)

Men , Pleasure , Literature , Question

“Neither in deductive nor inductive reasoning can we add a tittle to our implicit knowledge, which is like that contained in an unread book or a sealed letter. …Reasoning explicates or brings to conscious possession what was before unconscious. It does not create, nor does it destroy, but it transmutes and throws the same matter into a new form.”

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician

Source: The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method (1874) Vol. 1, p. 136

Books , Knowledge

“A thousand newspapers vulgarise knowledge, debase aesthetical appreciation, democratise success and make impossible all that was once unusual and noble. The man of letters has become a panderer to the intellectual appetites of a mob or stands aloof in the narrowness of a coterie. There is plenty of brilliance everywhere, but one searches in vain for a firm foundation, the power or the solidity of knowledge. The select seek paradox in order to distinguish themselves from the herd; a perpetual reiteration of some startling novelty can alone please the crowd…. Of all literary forms the novel only has still some genius and even that is perishing of the modern curse of overproduction.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

March 26, 1910
India's Rebirth

Search , Knowledge , Success

“She ends her letter, characteristically, by picturing me and her other critics as indifferent to the suffering of women. But many feminists, including several who wrote or spoke to me about my review, regret her single-minded concentration on lurid sex. They think that though it has predictably attracted much publicity, it tends to stereotype women as victims, and takes attention from still urgent questions of economic, political, and professional equality.”

Ronald Dworkin (1931–2013) American legal philosopher

"Pornography: An Exchange" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2310, response by Ronald Dworkin to Catherine Mackinnon, New York Review of Books 41(5), March 3, 1994.

Women , Sex , Question , Thinking

“On the receipt of this letter, Hijaj obtained the consent of Wuleed, the son of Abdool Mullik, to invade India, for the purpose of propagating the faith and at the same time deputed a chief of the name of Budmeen, with three hundred cavalry, to join Haroon in Mikran, who was directed to reinforce the party with one thousand good soldiers more to attack Deebul. Budmeen failed in his expedition, and lost his life in the first action. Hijaj, not deterred by this defeat, resolved to follow up the enterprise by another. In consequence, in the year AH 93 (AD 711) he deputed his cousin and son-in-law, Imad-ood-Deen Mahomed Kasim, the son of Akil Shukhfy, then only seventeen years of age, with six thousand soldiers, chiefly Assyrians, with the necessary implements for taking forts, to attack Deebul…“On reaching this place, he made preparations to besiege it, but the approach was covered by a fortified temple, surrounded by strong wall, built of hewn stone and mortar, one hundred and twenty feet in height. After some time a bramin, belonging to the temple, being taken, and brought before Kasim, stated, that four thousand Rajpoots defended the place, in which were from two to three thousand bramins, with shorn heads, and that all his efforts would be vain; for the standard of the temple was sacred; and while it remained entire no profane foot dared to step beyond the threshold of the holy edifice. Mahomed Kasim having caused the catapults to be directed against the magic flag-staff, succeeded, on the third discharge, in striking the standard, and broke it down… Mahomed Kasim levelled the temple and its walls with the ground and circumcised the brahmins. The infidels highly resented this treatment, by invectives against him and the true faith. On which Mahomed Kasim caused every brahmin, from the age of seventeen and upwards, to be put to death; the young women and children of both sexes were retained in bondage and the old women being released, were permitted to go whithersoever they chose.”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Muhammad bin Qãsim (AD 712-715)Debal (Sindh)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Life , Death , Women , Children

“After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

On the journal of Franz Kafka; diary entry (7 June 1953); Past Tense: Diaries Vol. 2 (1988)

Death , Reading

“By the letter that will accompany this, and was to have gone last night by Major Mifflin, your Excellency will see what measures I took before your favor came to hand. The passing of the ships up the river is, to be sure, a full proof of the insufficiency of the obstructions in the river to stop the ships from going up; but that garrison employs double the number of men to invest it that we have to occupy it. They must keep troops at King's Bridge, to prevent a communication with the country; and they dare not leave a very small number, for fear our people should attack them.”

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

Letter to George Washington (9 October 1776)

Men , People , Fear , Communication

“Your letter became before I was up this morning – Yes nice to get. I recognize two of the drawings you speak of – Number one is the first of the dozen or more you speak of – number 2 came next The last – It didn't quite satisfy me so I tried again – the last one was so much worse than the one you like that I thought I had just about worn the idea out so quit... You ask me what I did with the rest of myself when I made number 2 -... I sat up almost all night one night this week and made the most infernally ugly little shape you ever saw – I wanted to break it when I got through – but didn't then next afternoon when I had time to look at it, it amused me so that I didn't – really its laughable – it's so ugly – and still some way it's quite beautiful – I don't know – I may break it up – or I may try to cast it just for fun – I have another idea that I'm in an awful stew to model – I am going to get a lot of patience so I can make all the little do-dangles I want to and won't have to break one up so I can make another – I want to make a big one..”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, (September, 1916), p. 198
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Beauty , Way , Idea , Time

“There, where the cross in hoary ruin nods,
And weeping yews o'ershade the lettered stones,
While midnight silence wraps these dark abodes,
And soothes me wand'ring o'er my kindred bones,
Let kindled fancy view the glorious morn,
When from the bursting graves the dust shall rise,
All nature smiling, and, by angels borne,
Messiah's cross, far blazing o'er the skies.”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

Pollio: an Elegy (written 1762; published 1765)

Smile , Angels , Nature , Silence

“Tommy: I just wanna see more of you!
Storm: Tommy?
Tommy: Yes?
Storm: 6 Letters. Google.”

Storm Large (1969) actor, singer

'Just What I Needed' RS:SN Performance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAqJCjbI4U8 July 18, 2006

“Moments later he punched her unconscious. [Pause] No, he didn't, don't send us letters”

Eddie Mair (1965) Scottish broadcaster

Concluding an item in which a reporter asked random people on the street if throwing buckets of water at people was offensive, and whether he could do so[citation needed]
From PM and Broadcasting House

“But we all do sort of the same thing and that is rearrange what you thought was real, and, uh, they remind you of the beauty of very simple things. You forget, because you're so busy going from A to Z, that there's, uh, 24 letters in between.”

Grace Slick (1939) American musician, writer and painter

Interview on the History Channel documentary Getting High - The History of LSD, 2001; sampled on Drop Out by Infected Mushroom

Beauty , Business , Forgetting

“I already see things backwards! You see, in printmaking everything comes out backwards so printing is an absolute natural for me. It is difficult for a lot of artists to do prints because they draw one way and can’t imagine it the other way. I always had trouble reading as a child. Every few minutes my mind would shift and I would pick out all the o's, than all the letter a's on a page.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 21st Century, Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, 2006, p. 28

Way , Imagination , Nature , Reading

“The evolution of life is analogous to the evolution of language. For example, there are several languages based on the Roman alphabet of only 26 letters. Yet by arranging these in different orders, we’ve added several hundred thousand words to English since the 5th century, and many of them were completely new. The principle is the same in genetics. There are millions of named and classified species of life, all of them based on a variable arrangement of only four chemical components. For another example, we know that Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese all evolved from Latin, a vernacular which is now extinct. Each of these newer tongues emerged via a slow accumulation of their own unique slang lingo –thus diverging into new dialects, and eventually distinct forms of gibberish such that the new Romans could no longer communicate with either Parisians or Spaniards. Similarly, if we took an original Latin speaking population and divided them sequestered in complete isolation over several centuries, they might still be able to understand each other, or their jargon may have become unintelligible to foreigners. But they won’t start speaking Italian or Romanian because identical vocabularies aren’t going to occur twice.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"8th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU-7d06HJSs, Youtube (March 22, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Life , Communication , Understanding