Quotes about read
page 43
Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 35
Memoirs of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Priestly (1809), p. 41
as interviewed by Elias Isquith, salon.com http://www.salon.com/2015/06/04/we_are_in_a_revolutionary_moment_chris_hedges_explains_why_an_uprising_is_coming_%E2%80%94_and_soon/
Introduction of Pop Internationalism (1996)
Pop Internationalism (1996)
Quote from Duchamp's letter to Jean Mayoux (a Surrealist artist), New York, 8 March 1956; as cited in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 169
1951 - 1968
Source: A Case of Conscience (1958), Chapter 14 (p. 171)
John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)
From the Chronicle for Higher Education, The Chronicle Review, "A Complex God" September 28, 2001 The Chronicle Review Page: B6
Answering the question "What led you to stake out the noir Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner genre?", in "My Lunch with Warren Zevon" by David Bowman,Salon.com (17 March 2000)
Jewish Chronicle interview http://thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m14s150&AId=57994&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=murray%20perahia&srchtxt=1&srchhead=1&srchauthor=1&srchsandp=1&scsrch=999 (8 February 2008)
“Sometimes providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 280.
Source: The Theatre and Its Double (1938, translated 1958), Ch. 6
John Leguizamo Talks About "Assault on Precinct 13", January 16, 2005.
than the Holocaust."
Speech at AIPAC Policy Conference in March 2012 http://www.aipac.org/pc/videos/2012/monday-gala-plenary/prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu
2010s, 2012
“I had no distance or detachment from what I read: it seemed too real to me, too possible.”
Apocalypse Descending (2002)
Context: I was about ten when I first read 1984 and Lord of the Flies, both of which absolutely terrified me — especially 1984, because I figured out that Julia, Winston Smith's lover, would have been born the same year I was. I knew these books were fiction, but I was far too young to have a grasp on the political or cultural realities behind them — I had no distance or detachment from what I read: it seemed too real to me, too possible.
PENN Address (2004)
Context: It's not everywhere in fashion these days, Americanism. Not very big in Europe, truth be told. No less on Ivy League college campuses. But it all depends on your definition of Americanism.
Me, I'm in love with this country called America. I'm a huge fan of America, I'm one of those annoying fans, you know the ones that read the CD notes and follow you into bathrooms and ask you all kinds of annoying questions about why you didn't live up to that...
I'm that kind of fan. I read the Declaration of Independence and I've read the Constitution of the United States, and they are some liner notes, dude. As I said yesterday I made my pilgrimage to Independence Hall, and I love America because America is not just a country, it's an idea.
“All reading, in truth, is reading in a content area.”
Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: All reading, in truth, is reading in a content area. To read the phrase "the law of diminishing returns" or "the law of supply and demand" requires that you know how the word "law" is used in economics, for it does not mean what it does in the phrase "the law of inertia" (physics) or "Grimm's law" (linguistics) or "the law of the land" (political science) or "the law of survival of the fittest" (biology). To the question, "What does 'law' mean?" the answer must always be, "In what context?"
“Truly fine poetry must be read aloud.”
"The Divine Comedy" (1977)
Context: Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.
talking about http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/30792-daniel-abraham/page__st__60 his epic fantasy series The Dagger and the Coin
Context: For the moment, it's called the Dagger and the Coin, but with any luck, that'll swap out for a better name. There are some things in the proposal that need to get smoothed out so that everyone's on board, but I think it'll happen.
It's a very different from the Long Price books. It looks and feels more like traditional epic fantasy -- quasi-Europe, ferinstance, and some dragons in the background, no 15-year gaps between books -- but the plot structure is packed with everything I think is cool. There are echoes I'm intentionally building in of from things as familiar as Firefly and The Count of Monte Cristo and as obscure as Tevis' Queen's Gambit and Reck-Malleczewen's Diary of a Man in Despair. And the magic system is all about faith and deception, which will be tricky and fun both.
What I want to do is write something that I could read now (39 years old, married, raising a kid, 10 year IT career behind me, post 9-11, post-Bush, etc.) with the same joy I read the Belgariad when I was 16.
“If you read the Constitution, its protections are not limited to Americans.”
Judge Napolitano on Hannity and Colmes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bejmEG_t9mI, discussing the Supreme Court rulings on the scope of the protections in the Constitution.
Context: The Constitution applies to persons, not just citizens. If you read the Constitution, its protections are not limited to Americans. And that was written intentionally, because at the time it was written, they didn't know what Native Americans would be. When the post civil war amendments were added, they didn't know how blacks would be considered, because they had a decision of the Supreme Court called Dred Scott, that said blacks are not persons. So in order to make sure the Constitution protected every human being: American, alien; citizen, non-citizen; lawful combatant, enemy combatant; innocent, guilty; those who wish us well, those who wish us ill... they use the broadest possible language, to make it clear: Wherever the government goes, the Constitution goes, and wherever the Constitution goes, the protections that it guarantees restrain the government and requires it to protect those rights.
Letter to Thomas Poole (16 October 1797).
Letters
Context: From my early reading of Faery Tales, & Genii &c &c — my mind had been habituated to the Vast — & I never regarded my senses in any way as the criteria of my belief. I regulated all my creeds by my conceptions not by my sight — even at that age. Should children be permitted to read Romances, & Relations of Giants & Magicians, & Genii? — I know all that has been said against it; but I have formed my faith in the affirmative. — I know no other way of giving the mind a love of "the Great," & "the Whole." — Those who have been led by the same truths step by step thro' the constant testimony of their senses, seem to me to want a sense which I possess — They contemplate nothing but parts — and are parts are necessarily little — and the Universe to them is but a mass of little things. It is true, the mind may become credulous and prone to superstition by the former method; — but are not the experimentalists credulous even to madness in believing any absurdity, rather than believe the grandest truths, if they have not the testimony of their own senses in their favor? I have known some who have been rationally educated, as it is styled. They were marked by a microscopic acuteness; but when they looked at great things, all became a blank, and they saw nothing, and denied that any thing could be seen, and uniformly put the negative of a power for the possession of a power, and called the want of imagination judgment, and the never being moved to rapture philosophy.
A Battle For Life (July 1958)
Context: Later the assistant chief surgeon told people that he had been a surgeon for eleven years, had seen not a few patients die and consequently had become quite cold and indifferent. He was interested only in diseases as such and had no feelings for his patients as people. But what Chiu Tsai-kang had said impressed him deeply. Even after he left the patient's room he thought it over for quite a long while. Here was a man awaiting death who had to clench his teeth to endure the searing pain of his whole body, but who constantly had the nation's steel production on his mind and who wholeheartedly desired to return to his furnace. In the past, he had read of people with such public spirit and unselfish character only in novels. He had regarded them as nothing but ideal, imaginary creations of literary writers. Now he has seen such a hero in the flesh with his own eyes.
Period I To the Revival of Letters in Erope
The History and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision, Light, and Colours (1772)
Context: In his Opus Majus he demonstrates, that if a transparent body, interposed between the eye and an object, be convex towards the eye, the object will appear magnified. This observation our author certainly had from Alhazen... this writer [Bacon] gives us figures, representing the progress of rays of light through his spherical segment, as well as endeavours to give reasons why objects are magnified... From the writings of Alhazen and these observations and experiments of Bacon together, it is not improbable that some monks gradually hit upon the construction of spectacles, to which Bacon's lesser segment, not withstanding his mistake concerning it, was a nearer approach than Alhazen's... Whoever they were that pursued the discoveries of Bacon, they probably observed, that a very small convex glass, when held at a greater distance from a book, would magnify the letters more than when it was placed close to them, in which position only Bacon seemed to have used it. In the next place, they might try whether two of these small segments of a sphere placed together, or a glass convex on both sides, would not magnify more than one of them. They would then find, that two of these glasses, one for each eye, would answer the purpose of reading better than one; and lastly they might find, that different degrees of convexity, suited different persons. It is certain that spectacles were well known in the 13th century, and not long before.... It would certainly have been a great satisfaction to us to have been able to trace the actual steps in the progress of this most useful invention, without which most persons who have a taste for reading must have had the melancholy prospect of passing a very dull and joyless old age; and must have been deprived of the pleasure of entertaining themselves by conversing with the absent and the dead, when they were no longer capable of acting their part among the living. Telescopes and microscopes are to be numbered among the superfluities of life when compared to spectacles, which may now be ranked almost among the necessities of it; since the arts of reading and writing are almost universal.
1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)
Context: The American people in the Northern States have helped to enslave the black people. Their duty will not have been done till they give them back their plundered rights. Reference was made at the City Hall to my having once held other opinions, and very different opinions to those I have now expressed. An old speech of mine delivered fourteen years ago was read to show — I know not what. Perhaps it was to show that I am not infallible. If so, I have to say in defense, that I never pretended to be.
“You can read out of it whatever else pleases your youth and confidence; to me, this is all.”
The closing lines of the book. In a letter to William James (17 February 1908), Adams wrote with customary self-deprecation: "If you will read my Chartres,— the last chapter is the only thing I ever wrote that I almost think good." (J. C. Levinson et al. eds., The Letters of Henry Adams, Volume VI: 1906–1918. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1988, p. 121)
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: p>Granted a Church, Saint Thomas's Church was the most expressive that man has made, and the great gothic Cathedrals were its most complete expression.Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of all the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the gothic Cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards of the flying buttress,— the visible effort to throw off a visible strain,— never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. The equilibrium is visibly delicate beyond the line of safety; danger lurks in every stone. The peril of the heavy tower, of the restless vault, of the vagrant buttress; the uncertainty of logic, the inequalities of the syllogism, the irregularities of the mental mirror,— all these haunting nightmares of the Church are expressed as strongly by the gothic Cathedral as though it had been the cry of human suffering, and as no emotion had ever been expressed before or is likely to find expression again. The delight of its aspirations is flung up to the sky. The pathos of its self-distrust and anguish of doubt, is buried in the earth as its last secret. You can read out of it whatever else pleases your youth and confidence; to me, this is all.</p
"The Magic of Science" in Imperial Oil Review (Spring, 1994) http://sites.utoronto.ca/jpolanyi/public_affairs/public_affairs4f.html.
Context: It is not the laws of physics that make science possible but the unprovable proposition that there exists a grand design underlying the physical world. And not just any old "grand design" but one that is accessible to the limited senses and modest reasoning powers of the species to which we belong. Scientists subscribe with such conviction to this article of faith that they are willing to commit a lifetime to the pursuit of scientific discovery. It is hardly surprising that an activity so magical is also undefinable. Science is what scientists do. And what they do is look around themselves for messages written in the sky, the earth, the oceans and all living things – messages that tell of the unity of creation. These messages have been there – unseen, though at times written in letters miles high – since the dawn of history. But we have just passed through an epoch in which, quite suddenly, scientists seem to have learnt speed reading. Discoveries have been coming at an unprecedented pace. In the wake of such a period it is common to consider that we may be approaching the point where all that is readable in nature will have been read. We should be skeptical of such claims. Success in reading some messages brings with it a temporary blindness to others. We forget that between the words written in black in nature's book there are likely to be messages of equal importance written in white. It is a truism that success in science comes to the individuals who ask the right questions.
I love the story of Hanuman. For many years, it remained in my very blood because he’s someone who loves too much and can’t help it. I don’t know where I first heard of him, but the story remained with me and I knew it would come out of me somehow or other. But I didn’t know what shape it would take.
The Paris Review interview (1982)
The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929–1940 (2009), p. 362
Context: I think the next little bit of excitement is flying. I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.
Introduction to "Alma"
That Was the Year That Was (1965)
Context: Last December 13th, there appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read.
It was that of a lady named Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, who had, in her lifetime, managed to acquire as lovers practically all of the top creative men in central Europe. And, among these lovers, who were listed in the obituary, by the way, which is what made it so interesting, there were three whom she went so far as to marry: One of the leading composers of the day, Gustav Mahler, composer of "Das Lied von der Erde" and other light classics, one of the leading architects, Walter Gropius, of the "Bauhaus" school of design, and one of the leading writers, Franz Werfel, author of the "Song of Bernadette" and other masterpieces.
It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
"Garrison Keillor: God help us. We’re in trouble down here." in The Washington Post (26 July 2016)
Context: We made our mistakes back in the 20th century, Lord knows, but we never nominated a man for president who brags about not reading. Calvin Coolidge had his limits. Warren G. Harding spent more time on his hair than strictly necessary. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a piece of work. But all of them read books. When I envision a Trump Presidential Library, I see enormous chandeliers and gold carpet and a thousand slot machines. God help us. I mean it. We’re in trouble down here.
“I read a lot of books that are, for lack of a better word, cross-cultural.”
Academy of Achievement interview (2006)
Context: I read a lot of books that are, for lack of a better word, cross-cultural. I find movies and books that take me — transport me to another culture are the things that I'm most interested in, and always have been.
A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, First Part.
First Part of Narrative
“It’s fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it.”
Salon interview (1996)
Context: It’s fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it. One of the things any great children’s writer will tell you is that children like it if in books designed for their age group there is a vocabulary just slightly bigger than theirs. So they come up against weird words, and the weird words excite them. If you describe a small girl in a story as “loquacious,” it works so much better than “talkative.” And then some little girl will read the book and her sister will be shooting her mouth off and she will say to her sister, “Don't be so loquacious.” It is a whole new weapon in her arsenal.
“I know that to be a true fact because I read it in Heat magazine”
Tinselworm (2008)
Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: It may come as a surprise to our technocrat philosophers, but people do not read, write, speak, or listen primarily for the purpose of achieving a test score. They use language in order to conduct their lives, and to control their lives, and to understand their lives. An improvement in one's language abilities is therefore... observed in changes in one's purposes, perceptions, and evaluations. Language education... may achieve what George Bernard Shaw asserted is the function of art. "Art," he said in Quintessence of Ibsenismn, "should refine our sense of character and conduct, of justice and sympathy, greatly heightening our self knowledge, self-control, precision of action and considerateness, and making us intolerant of baseness, cruelty, injustice, and intellectual superficialty and vulgarity." …For my purposes, if you replace the word "art" with the phrase "language education," you will have a precise statement of what I have been trying to say.
The Flower; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“It goes to countries where women can work, children can read, and entrepreneurs can dream.”
As quoted by Ambassador Cameron R. Hume in a speech on U.S. Government Initiatives in South Africa http://pretoria.usembassy.gov/wwwhambhume020918.html at the American Chamber of Commerce, Johannesburg, South Africa (18 September 2002).
2000s
Context: Capital is a coward. It flees from corruption and bad policies, conflict and unpredictability. It shuns ignorance, disease and illiteracy. Capital goes where it is welcomed and where investors can be confident of a return on the resources they have put at risk. It goes to countries where women can work, children can read, and entrepreneurs can dream.
Englische Studien, Volume 19 https://archive.org/stream/englischestudien19leipuoft#page/157/mode/1up (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 157-158.
Introduction.
The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (1985)
Context: Have you never read the manifesto of the Marchbanks Humanist Party? How does it begin?
The more taboos and prohibitions there are in the world
The poorer the people will be.
The more sharp weapons the people have
The more troubled the state will be.
The more cunning and skill man possesses
The more vicious things will appear.
The more laws and orders are made prominent
The more thieves and robbers there will be.
And who wrote that, do you suppose?" "You, I imagine." "No, you don't imagine. That's what's wrong with you, and your kind; you don't, and can't imagine. Those words were written by the Chinese sage Lao Tzu in the sixth century BC.
"Intense Ornate" interview with Amazon.co.uk (1999) http://www.elizabethhand.com/interview99.shtml
Context: So much fantasy relies on the author's having read Fraser's The Golden Bough or Robert Graves' The White Goddess and nothing else. The White Goddess is a crank book, a crank book of genius of course, but all the same... Mind you, I found Waking the Moon cited in an article in a pagan magazine as an authority for the idea that there was a patriarchal brotherhood, the Benandanti, that have been running things since antiquity, with no mention of the fact that it is a novel, and a fantasy at that. People want to believe something, and so they swallow anything.
Rescue (1945)
Context: Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died. But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.
Introduction
The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962])
Context: The customs of both the Greeks and Hebrews in that heroic age were often alien to their respective descendants in the classical periods. We shall have to bear in mind that the gulf separating classical Israel (of the great Prophets) from classical Greece (of the scientists and philosophers) must not be read back into the heroic age when both peoples formed part of the same international complex.
“We are taught to read but not trained to think”
Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
Context: Democracy has become confused with ignorance, lack of discipline, and low tastes … Though educational facilities are within the reach of large numbers, the level of culture is not high. It has become more easy to get into a college and more difficult to get educated. We are taught to read but not trained to think … Those who know better are afraid to speak out but keep step with the average mind. Uncivilized mass-impulses, crowd emotions and class-resentments have taken the place of authority and tradition.
A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, Second Part.
Second Part of Narrative
Lyra's Oxford (2003)
Context: All these tattered old bits and pieces have a history and a meaning. A group of them together can seem like the traces left by an ionizing particle in a bubble chamber: they draw the line of a path taken by something too mysterious to see. That path is a story, of course. What scientists do when they look at the line of bubbles on the screen is work out the story of the particle that made them: what sort of particle it must have been, and what caused it to move in that way, and how long it was likely to continue.
Dr. Mary Malone would have been familiar with that sort of story in the course of her search for dark matter. But it might not have occurred to her, for example, when she sent a postcard to an old friend shortly after arriving in Oxford for the first time, that that card itself would trace part of a story that hadn't yet happened when she wrote it. Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don't understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are. There are many things we haven't yet learned how to read.
The story in this book is partly about that very process.
The Vorkosigan Companion (2008)
Context: Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the secret mind.
"'A Conversation With Lois McMaster Bujold", an interview with Lillian Stewart Carl, p. 52
“Why read the crystal when he can read the book?”
Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 468, col. 319.
Speech in the House of Commons, 29 September 1949.
1940s
Context: It has been suggested, I think by the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) that the most constructive suggestion he could make was to urge an early General Election and a return of a Tory Government in Britain. Why on earth should he want to prophesy what might result from a Tory Government when history has the record for him? Why read the crystal when he can read the book?
“If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.”
Book II, ch. 18.
Discourses
This is one of the earliest known uses of the term "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" which is often attributed to Mark Twain, who in his Autobiography (1924) in a passage probably written in Florence in 1904, attributes it to Benjamin Disraeli, perhaps because he thought him "The Wise Statesman" Courtney referred to. An even earlier incident has recently been located, in which Mrs Andrew Crosse (Cornelia Augusta Hewitt Crosse) states in "Old Memories Interviewed" (1892):
To My Fellow-Disciples at Saratoga Springs (1895)
Context: What a jolly awakening there will be some few years hence, when the inevitable argument of experience will show us a nation contradicting itself through the voices of its chosen representatives! The stupidest politician will sit up, rubbing his eyes. After all, facts are facts, and although we may quote one to another with a chuckle the words of the Wise Statesman, "Lies — damned lies — and statistics," still there are some easy figures the simplest must understand, and the astutest cannot wriggle out of. So we may be led to the serious consideration of change by the evolution of materials of conviction which those who run may read, though some who read may wish to run away from them.
“There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.”
"Ars Poetica?"
Context: There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics. And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
"Introduction" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/1.htm
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)
Context: Any writer, reading over the typescript of a book for the last time before sending it off to the publisher, must wonder what all the effort was for. An autobiography is specially in need of justification to its author. It is a work of self-justification which itself needs justifying. Why have I written this book? Why have I written it the way I have? What does it mean to me? What do I hope it will mean to others?
Each human being has at the final core of self a crystal from which the whole manifold of the personality develops, a secret molecular lattice which governs the unfolding of all the structures of the individuality, in time, in space, in memory, in action and contemplation. Asleep there were just these dreams and no others. Awake there were these actions only. Only these deeds came into being.
Introduction of Doubts about Galen, as quoted in Bashar Saad, Omar Said, Greco-Arab and Islamic Herbal Medicine: Traditional System, Ethics, Safety, Efficacy, and Regulatory Issues, John Wiley & Sons, 2011. , page https://books.google.com/books?id=-WQVF8nhKf4C&pg=PT33
Context: I prayed to God to direct and lead me to the truth in writing this book. It grieves me to oppose and criticize the man Galen from whose sea of knowledge I have drawn much. Indeed, he is the Master and I am the disciple. Although this reverence and appreciation will and should not prevent me from doubting, as I did, what is erroneous in his theories. I imagine and feel deeply in my heart that Galen has chosen me to undertake this task, and if he were alive, he would have congratulated me on what I am doing. I say this because Galen's aim was to seek and find the truth and bring light out of darkness. I wish indeed he were alive to read what I have published.
“I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 10 "Child Training"
The last line here has sometimes been misquoted as "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure." It has also been attributed to, among others, Mark Twain and Winston Churchill. The misquoted version also frequently begins, "I've never wished a man dead..." or "I never wanted to see anybody die..."
Context: Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.
Writ of expulsion from the Jewish community, as translated in Benedict de Spinoza : His Life, Correspondence, and Ethics (1870) by Robert Willis
Context: With the judgment of the angels and the sentence of the saints, we anathematize, execrate, curse and cast out Baruch de Espinoza, the whole of the sacred community assenting, in presence of the sacred books with the six-hundred-and-thirteen precepts written therein, pronouncing against him the malediction wherewith Elisha cursed the children, and all the maledictions written in the Book of the Law. Let him be accursed by day, and accursed by night; let him be accursed in his lying down, and accursed in his rising up; accursed in going out and accursed in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowledge him; may the wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn henceforth against this man, load him with all the curses written in the Book of the Law, and blot out his name from under the sky; may the Lord sever him from all the tribes of Israel, weight him with all the maledictions of the firmament contained in the Book of Law; and may all ye who are obedient to the Lord your God be saved this day.
Hereby then are all admonished that none hold converse with him by word of mouth, none hold communication with him by writing; that no one do him any service, no one abide under the same roof with him, no one approach within four cubits' length of him, and no one read any document dictated by him, or written by his hand.
Letter to his father-in-law, the Duc d'Ayan (4 December 1776), as quoted in George Washington's Generals and Opponents: Their Exploits and Leadership (1994) by George Athan Billias, p. 219
Context: I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can. I shall not speak much for fear of saying foolish things; I will risk still less for fear of doing them, for I am not disposed to abuse the confidence which they have deigned to show me. Such is the conduct which until now I have followed and will follow.
¶ 129 - 130.
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761)
Context: What is the difference between man's own righteousness and man's own light in religion? They are strictly the same thing, do one and the same work, namely, keep up and strengthen every evil, vanity, and corruption of fallen nature. Nothing saves a man from his own righteousness, but that which saves and delivers him from his own light. The Jew that was most of all set against the gospel, and unable to receive it was he that trusted in his own righteousness; this was the rich man, to whom it was as hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. But the Christian, that trusts in his own light, is the very Jew that trusted in his own righteousness; and all that he gets by the gospel, is only that which the Pharisee got by the Law, namely, to be further from entering into the kingdom of God than publicans and harlots. … Nothing but God in man can be a godly life in man. Hence is that of the apostle, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." But you will say, can this be true of the spiritual divine letter of the gospel? Can it kill, or give death? Yes, it kills, when it is rested in; when it is taken for divine power, and supposed to have goodness in itself; for then it kills the Spirit of God in man, quenches his holy fire within us, and is set up instead of it. It gives death, when it is built into systems of strife and contention about words, notions, and opinions, and makes the kingdom of God to consist, not in power, but in words. When it is thus used, then of necessity it kills, because it keeps from that which alone is life and can give life. … All the Law, the prophets, and the gospel are fulfilled, when there is in Christ a new creature, having life in and from him, as really as the branch has its life in and from the vine. And when all scripture is thus understood, and all that either Christ says of himself, or his apostles say of him, are all heard, or read, only as one and the same call to come to Christ, in hunger and thirst to be filled and blessed with his divine nature made living within us; then, and then only, the letter kills not, but as a sure guide leads directly to life. But grammar, logic, and criticism knowing nothing of scripture but its words, bring forth nothing but their own wisdom of words, and a religion of wrangle, hatred, and contention, about the meaning of them.
But lamentable as this is, the letter of scripture has been so long the usurped province of school-critics, and learned reasoners making their markets of it, that the difference between literal, notional, and living divine knowledge, is almost quite lost in the Christian world. So that if any awakened souls are here or there found among Christians, who think that more must be known of God, of Christ, and the powers of the world to come, than every scholar can know by reading the letter of scripture, immediately the cry of enthusiasm, whether they be priests, or people, is sent after them. A procedure, which could only have some excuse, if these critics could first prove, that the apostle's text ought to be thus read, "The spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life."
“Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men”
2 Corinthians 3:1-16 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+3&version=KJV;SBLGNT
Second Epistle to the Corinthians
Context: Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?
Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech: And not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished: But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
Autobiography (1873)
Context: Mere newspaper articles on the occurrences or questions of the moment, gave no opportunity for the development of any general mode of thought; but I attempted, in the beginning of 1831, to embody in a series of articles, headed "The Spirit of the Age," some of my new opinions, and especially to point out in the character of the present age, the anomalies and evils characteristic of the transition from a system of opinions which had worn out, to another only in process of being formed. These articles were, I fancy, lumbering in style, and not lively or striking enough to be at any time, acceptable to newspaper readers; but had they been far more attractive, still, at that particular moment, when great political changes were impending, and engrossing all minds, these discussions were ill-timed, and missed fire altogether. The only effect which I know to have been produced by them, was that Carlyle, then living in a secluded part of Scotland, read them in his solitude, and saying to himself (as he afterwards told me) "here is a new Mystic," inquired on coming to London that autumn respecting their authorship; an inquiry which was the immediate cause of our becoming personally acquainted.
Vol. VI, p 5, "First Talk in Rajahmundry (20 November 1949) http://www.jkrishnamurti.com/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=335&chid=4655&w=%22You+cannot+find+truth+through+anybody+else%22, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 491120
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: You cannot find truth through anybody else. How can you? Surely, truth is not something static; it has no fixed abode; it is not an end, a goal. On the contrary, it is living, dynamic, alert, alive. How can it be an end? If truth is a fixed point, it is no longer truth; it is then a mere opinion. Sir, truth is the unknown, and a mind that is seeking truth will never find it. For mind is made up of the known; it is the result of the past, the outcome of time — which you can observe for yourself. Mind is the instrument of the known; hence it cannot find the unknown; it can only move from the known to the known. When the mind seeks truth, the truth it has read about in books, that "truth" is self-projected, for then the mind is merely in pursuit of the known, a more satisfactory known than the previous one. When the mind seeks truth, it is seeking its own self-projection, not truth. After all, an ideal is self-projected; it is fictitious, unreal. What is real is what is, not the opposite. But a mind that is seeking reality, seeking God, is seeking the known. When you think of God, your God is the projection of your own thought, the result of social influences. You can think only of the known; you cannot think of the unknown, you cannot concentrate on truth. The moment you think of the unknown, it is merely the self-projected known. So, God or truth cannot be thought about. If you think about it, it is not truth. Truth cannot be sought; it comes to you. You can go after only what is known. When the mind is not tortured by the known, by the effects of the known, then only can truth reveal itself. Truth is in every leaf, every tear; it is to be known from moment to moment. No one can lead you to truth; and if anyone leads you, it can only be to the known.
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time
Context: In literature you don't just read one poem or novel after another, but enter into a complete world of which every work of literature forms part. This affects the writer as much as it does the reader.
Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 11
Context: How much of what we do is free will, and how much is programmed in our genes? Why is each people so narrow that it believes that it, and it alone, has all the answers?
In religion, is there but one road to salvation? Or are there many, all equally good, all going in the same general direction?
I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.
"Bear Meat" in The New Yorker (8 January 2007) http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2007/01/08/070108fi_fiction_levi?currentPage=all
Context: I read somewhere — and the person who wrote this was not a mountaineer but a sailor — that the sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong. Now, I don’t know much about the sea, but I do know that that’s the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head.
“All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.”
II.3.7
The First Ennead (c. 250)
The Other World (1657)
Context: When I opened a box, I found inside something made of metal, somewhat like our clocks, full of an endless number of little springs and tiny machines. It was indeed a book, but it was a miraculous one that had no pages or printed letters. It was a book to be read not with eyes but with ears. When anyone wants to read, he winds up the machine with a large number of keys of all kinds. Then he turns the indicator to the chapter he wants to listen to. As though from the mouth of a person or a musical instrument come all the distinct and different sounds that the upper-class Moon-beings use in their language.
When I thought about this marvelous way of making books, I was no longer surprised that the young people of that country know more at the age of sixteen or eighteen than the greybeards of our world. They can read as soon as they can talk and are never at a loss for reading material. In their rooms, on walks, in town, during voyages, on foot or on horseback, they can have thirty books in their pockets or hanging on the pommels of their saddles. They need only wind a spring to hear one or more chapters or a whole book, if they wish. Thus you always have with you all the great men, both living and dead, who speak to you in their own voices.
17 April 1823.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Context: Kean is original; but he copies from himself. His rapid descents from the hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial, though sometimes productive of great effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning. I do not think him thorough-bred gentleman enough to play Othello.
"Ed Gorman Calling: We Talk to Richard Matheson" http://www.mysteryfile.com/Matheson/Interview.html (2004).
"Off the Page: Martin Amis" (2003)
Context: I once wrote, in The Information, that an Englishman wouldn't bother to attend a reading even if the author in question was his favorite living writer, and also his long-lost brother — even if the reading was taking place next door. Whereas Americans go out and do things. But Meeting the Author, for me, is Meeting the Reader. Some of the little exchanges that take place over the signing table I find very fortifying: they make up for some of the other stuff you get.
“I know that all this is dull reading, tiresome, perhaps tedious, but it is all necessary.”
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss
Context: I know that all this is dull reading, tiresome, perhaps tedious, but it is all necessary. And I must repeat once again that we have nothing to do with a transcendental police system or with the conversion of God into a great Judge or Policeman — that is to say, we are not concerned with heaven or hell considered as buttresses to shore up our poor earthly mortality, nor are we concerned with anything egoistic or personal. It is not I myself alone, it is the whole human race that is involved, it is the ultimate finality of all our civilization. I am but one, but all men are I's.
A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, First Part.
First Part of Narrative
Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible
… Acts of rebellion formerly regarded as manifestation of mere bestiality are now condoned as pathological outbursts; the possibility that such acts are the intentional projects of conscious men who are at once both demanding and expressing freedom is beyond the pale of conception. Thus are men robbed not only of their freedom but also of their dignity as creative human beings.
Source: Forced to be Free (1971), p. 68
Preface to Collected Poems (1913)
Context: When I first discovered for myself how near was the King in His beauty I thought I would be the singer of the happiest songs. Forgive me, Spirit of my spirit, for this, that I have found it easier to read the mystery told in tears and understood Thee better in sorrow than in joy; that, though I would not, I have made the way seem thorny, and have wandered in too many byways, imagining myself into moods which held Thee not. I should have parted the true from the false, but I have not yet passed away from myself who am in the words of this book. Time is a swift winnower, and that he will do quickly for me.
“I ask no one who may read this book to accept my views. I ask him to think for himself.”
Source: Social Problems (1883), Ch. 21 : Conclusion
Context: I ask no one who may read this book to accept my views. I ask him to think for himself.
Whoever, laying aside prejudice and self-interest, will honestly and carefully make up his own mind as to the causes and the cure of the social evils that are so apparent, does, in that, the most important thing in his power toward their removal. This primary obligation devolves upon us individually, as citizens and as men. Whatever else we may be able to do, this must come first. For "if the blind lead the blind, they both shall fall into the ditch."
Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow. Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, Fourth Part.
Fourth Part of Narrative
Letter to Samuel "Sam" Chapman (June 1907)
Context: I suppose you are now back in Staunton. I wrote you about my disgust at reading the Reunion speeches. It has since been increased by reading Christian's report. I am certainly glad I wasn't there. According to Christian, the Virginia people were the abolitionists and the Northern people were pro-slavery. He says slavery was 'a patriarchal' institution. So were polygamy and circumcision. Ask Hugh if he has been circumcised.
Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: Since there is no such thing as complete knowledge of a subject, one is always working to improve one's reading, writing, etc., of a subject. As Thomas Henry Huxley said, "If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, is there anyone who knows so much as to be out of danger?" …. The problems of learning to read or write are inexhaustible.
“Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance.”
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting … Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.
As quoted in in Contemporary American Novelists, 1900-1920 (1922) by Carl Clinton Van Doren
Context: I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Context: There is no reason to suppose that people today feel less than their grandfathers, but there is good reason to think that they are less able to read in a way which makes them feel. It is natural for them to blame books rather than themselves, and to demand fiction which is highly peppered, like a glutton whose palate is defective.
“No one who reads the gospels thoughtfully and sympathetically will maintain that Jesus”
Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 6-7
Context: No one who reads the gospels thoughtfully and sympathetically will maintain that Jesus—whether God or man—was incapable of making himself completely understood. We must therefore seek for a better explanation of the confusion that exists among the avowed believers in the divinity of Christ, as well as among those who deny the divinity of Christ.
"On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker (December 1968)
Context: I was always much impressed, in reading prison memoirs of revolutionists, such as Lenin and Trotsky … by the amount of reading they did, the languages they studied, the range of their plans for a better social order. (Or rather, for a new social order.) In the Acts of the Apostles there are constant references to the Way and the New Man.
Source: To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (1618), Lines 17 - 24; this was inspired by a eulogy by William Basse, On Shakespeare:
Context: Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room;
Thou art a monument, without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), Apology
Context: Folk say, a wizard to a northern king
At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show,
That through one window men beheld the spring,
And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day.
So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;
Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
Not the poor singer of an empty day.
“We must not let them go into the fourth and fifth grades not knowing how to read.”
The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: Our education system has gone to hell. It’s my idea from now on to stop spending money educating children who are sixteen years old. We should put all that money down into kindergarten. Young children have to be taught how to read and write. If children went into the first grade knowing how to read and write, we’d be set for the future, wouldn’t we? We must not let them go into the fourth and fifth grades not knowing how to read. So we must put out books with educational pictures, or use comics to teach children how to read. When I was five years old, my aunt gave me a copy of a book of wonderful fairy tales called Once Upon a Time, and the first fairy tale in the book is “Beauty and the Beast.” That one story taught me how to read and write because I looked at the picture of that beautiful beast, but I so desperately wanted to read about him too.
"Elizabeth Hand on Mortal Love at HarperCollins (2004) http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=4143&isbn13=9780060755348&displayType=bookinterview
Context: I find that many modern fantasies explain things away far too easily, which makes a lot of it overly familiar (to me, anyway). Real myths are often strange and startlingly unfamiliar, and don't always give up their meanings easily; you have to tease them out, and for me, that's one of the pleasures of reading older collections of lore.
“We are reading for our lives, not performing like seals for some fresh fish.”
Acceptance speech http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=leonardAcceptanceSpeech, National Book Critics Circle 2006 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award (8 March 2007)
Context: My whole life I have been waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue. From these writers, for almost 50 years, I have received narrative, witness, companionship, sanctuary, shock, and steely strangeness; good advice, bad news, deep chords, hurtful discrepancy, and amazing grace. At an average of five books a week, not counting all those sighed at and nibbled on before they go to the Strand, I will read 13,000. Then I'm dead. Thirteen thousand in a lifetime, about as many as there are new ones published every month in this country.
It's not enough, and yet rich to excess. The books we love, love us back. In gratitude, we should promise not to cheat on them — not to pretend we're better than they are; not to use them as target practice, agit-prop, trampolines, photo ops or stalking horses; not to sell out scruple to that scratch-and-sniff info-tainment racket in which we posture in front of experience instead of engaging it, and fidget in our cynical opportunism for an angle, a spin, or a take, instead of consulting compass points of principle, and strike attitudes like matches, to admire our wiseguy profiles in the mirrors of the slicks. We are reading for our lives, not performing like seals for some fresh fish.
“You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books.”
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Context: I’ve always been interested in the Mother Goddess. Not long ago, a young person, whom I don’t know very well, sent a message to a mutual friend that said: “I’m an addict of Mary Poppins, and I want you to ask P. L. Travers if Mary Poppins is not really the Mother Goddess.” So, I sent back a message: “Well, I’ve only recently come to see that. She is either the Mother Goddess or one of her creatures — that is, if we’re going to look for mythological or fairy-tale origins of Mary Poppins.”
I’ve spent years thinking about it because the questions I’ve been asked, very perceptive questions by readers, have led me to examine what I wrote. The book was entirely spontaneous and not invented, not thought out. I never said, “Well, I’ll write a story about Mother Goddess and call it Mary Poppins.” It didn’t happen like that. I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.
Once, when I was in the United States, I went to see a psychologist. It was during the war when I was feeling very cut off. I thought, Well, these people in psychology always want to see the kinds of things you’ve done, so I took as many of my books as were then written. I went and met the man, and he gave me another appointment. And at the next appointment the books were handed back to me with the words: “You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books.”
That was so interesting to me. I began to see, thinking about it, that people who write spontaneously as I do, not with invention, never really read their own books to learn from them. And I set myself to reading them. Every now and then I found myself saying, “But this is true. How did she know?” And then I realized that she is me. Now I can say much more about Mary Poppins because what was known to me in my blood and instincts has now come up to the surface in my head.
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 11-12
Context: The multitude are matter-of-fact. They live in commonplace concerns and interests. Their problems are, how to get more plentiful and better food and drink, more comfortable and beautiful clothing, more commodious dwellings, for themselves and their children. When they seek relaxation from their labors for material things, they gossip of the daily happenings, or they play games or dance or go to the theatre or club, or they travel or they read story books, or accounts in the newspapers of elections, murders, peculations, marriages, divorces, failures and successes in business; or they simply sit in a kind of lethargy. They fall asleep and awake to tread again the beaten path. While such is their life, it is not possible that they should take interest or find pleasure in religion, poetry, philosophy, or art. To ask them to read books whose life-breath is pure thought and beauty is as though one asked them to read things written in a language they do not understand and have no desire to learn. A taste for the best books, as a taste for whatever is best, is acquired; and it can be acquired only by long study and practice. It is a result of free and disinterested self-activity, of efforts to attain what rarely brings other reward than the consciousness of having loved and striven for the best. But the many have little appreciation of what does not flatter or soothe the senses. Their world, like the world of children and animals, is good enough for them; meat and drink, dance and song, are worth more, in their eyes, than all the thoughts of all the literatures. A love tale is better than a great poem, and the story of a bandit makes Plutarch seem tiresome. This is what they think and feel, and what, so long as they remain what they are, they will continue to think and feel. We do not urge a child to read Plato—why should we find fault with the many for not loving the best books?
Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967)
Context: I like long and unusual words, and anybody who does not share my tastes is not compelled to read me. Policemen and politicians are under some obligation to make themselves comprehensible to the intellectually stunted, but not I. Let my prose be tenebrous and rebarbative; let my pennyworth of thought be muffled in gorgeous habilements; lovers of Basic English will look to me in vain.
As quoted in "Cat Stevens Breaks His Silence," by Andrew Dansby in Rolling Stone (14 June 2000) http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/catstevens/articles/story/5927176/cat_stevens_breaks_his_silence; Leviticus 24:16 reads : "And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death."
Context: I'm very sad that this seems to be the No. 1 question people want to discuss. I had nothing to do with the issue other than what the media created. I was innocently drawn into the whole controversy. So, after many years, I'm glad at least now that I have been given the opportunity to explain to the public and fans my side of the story in my own words. At a lecture, back in 1989, I was asked a question about blasphemy according to Islamic Law, I simply repeated the legal view according to my limited knowledge of the Scriptural texts, based directly on historical commentaries of the Qur'an. The next day the newspaper headlines read, "Cat Says, Kill Rushdie." I was abhorred, but what could I do? I was a new Muslim. If you ask a Bible student to quote the legal punishment of a person who commits blasphemy in the Bible, he would be dishonest if he didn't mention Leviticus 24:16.