Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.- William Saroyan, born on this date in 1908
Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.- Théophile Gautier, born on this date in 1811
Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.- Mary Shelley, born on this date in 1797
Happiness is rarely absent; it is we that know not of its presence.- Maurice Maerterlinck, born on this date in 1862
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.- Robertson Davies, born on this date in 1913
It's important to note that the Hauser affair also represents the best in science. When lowly graduate students suspected their famous boss was cooking his data, they risked their careers and reputations to blow the whistle on him. They are the scientists to celebrate.
Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it.- Johann Georg Hamann, born on this date in 1730
And do you accept the idea that there is no explanation?- Julio Cortázar, born on this date in 1914
As a Literary Novelist, Franzen is "painfully conscious," and so must bear the burden of those who are not. The insights he shares won't alienate the "beleaguered" modern reader — Grossman assures us we'll enjoy Freedom because it's not too difficult to read.
When you're a writer you no longer see things with the freshness of the normal person. There are always two figures that work inside you.- Brian Moore, born on this date in 1921
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.- Jean Rhys, born on this date in 1890
Revolutionaries themselves are the last people to realize when, through force of time and circumstance, they have gradually become conservatives. It is scarcely to be wondered at if the public is very nearly as slow in the uptake.- Constant Lambert, born on this date in 1905
In deciding which novelist “knows” more about the world, here are things to look for: how much can you picture the respective operations, which writer is more specific, which writer holds the reader’s hand more, which writer is more interested in the world that he is writing about?
Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.- Ray Bradbury, born on this date in 1920
When the critic of a one-paper town decides that (in Mr. Rosenberg's words) "mediocrity takes up residence . . . when Welser-Möst is on the podium," and when his reviews of the orchestra's concerts consist in large part of variations on that grim theme, the editors of his paper have to ask themselves a tough question: At what point does so oft- repeated an opinion become predictable and redundant?
Rather than replace Mr. Rosenberg with a younger critic, Ms. Goldberg could just as easily have ordered the two men to split the assignment of covering the orchestra's concerts right down the middle. Criticism is not an exact science, and the paper would have done its readers a service by regularly publishing contrasting points of view on the city's No. 1 cultural venture.
The realization that he was a great poet came to McGonagall in 1877 with the suddenness of a mystical experience or perhaps a neurological event like a stroke. (These days, he would be put at once into an MRI scanner.) From that time on, he ceased ever to work as a cotton-weaver, deriving an exiguous and precarious living from performances of his own compositions in places such as village halls, public meeting rooms, and pubs. His wife begged him to return to cotton-weaving, where the remuneration, while not munificent, was at least regular and more or less calculable in advance. But McGonagall was faithful to his muse to the last, dying in penury in 1902.
Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.- St. Francis de Sales, born on this date in 1567
Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.- Paul Tillich, born on this date in 1886
Real rebels are rarely anything but second rate outside their rebellion; the drain of time and temper is ruinous to any other accomplishment.- James Gould Cozzens, born on this date in 1903
A new form will always seem more or less an absence of any form at all, since it is unconsciously judged by reference to the consecrated forms.- Alain Robbe-Grillet, born on this date in 1922
