Quotes about writing (5027 quotes, page 19)

“You may lose something, but you gain a double perspective, a double vision. Especially in terms of writing, or in terms of art, I think it's tremendously useful.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

On the intermingling of cultures
Jeet Thayil on why 'Where are you from?' is a complicated question for all of us

Art , Thinking

“Those who write about life, reflect about life…. you see in others who you are.”

Bernard Malamud book Dubin's Lives

Dubin's Lives (1979)

Life

“…and if you are common, you can dress up as a woman, show you behind or write poems: there’s nothing offensive about a naked behind if it’s everybody’s; each person will be mirrored in it.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(463).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Personality

“Write her a poem, spill your heart to her in sweet cadences; but I didn't know how to write poetry. It was love and dove with me, bad rhymes, blundering sentiment. Oh Christ in Heaven, I'm no writer: I can't even put down a little quatrain. I'm no good in this world. I stood at the window and waved my hands at the sky; no good at all, just a cheap fake; neither writer nor lover; neither fish nor fowl.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love , World , Lovers , Fish

“The pessimist writes over the gates of life what the poet has inscribed on the portals of hell—”Abandon hope, ye who enter here.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 189

Life , Hope , Hell

“Well, that sounds - who wrote that? Did Hillary's scriptwriters write it? Because everybody that went out there, we also had John Allen who failed with ISIS. I mean, he was a general, Allen, General Allen. He went out. And he was ranting and raving. And then I read a report. He was in there for a number of months. And he failed with ISIS.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, This Week Interview (July 30, 2016)

Reading

“Lenin’ s article of 1905, "Party Organization and Party Literature", was used for decades, and is still used, to justify ideologically the enslavement of the written word in Russia. It has been argued that it refers only to political literature, but this is not so: it relates to every kind of writing. It contains the words: "Down with non-partisan writers! Down with literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, ‘ a cog and a screw’ of one single great Social Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically conscious vanguard of the entire working class" (Works, vol. 10, p. 45). For the benefit of "hysterical intellectuals" who deplore this seemingly bureaucratic attitude, Lenin explains that there can be no mechanical levelling in the field of literature; there must be room for personal initiative, imagination, etc.; none the less, literary work must be part of the party’ s work and controlled by the party. This, of course, was written during the fight for "hourgeois democracy", on the assumption that Russia would in due course enjoy freedom of speech but that literary members of the party would have to display party-mindedness in their writings; as in other cases, the obligation would become general when the party controlled the apparatus of state coercion.”

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

pg. 515
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age

Democracy , Imagination , Literature , Freedom

“What was the use of writing if someone didn't read what you have to say?”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 21-29, p. 134

Reading

“It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13
Essais (1595), Book III

Books

“Death, death. Now I won't be able to write my beautiful memoirs.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

To Dr. G. M. Gilbert, after receiving the death sentence. Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" - by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995

Death , Beauty

“All right, I also have a condition:that you should not write down anything without grasping the full significance of what I say.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

Vyasa's condition agreeing to the terms set by Ganesha. Quoted in p. 139.
Sources, Hindu Culture, An Introduction

“I have a paper cut from writing my suicide note. [sighs] It's a start…”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

When the Leaves Blow Away (2006), I Still Have a Pony (2007)

Suicide

“John Randolph had only been a Senator for a few days when he gave an extraordinary speech denouncing John Quincy Adams. 'It is my duty,' said Randolph, 'to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to pull down this administration…. They who, from indifference, or with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom, deserve to be insulted… deserve to be slaves, with no other music to soothe them but the clank of the chains which they have put on themselves and given to their offspring.' John Randolph said this in 1826. This was a time, writes de Tocqueville, when the presidency was almost invisible. If we cannot say this and more today, when the presidency is dictator to the world, we are not authentic conservatives and libertarians. Indeed, we are not free men.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

6 October 1996 "Down With the Presidency"
1990s

Men , World , Music , Time

“Writings such as commentaries and annotations exist to assist people in becoming sages, but in fact they close the doors to sagehood.”

Li Zhi (philosopher) (1527–1602) Chinese philosopher

[Saussy, Haun, Lee, Pauline, Handler-Spitz, Rivi, A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep (Hidden): Selected Writings, 2016, Columbia University Press, 0231541538, https://books.google.com/books?id=4Xm0CwAAQBAJ, Prefaces, 4–5]

People

“Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 476 (5 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The fact that you can write verse is in itself a certificate that you can write prose.”

Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) American poet

What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)

“Some write their wrongs in marble: he more just,
Stoop’d down serene and wrote them in the dust,—
Trod under foot, the sport of every wind,
Swept from the earth and blotted from his mind.
There, secret in the grave, he bade them lie,
And grieved they could not ’scape the Almighty eye.”

Samuel Madden (1686–1765) Irish writer

Boulter's Monument (1745), dedicated to Frederick, Prince of Wales, who had been Madden's student.

Lie , Secret , Sport

“Sometimes you can justify doing something that hurts other people by saying otherwise something worse is going to happen to me. You know, if you were *really* going to starve, you'd be justified in writing proprietary software.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

2000s, Free Software: Freedom and Cooperation (2001)

People , Hurt

“What should I write?
What can I say?
How can I tell you how much I miss you?
The weather here has been as nice as it can be,
Although it doesn't really matter much to me.
For all the fun I'll have while you're so far away,
It might as well rain until September.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

It Might as Well Rain Until September (1962), co-written with Gerry Goffin, recorded by King and Bobby Vee
Song lyrics, Singles

Weather

“When you write your own lyrics, you tend to be over-analytical. One second everything you do is brilliant, and the next, everything is garbage, and I want to be able to express personal things without being made to feel stupid. One of the first times I remember writing something personal was on tour. I was feeling really freaky and down, and I looked in the mirror and I was wearing a red T-shirt and some baggy tennis shorts. I remember thinking that as bummed as I felt, I looked like some beach kid. And then I came up with that line—’I’m looking California / And feeling Minnesota,’ from the song ‘Outshined’—and as soon as I wrote it down, I thought it was the dumbest thing. But after the record came out and we went on tour, everybody would be screaming along with that particular line when it came up in the song. The was a shock. How could anyone know that that was one of the most personally specific things I had ever written? It was just a tiny line. But somehow, maybe because it was personal, it just pushed that button.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Details Magazine, December 1996 https://pitchfork.com/features/article/10081-chris-cornell-searching-for-solitude/,
Soundgarden Era

Stupidity , Feeling , Thinking , Time

“When I was young, I thought I was the best formalist of my time. I thought I was a revolutionary. When the big problems would come, I would solve them and write about them. The big problems came and passed by, others solved them and wrote about them. I was a classicist and not a revolutionary.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

As quoted in Faust in Copenhagen (2007) by Gino Segrè, p. 130.5, which cites The Historical Development of Quantum Theory (1982) by Jagdish Mehra and Helmut Rechenberg, vol 1 of 4, p. xxiv, and Inward Bound (1986) by Abraham Pais, p. 186

Problem , Time

“I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realised that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Interview in the San Francisco Examiner (26 August 1928)

Life , Men , Religion , Soul

“What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto, unlike the lovely Sir Ian McKellen, is a mad old terrorist twat. No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal behaviour, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he's just an old bastard with daft, old ideas based on violence and coercion. I really wanted to make that clear (when writing New X-Men).”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2004
https://web.archive.org/web/20040803001942/http://www.popimage.com/content/grant20044.html Popimage interview
On The X-Men

Love , Men , People , Stupidity

“Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups…So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978)

People , Motivation , Reality , Universe

“The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction, between a government with limited and unlimited powers, is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

5. U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177
Marbury v. Madison (1803)

Time , Personality

“The greatest poets never write poetry. The Homers and Shakespeares are not the greatest — they are only the greatest that we can know. And so with Handel among musicians. For the highest poetry, whether in music or literature, is ineffable — it must be felt from one person to another, it cannot be articulated.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Poetry
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XII - The Enfant Terrible of Literature

Music , Literature , Personality

“Whether we are writing prose or verse we must never use language in a merely decorative way, every qualifying word, every adjective and adverb must be carefully inspected & weighed before it is used and ask before its use, is it really necessary.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

A Proper Gentleman, 1977

Way

“God bless my soul, woman, the more personal you are the better! This is a story of human beings — not dummies! Be personal — be prejudiced — be catty — be anything you please! Write the thing your own way. We can always prune out the bits that are libellous afterwards!”

Agatha Christie book Murder in Mesopotamia

Dr Reilly
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)

God , Way , Soul , Personality

“I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn't have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I'm sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: "Who're the right actors for these roles?" "How should this be staged?" "Do I really want to set this in Denmark?" His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. "Is the financing in place?" "Are there enough good seats for my patrons?" "Where am I going to get a human skull?"”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare's mind was the question "Is this literature?"
Nobel Banquet Speech

Literature , Question , Thinking , Reading

“Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand — a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods — or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"On the Art of Fiction" (1920)
Willa Cather on Writing (1949)

Food , Art , Search , Business

“"The language spoken by these early Macedonians has become a controversial issue in modern times. It seems not to have been so in antiquity. As we have seen, Hesiod made Magnes and Macedon first cousins of the Hellenes, and he therefore regarded them as speakers of a dialect (or dialects) of the Greek language. That he was correct in the case of the Magnetes has been proved by the discovery of early inscriptions in an Aeolic dialect in their area of eastern Thessaly. Then, late in the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, who visited the court of Macedonia, made the father of Macedon not Zeus but Aeolus, a thing which he could not have done unless he knew that the Macedonians were speaking an Aeolic dialect of Greek. A remarkable confirmation of their Greek speech comes from the Persians, who occupied Macedonia as part of their conquests in Europe c.510-480. […] Disagreements over this issue have developed for various reasons. In the second half of the fifth century Thucydides regarded the semi-nomadic, armed northerners of Epirus and western Macedonia as "barbarians", and he called them such in his history of events in 429 and 423. The word was understood by some scholars to mean "non-Greek-speakers" rather than "savages." They were shown to be mistaken in 1956, when inscriptions of 370-68, containing lists of Greek personal names and recording in the Greek language some acts of the Molossians, were found at Dodona in Epirus. This discovery proved beyond dispute that one of Thucydides "barbarian" tribes" of Epirus, the Molossians, was speaking Greek at the time of which he was writing. Demosthenes too called the Macedonians "barbarians" in the 340s. That this was merely a term of abuse has been proved recently by the discovery at Aegae (Vergina) of seventy-four Greek names and one Thracian name on funerary headstones inscribed in Greek letters.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"The Miracle That Was Macedonia", Palgrave Macmillan (September 1991)

History , Time , Parting , Personality

“That accounts for a truly crazy cycle in which students repeat the worst stylistic excesses the journals contain, learn that those very excesses are what makes their work different from what every damn fool knows and says, write more articles like those they learned from, submit them to journals whose editors publish them because nothing better is available (and because academic journals cannot afford expensive copy editing) and thus provide the raw material for another generation to learn bad habits from.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Writing for Social Scientists (1986), p. 41.

Fools , Learning

“The all-inclusiveness of the RV in the realm of mythology is also observable in the sphere of poetics. There is hardly a major poetic device in the various IE branches that is not present in the RV. A significant aspect, for example, is that in early Greek poetry (epics of Homer and Hesiod, and some epigraphic material) the fairly strict syllabic meter (the hexameter with its dactylic, iambic and other variants) is preponderant with only traces of alliteration; in Germanic poetry alliteration prevails while the syllabic meter is very loose: both are present in the RV. …Early Irish poetry (6th century CE) has both meter and alliteration (and rhyme) but this hardly counts since the Irish poets knew these poetic devices “from Vergil and Ovid” and, of course, the Romans developed them from the Greek tradition. Of the Vedic poetic art Watkins writes: “The language of India from its earliest documentation in the Rigveda has raised the art of the phonetic figure to what many would consider its highest form.””

Nicholas Kazanas (1939)

"Indo-European Deities and the Rigveda," JIES 29 (2001), p. 257.

Art

“Thus, the founders of grammar were Sîbawayh and, after him, al-Fârisî and Az-Zajjâj. All of them were of non-Arab (Persian) descent. They were brought up in the Arabic language and acquired the knowledge of it through their upbringing and through contact with Arabs. They invented the rules of (grammar) and made it into a discipline (in its own right) for later (generations to use). Most of the ḥadîth scholars who preserved traditions for the Muslims also were Persians, or Persian in language and upbringing, because the discipline was widely cultivated in the 'Irâq and the regions beyond. Furthermore all the scholars who worked in the science of the principles of jurisprudence were Persians. The same applies to speculative theologians and to most Qur'ân commentators. Only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus, the truth of the following statement by the Prophet becomes apparent: 'If scholarship hung suspended in the highest parts of heaven, the Persians would attain it.”

Ibn Khaldun book Muqaddimah

Muqaddimah, Translated by Franz Rosenthal, vol. 1, pp. 429-430, Princeton University Press, 1981.
Muqaddimah (1377)

Truth , Knowledge , Science , Parting

“I've been getting fan mail from maximum security penitentiaries, and Death Row. What are the authorities thinking of in playing a show with young teenage girls to Death Row inmates? They write everything — disgusting things that you don't even want to know about. And they send me pictures — "Oh, here's a picture of me before I was incarcerated!" — and there's some guy sat on the sofa with a bottle of beer and a moustache, and a big gut. It's so creepy. Way more creepy than Buffy.”

Eliza Dushku (1980) American actress

Attributed

Death , Way , Guy , Girl

“Dad is a man of few words. He rarely discusses my compositions. But I hear him humming my numbers to my nephew. The recent one is a hit from the Telugu flick “Oy”. A musical genius in the family is both a huge advantage and a disadvantage. I’ve absorbed so much from my father. But, at the same time, fans keep writing to me saying they expect more from me — because of my lineage!”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Family , Music , Time

“To say that a poet is justified in employing a disintegrating form in order to express a feeling of disintegration, is merely a sophistical justification for bad poetry, akin to the Whitmanian notion that one must write loose and sprawling poetry to 'express' the loose and sprawling American continent. In fact, all feeling, if one gives oneself (that is, one's form) up to it, is a way of disintegration; poetic form is by definition a means to arrest the disintegration and order the feeling; and in so far as any poetry tends toward the formless, it fails to be expressive of anything.”

Yvor Winters (1900–1968) American poet and literary critic

The Influence of Meter on Poetic Convention, Section V : The Heroic Couplet and its Recent Rivals
Primitivism and Decadence : A Study of American Experimental Poetry (1937)

Way , Feeling

“I get so excited when I know I’m going to a good restaurant, then, when I do the review, I write myself up into such a frenzy that I have to go out and eat all over again.”

Giles Coren (1969) British food critic, television presenter and novelist

Jewish Chronicle, 23 February 2007 http://website.thejc.com/home.aspx?AId50455&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrGiles%20Coren&srchtxt0&srchhead1&srchauthor0&srchsandp0&scsrch0

“I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing — I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn’t really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project — it’s an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Conversations with Žižek by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 42

Hate , Idea

“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

Religion , Smile

“I have always regretted having gotten involved with literature up to my neck. I would have preferred to have been a monk; but, as I said, I was torn between wanting fame and wishing to renounce the world. The basic problem is that if God exists, what is the point of literature? And if He doesn’t exist, what is the point of literature? Either way, my writing, the only thing I have ever succeeded in doing, is invalidated.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

The Paris Review interview (1984)

God , World , Way , Literature

“It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction. Ignorance has no light, but error follows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has further to go, before she can arrive at the truth, than ignorance.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; I
Lacon (1820)

Truth , Error , Business , Knowledge

“I hate publicity, celebrity, fame, and notoriety, all of which are associated with controversy in its public form. But, in fairness, all my life I've been rather upfront with my opinions and never hidden them on grounds of conformity or (I fear) politesse. However, until the wretched Polish consulate affair, I don't think I was ever controversial—I was certainly not known outside of the hermetic little world of the academy, and my contrarian scholarly writings aroused no great fuss.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

quoted in Evan R. Goldstein, "The Trials of Tony Judt", The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 06, 2010)

Life , Hate , World , Fear

“The editor of this catalog asked me to make a statement about my work. I don't have much to write:
- Be a child of your age.
- Be naturalistic against your own ego.
- Be matter-of- fact toward your inner visions
- My love is dedicated to the four great masters of masculine mysticism: Mäleskirchener ([church-painters / muralists, Grünewald, Breughel [both famous painters in the late Middle Ages, ed. ] and Van Gogh.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

a catalog-text for his first major graphic show, November 1917; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14
1900s - 1920s

Love , Age

“What to children learn at school? They go varying distances in their studies, but at any rate they learn to read, to write and to add - i. e. a number of techniques, and a number of other things as well, including elements (which may be rudimentary or on the contrary thoroughgoing) of scientific' or 'literary culture', which are directly useful in the different jobs in production (one instruction for manual workers, another for technicians, a third for engineers, a final one for higher management, etc.). Thus they learn 'know-how.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p.132

Children , School , Study , Learning

“Oh, I have a special way of writing the lyrics when it is dictated to me. No matter what the language of the song, even if it is Bengali, I write it in Hindi. I have certain notations and markings to indicate the way it should be pronounced. I feel the Devanagari script is the closest to the phonetics of the language. English alphabets are not very good for that purpose. Moreover, I listen carefully and try to grasp as much as possible when the lyrics are read to me.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Getting it right (Singing) http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/queen-of-the-charts/article390455.ece

Way , Feeling , Reading

“But one of the great disappointments of esoteric practice is that discovering reality is your own creation does not give you the power to change it permanently. However much physics you read, however many mystical writings you study, the world remains stubbornly solid. In theory, you should be able to build your next home by thinking it into existence. In practice, you still have to lay the bricks like anybody else.”

Herbie Brennan (1940) Irish Author

Source: Magical Use of Thought Forms (2001), p. 34

World , Disappointment , Home , Thinking

“In 1663 Spinoza published the only work to which he ever set his name… He had prepared a summary of the second part of Descartes' 'Principles of Philosophy' for the use of a pupil… Certain of Spinoza's friends became curious about this manual and desired him to treat the first part of Descartes' work also in the same manner. This was done within a fortnight and Spinoza was then urged to publish the book, which he readily agreed to do upon condition that one of his friends would revise the language and write a preface explaining that the author did not agree with all the Cartesian doctrine… The contents… [included] an appendix of 'Metaphysical Reflections,' professedly written from a Cartesian point of view, but often giving significant hints of the author's real divergence from Descartes….'On this opportunity,' he writes to Oldenburg, 'we may find some persons holding the highest places in my country… who will be anxious to see those other writings which I acknowledge for my own, and will therefore take such order that I can give them to the world without danger of any inconvenience. If it so happens, I doubt not that I shall soon publish something; if not, I will rather hold my peace than thrust my opinions upon men against the will of my country and make enemies of them.'… The book on Descartes excited considerable attention and interest, but the untoward course of public events in succeeding years was unfavourable to a liberal policy, and deprived Spinoza of the support for which he had looked….
If Spinoza had ever been a disciple of Descartes, he had completely ceased to be so… He did not suppose the geometrical form of statement and argument to be an infallible method of arriving at philosophical truth; for in this work he made use of it to set forth opinions with which he himself did not agree, and proofs with which he was not satisfied. We do not know to what extent Spinoza's manual was accepted or taken into use by Cartesians, but its accuracy as an exposition of Descartes is beyond question. One of the many perverse criticisms made on Spinoza by modern writers is that he did not understand the fundamental proposition cogito ergo sum. In fact he gives precisely the same explanation of it that is given by Descartes himself in the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

p, 125
Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880)

Men , Truth , Books , World

“Nouns and verbs carry writing.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 2, Ceremonies of Innocence, p. 58

“I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

On Jan Moir's column on the death of Stephen Gately.
Quoted in The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/16/jan-moir-column-on-stephe_n_323964.html
2000s

Dead

“He taught himself to write, retyping books by writers he admired: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner… the usual heavyweights. He said he wanted to get inside the rhythm of their language and find his own stlye.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Preface, The End, p. xv
Outlaw Journalist (2008)

Books

“The Code-and-Fix Model. The basic model used in the earliest days of software development contained two steps:
:1. Write some code.
:2. Fix the problems in the code.
Thus, the order of the steps was to do some coding first and to think about the requirements, design, test, and maintenance later. This model has three primary difficulties: (a) After a number of fixes, the code became so poorly structured that subsequent fixes were very expensive. This underscored the need for a design phase prior to coding. (b) Frequently, even well designed software was such a poor match to users' needs that it was either rejected outright or expensively redevelopment…”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Source: A spiral model of software development and enhancement. (1988), p. 61-62

Problem , Thinking

“In pursuing the wraith that was Paul Curtis, I more than ever was aware that what lives after a shooting man is what has been published of his writings. Memories of the man grow dim and not too rarely become confused […] almost but not quite capturing for me a presence that surfaced like a zither theme in a suspense movie.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

George Bird Evans Introduces (1990)

Memory

“Therefore create me! You, the most esteemed, cultured public, are in possession of nervus rerum gerendarum [the moving force to accomplish something]. Just a word from you, a promise to purchase what I write, or, if it is possible, so that everything can be in order immediately, a little advance payment – and I am an author; I shall remain one as long as this favor lasts.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Writing Sampler

Søren Kierkegaard, Writing Sampler, Nichol P. 75
1840s, Writing Sampler (1844)

“Sometimes people decide to write reports even though they haven't been to Guantanamo. And so I would just suggest that people look at some of the work that's been done by people who have been there. But that's not to say that we will not be very glad at the day that conditions permit the closure of Guantanamo and the trying of its inhabitants or for their release.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

Remarks With British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw At Blackburn Town Hall http://web.archive.org/web/20060405071024/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/63980.htm, April 1, 2006.

People

“An artist must pass judgment only on what he understands; his range is limited as that of any other specialist—that's what I keep repeating and insisting upon. Anyone who says that the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imagery. An artist observes, selects, guesses and synthesizes.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (October 27, 1888)
Letters

Understanding , Question

“After four centuries, Montaigne's curious genius still has that effect on his readers and, time and again, one finds in his self-portrait one's own most brilliant aperçus (the ones that somehow we forgot to write down and so forgot) restored to us in his essays—attempts—to assay—value—himself in his own time as well as, if he was on the subject, all time, if there is such a thing.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Montaigne"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Time

“I'm exactly the opposite of religious, I'm anti-religious. I find religious people hideous. I hate the religious lies. It's all a big lie. … I have such a huge dislike. It's not a neurotic thing, but the miserable record of religion. I don't even want to talk about it, it's not interesting to talk about the sheep referred to as believers. When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety - and I never needed religion to save me.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Interview for Martin Krasnik of the Guardian, (14 December 2005) http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/dec/14/fiction.philiproth

Hate , People , Lie , Fear

“As a writer you will know that one of the favourite fantasy plots of a writer is, a character's told 'you've got three months to live,' and who would you kill? I call my cancer Rupert, so I can get close to it. Because that man, Murdoch, is the one who, if I had the time (I've got too much writing to do…) I would shoot the bugger if I could. There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press. And the pollution of the British press is an important part of the pollution of British political life, and it's an important part of the cynicism and misperception of our own realities that is destroying so much of our political discourse.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

"The Long Goodbye," The Guardian (6 April 1994); the quote is from Potter's final television interview with Melvyn Bragg (5 April 1994)

Life , Reality , Time , Parting

“The presuppositions of biblical scholarship explain better why, as historically conditioned pieces of writing, the scriptures are filled with errors and inconsistencies.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Introduction, p. 11
Dynamics Of Theology

Error

“Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith — a desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will — but faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world — faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

As quoted in The New York Times (27 May 1984)

World , Faith , History , Study

“Quoting an unnamed writer: "To this day," she writes, "I cannot understand dallying with religion and the commandments of God. The very instant I heard my Father's cry calling unto me, my heart bounded in recognition. I ran, I stretched forth my arms, I cried aloud, 'Here, here I am, my Father.' Oh, happy child, what should I do? 'Love me', answered my God. 'I do, I do," I cried passionately. 'Come unto me,' called my Father. 'I will,' my heart panted. Did I stop to ask a single question? Not one. It never occurred to me to ask whether I was good enough, or to hesitate over my unfitness, or to find out what I thought of his church, or… to wait until I should be satisfied. Had I not found my God and my Father? Did he not love me? Had he not called me? Was there not a Church into which I might enter?… Since then I have had direct answers to prayer — so significant as to be almost like talking with God and hearing his answer. The idea of God's reality has never left me for one moment."”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Love , God , Religion , Quotes

“I cried out. I turned the pages, one after the other, in a frenzy. I could not believe what I saw, would not believe it. For the pages of the book were blank.
Oh, yes, there had been writing, this much I could see, but the inks had faded. Now there were only faint smudges and marks here and there on the yellowness. And I could tell nothing from them…
It came to me, as I walked, how bitter the irony of the Book had been which had said: Herein the Truth. For it had a truth of its own in its bleached barrenness. What was truth except something which faded, lost its shape, grew unreadable and indistinguishable, at last a blank page for men to write on what they wished.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part II “The Edge of the Sea”, Chapter 2 (p. 357)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Men , Truth , Books

“What a strange page in human history is that of social distinction; no people so savage but they have a sort of fashion. Even among the wild people in whose country I am now writing, there are all the small distinctions of small gentility — for example, it is not "comme il faut to wear silk."”

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

No.18. The Monastery — MYSIE HAPPER.
Literary Remains

People , History , Fashion , Country

“I don't feel the need to be a role model, it's just something that's been thrust upon me. Teachers and a lot of Asian-American organizations, for example, say to me, "We need you to come and speak to us because you're a role model."… Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden. Someone who writes fiction is not necessarily writing a depiction of any generalized group, they're writing a very specific story.”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

SALON Interview (1995)

Feeling , Teachers

“What you want if you're asking that question is a specific time in your life to come back to you, and that will never happen. You will never be 15 years old again. I could write, verbatim, another Take This To Your Grave, and you won't feel the same way. It's not going to mean anything to you because it wouldn't mean anything to me.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

When asked "how do you respond to people who say they wish Fall Out Boy would just write another Take This To Your Grave?"
AbsolutePunk.net, Patrick Stump, Part 1 - 10.06.08

Life , Way , Feeling , Question

“The history of Acadians has never been written down as see by its people. Its been written by historians from outside. These historians sometimes had reason not to write the truth or didn't know the truth or didn't know the small things which become the big things, the inside story, what we in France call la petit histoire. History is made by the kings and lords, But la petit histoire is made by the people.”

Antonine Maillet (1929) Canadian writer and scholar

Antonine Maillet, Acadian author quoted by Isabel Vincent in the Toronto Globe and Mail, June 24, 1989. Source: Dictionary of Canadian Quotations by Robert Columbo. (Toronto: Stoddart, 1991) p. 3

People , Truth , History

“I have not had an affair with Petronella. It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture. I am amazed people can write this drivel.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Simon Walters, "Boris, Petsy and a 'pyramid of piffle'", Mail on Sunday, 7 November 2004, p. 7.
Denying accusations of his having an affair with Petronella Wyatt.
2000s, 2004

People

“Sometimes I just want to tell a story regardless of whether it fits what the show is saying. I’ve been in a lot of writing rooms where somebody says an idea and everyone’s dying, like laughing so they’re delirious. It’s like a black hole in a good way, everything starts to fall into it, you know what I mean.
And then after a few minutes everybody calms down and somebody says yeah, we can’t do it that way, it doesn’t make any sense, because it hurts this thing and this. And then everyone gets a little—has a moment of silence for the idea and moves on, and something amazing was kept away from the public.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Time http://entertainment.time.com/2011/06/22/louis-ck-interview-part-1-fatherhood-and-fear/#ixzz2LfKg3gu2 (2011)

Way , Idea , Sense , Silence

“I am such a slow learner that once I understand something I might as well write it down!”

Elliott Organick (1925–1985) American computer scientist

When asked about his prolific publication record; quoted in Computer Pioneers by John A. N. Lee, pg. 510.

Understanding

“Whoever writes on world history, but not as a forensic history, becomes thereby an accomplice.”

Karlheinz Deschner (1924–2014) German writer and activist

Wer Weltgeschichte nicht als Kriminalgeschichte schreibt, ist ihr Komplize.
Bissige Aphorismen, S. 54

World , History

“We came up with the idea of people who are attracted to criminals, especially those who might write to a criminal in jail saying, “I understand you, I sympathize with what you’re going through,” and they just sort of pin all their hopes and dreams on somebody who they think is misunderstood but who is in fact rather dangerous. The fact that Harley might have gone from this intelligent, cool therapist to this crazed clown woman was both very interesting and very tragic to us. We thought that had the makings of a great Batman villain — like Batman himself, his villains start off human but then some tragedy happens and warps them into what they are today.”

Paul Dini (1957) writer

Paul Dini reflects on 25 years of Harley Quinn http://ew.com/books/2017/09/05/paul-dini-25-years-of-harley-quinn/ (September 5, 2017)

People , Dreams , Hope , Intelligence

“A learned man, Emile Durkheim,
Had much to say concerning crime
And most of what he had to say
Became a book, and so today
The thoughts he had in 1910
Are read by other learned men,
Who then proceed to write a lot
Of books on Durkheim’s life and thought,
And I am sure that someday you
Will write a book or maybe two,
Destined to be widely read,
On what they say that Durkheim said.”

Albert K. Cohen (1918–2014) American criminologist

Albert K. Cohen (1993). " The Social Functions of Crime https://www.asc41.com/Photos/Cohen_Albert_withPoem.html," at asc41.com. First part of poem presented in his Sutherland Address at the 1993 ASC meetings in Phoenix.

Life , Men , Books , Learning

“A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist — nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.”

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

Letter to Corona Machemer (11 June 1975)

World , Time

“Here I want to reiterate very clearly that this Little Mandate did not come to me dictated, or as a whole, but as I am telling it now. Get the picture: it could happen any place, any time, in the midst of a group, in my office, at lunch in a cafeteria. Suddenly a little light, a little added word would come to me. I used to write them down on scraps of paper, on the back of old envelopes, in some diary, maybe lost or forgotten now; though some of them are still here. It was a patchy thing.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

"How the Little Mandate Came to Be", p. 23
Unfinished Pilgrimage (1995)

Light , Time

“All the big sportswriters seemed to enjoy writing about me as an ignorant cotton-mill boy with nothing but lint where my brains ought to be. That was all right with me. I was able to fool a lot of pitchers and managers and club owners I wouldn't have been able to fool if they'd thought I was smarter.”

Joe Jackson (1887–1951) American baseball player

This is the Truth! (1949)

Fools , Boy

“A better name for scientific management is "measured functional management." It is not sufficient to call it " labor saving 'management " for it deals with more than labor and labor saving. It is a way for obtaining methods of least waste. It not only saves useless labor, but it improves labor conditions; improves quality of product; prolongs the period of the worker's productivity; conserves, teaches and transfers skill and experience. The committee have caused the Society and the world to recognize at last the importance of the feature of the transference of skill, but they apparently still lack appreciation of the even greater feature of the recording and transference of experience of Mr. Taylor's measured functional management and of micro-motion study. Mr. Taylor's system is best described in his writings entitled A Piece Kate System, Shop Management, and On the Art of Cutting Metals, published by the Society, and Principles of Scientific Management, published by Harper & Brothers.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: The present state of art of industrial management, 1913, p. 1224

World , Art , Way , Study

“That's the attraction of the conference circuit: it's a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism with tourism, and all at someone else's expense. Write a paper and see the world! I'm Jane Austen – fly me!”

David Lodge (1935) writer

Part IV, ch. 1, p. 231.
Small World (1984)

World , Way , Flying

“One of the joys of teaching with the anthology is to watch the excitement grow as students, who may think the past dull and irrelevant, find how fresh and new and powerful are the kinds of writings that are hundreds of years old.”

M. H. Abrams (1912–2015) American literary theorist

The New York Times dialogue with S. Greenblatt (2012)

Thinking , Past , Joy

“When someone like Kurt Cobain or Jack White comes out, they didn’t go, “He sounds just like Muddy Waters,” did they? They just said, “He’s great, he sounds like him.” When women come out and men write about them, they tend to write about them in a way that other men can understand, which sometimes can seem a bit patronizing.”

Shingai Shoniwa (1981) British musician

http://venuszine.com/stories/music/4102.php

Women , Men , Way , Understanding

“Dictators, perhaps because they know their own lies so well, have usually realised the power of history. Consequently, they have tried to re-write, deny, or destroy the past.”

Margaret MacMillan (1943) Canadian historian

p.22

History , Past

“Stop'. 'I do not know either 'The Merciful, or the Compassionate'. Write: 'In the name of God'.”

Suhayl ibn Amr soldier

in negotiating Treaty of Hudaybiyyah (628)

God

“If you like what you are writing, just write. Try to keep going before you stop to take a break. Keep going back before too much time has passed. And just stay with it.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Interview at KidsReads (2003)

Time

“I wrote the Light of What We Know here..(at Yaddo), over several long stays. I'm not sure where I would have written it otherwise. I've been homeless since 2007, all my few possessions put into storage before I set off to travel across Europe and Asia. My journey was interrupted because of the deaths of loved ones and it was within the interruption that I began and finished writing the novel. Yaddo, I was told, might be a good place to write. … Yaddo turned out to suit me perfectly. A stately home—not English privilege but a Scooby Doo mansion—with woodlands, three lakes and magical charm, this charitable foundation has for a hundred years been host to giants such as James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Sylvia Plath and Truman Capote. I'm still homeless and have yet to resume my broken travels, but wherever I go, I know that Yaddo and its 400-acre stretch of God's own country was always a kind of home to me and helped to nurture In the Light of What We Know.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

"Sweet Inspiration - Writing and Travel", April 4, 2015 Sweet Inspiration - Writing and Travel http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/themes/67591492/Sweet-inspiration-Writing-and-travel April 4, 2015. Retrieved on 2015-04-05.

Love , Death , God , Travel

“In my opinion, so much of it is really about what you had in mind when you got into it: was it only that you wanted to be a rockstar and see your name in lights? I never really had those kinds of dreams. I knew I loved music and I knew that when I sang in a certain way it made my chest and my whole stomach tickle and I liked it. It still does that same thing to me; I know I’m doing it right when it makes my core tingle a little bit. I get the same feeling when I’m painting a picture or when I get into that almost hypnotic state of writing – those things are incredible and those are the kinds of things that attract me to creativity.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

When asked about intention for a magazine in Berlin (http://www.pulse-berlin.com/)

Love , Dreams , Music , Way

“I will take the liberty of saying that we missed the chance we had in the 1990s. The question was posed: what kind of country should we have? A strong country, or a worthy one where people can live decently? We chose the former – a strong country. Once again we are living in an era of power. Russians are fighting Ukrainians. Their brothers. My father is Belarusian, my mother, Ukrainian. That's the way it is for many people. Russian planes are bombing Syria … A time full of hope has been replaced by a time of fear. The era has turned around and headed back in time. The time we live in now is second-hand … Sometimes I am not sure that I've finished writing the history of the "Red" man.”

Svetlana Alexievich (1948) Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer

Nobel Lecture (2015)

People , Fear , Hope , Way

“But how does it come about, step by step, that some complex Systems actually function? This question, to which we as students of General Systemantics attach the highest importance, has not yet yielded to intensive modern methods of investigation and analysis. As of this writing, only a limited and partial breakthrough can be reported, as follows: A COMPLEX SYSTEM THAT WORKS IS INVARIABLY FOUND TO HAVE EVOLVED FROM A SIMPLE SYSTEM THAT WORKED”

John Gall (1925–2014) American physician

Source: Systemantics: the underground text of systems lore, 1986, p. 65 cited in "Quotes from Systemantics – Funny, But Scary Too" Posted on agileadvice.com March 3, 2006 by Mishkin Berteig. This quote was mentioned in General systemantics (1975, p. 71)

Question

“Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

As quoted at ContemporaryWriters.com http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth03D25I553012635618

Life , Way , Learning

“I remember seeing how Layne [Staley] reacted to Andy [Andrew Wood] dying from drugs, and I think that he was scared possibly. And I think he also reacted the same way when Kurt [Cobain] shot himself. They were really good friends. And yet it didn’t stop him. But for me, if I think about the evolution of my life as it appears in songs for example, Higher Truth is a great example of a record I wouldn’t have been able to write [when I was younger], and part of that is in essence because there was a period of time there where I didn’t expect to be here. And now not only do I expect to be here, and I’m not going anywhere, but I’ve had the last 12 years of my life being free of substances to kind of figure out who the substance-free guy is, because he’s a different guy. Just by brain chemistry, it can’t be avoided. I’m not the same, I don’t think the same, I don’t react the same. And my outlook isn’t necessarily the same. My creative endeavours aren’t necessarily the same. And one of the great things about that is it enabled me to kind of keep going artistically and find new places and shine the light into new corners where I hadn’t really gone before. And that feels really good. But it’s also bittersweet because I can’t help but think, what would Jeff be doing right now, what would Kurt be doing right now, what would Andy be doing? Something amazing, I’m sure of it. And it would be some music that would challenge me to lift myself up, something that would be continually raising the bar so that I would work harder too, in the same way they affected me when they were alive basically.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked if there was a lesson to be learned from his friends' deaths caused by substance abuse and if it was not enough to scare everyone ** The Life & Times of Chris Cornell, Rolling Stone Australia, 17 September 2015 https://rollingstoneaus.com/music/post/the-life-and-times-of-chris-cornell/2273,
Solo career Era

Life , Truth , Music , Way

“We do not, of course, write literary criticism at all now. Academe has won the battle in which Wilson fought so fiercely on the other side. Ambitious English teachers now invent systems that have nothing to do with literature or life but everything to do with those games that must be played in order for them to rise in the academic bureaucracy. Their works are empty indeed. But then, their works are not meant to be full. They are to be taught, not read. The long dialogue has broken down. Fortunately, as Flaubert pointed out, the worst thing about the present is the future. One day there will be no… But I have been asked not to give the game away. Meanwhile, I shall drop a single hint: Only construct!”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Edmund Wilson: This Critic and This Gin and These Shoes", closing lines
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Life , Game , Literature , Teachers

“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

Interview in Writers at Work (1988)

People , History , Thinking

“These women, like writers, have no time clocks to punch, no waiting boss. I write in the morning before teaching, and neither these women nor I care about the morning commuter traffic. There is no place we have to be. We already are where we have to be, facing ourselves. Both of us, without the prodding of a paycheck or the loss of a job, face only time itself, and our responsibility to use it as best we can.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Of Robin Hood and Womanhood.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Women , Loss , Time , Waiting

“We don't need to rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America, we need to re-read the Constitution and enforce the Constitution. We don't need to re-write, let's reread! And I know that there are some people that are not going to do that. So for the benefit of those who are not going to read it because they don't want us to go by the Constitution, there's a little section in there that talks about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". You know, those ideals that we live by, we believe in, your parents believed in, they instilled in you. When you get to the part about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," don't stop right there, keep reading. 'Cause that's when it says "when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it."”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

We've got some altering and some abolishing to do!
Lecturing Americans To ‘Reread’ Constitution, Herman Cain Confuses It With Declaration of Independence
Think Progress
Ian
Millhiser
2011-05-23
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/23/168628/cain-reread-constitution/
2011-10-08
Quoting parts of the United States Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. … That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government....”

Life , People , Parent , Reading

“"The water in music the oar forsakes." The air in music the wing forsakes. All things move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, from Yosemite Valley (September 1874); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 11: On Widening Currents 
(Presumably paraphrasing from the poem Woodnotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Come learn with me the fatal song / Which knits the world in music strong / … / and the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake / The wood is wiser far than thou".)
(Turlock: Town where Muir changed from railroad to foot travel in this particular journey from Oakland, California, to Yosemite Valley.)
1870s

Music , Star , Water , Singing