What Is Left Behind

A memory is what is left behind when something happens and does not completely unhappen.

-- Edward de Bono (1933 - 2021), British physician, author, inventor, and consultant, The Mechanism of Mind (1969), Ch. 5

A Comedy In Long-shot

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

-- Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (1889 - 1977), British comedic actor and director, as quoted in his obituary in The Guardian (28 December 1977)

Crooked Timber

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

-- Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804), German philosopher, Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6

A Tautology

A good poem is a tautology.  It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken.  The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it.  Classical odes grow from "and" or "because", romantic lyrics from "but" or "if".  Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb.

-- Alasdair James Gray (1934 - 2019), award-winning Scottish writer and artist, Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983) "Prometheus", pp. 208-9

They Don't Ask Much

They don’t ask much of you.  They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

-- Boris Pasternak (1890 - 1960), Russian poet and writer, famous for his 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago; 1958 Nobel Laureate for Literature, On Soviet bureaucrats, in LIFE magazine (13 June 1960)

The Most Divine

Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.

-- John Ruskin (1819 - 1900), English author, poet, and painter, The Stones of Venice (1853) Volume II, chapter V, section 30

The Only Currency

Time is the only currency you spend without knowing the balance.  Use it wisely.

-- Nicholas John

Struck By Lightning

A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.

-- Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965), American poet, novelist, critic, and essayist, Poetry and the Age (1953) "Reflections on Wallace Stevens", p. 134; conclusion

It Is Not Our Wanting

Reality is what we want it to be or what we do not want it to be, but it is not our wanting or our not wanting that makes it so.

-- Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965), American poet, novelist, critic, and essayist, A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962) "Malraux and the Statues at Bamberg", p. 191

They Have Forgotten

One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

-- Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965), American poet, novelist, critic, and essayist, "An Unread Book," introduction to The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead (Holt, Rinehart, 1965 edition)

Soon We Shall Know

Soon we shall know everything the eighteenth century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with.

-- Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965), American poet, novelist, critic, and essayist, Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980) "On the Underside of the Stone," The New York Times Book Review (23 August 1953), p. 177

Truth And Right

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

   The flying cloud, the frosty light:

   The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

   The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

   The civic slander and the spite;

   Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

-- Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809 - 1892), Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, "In Memoriam A.H.H." (1850)

Avalanche

Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering.

-- Donald Edwin Westlake (1933 - 2008), American novelist and screenplay author, "Interview with Donald E. Westlake, Author of What's So Funny?" by Scott Butki, at Blogcritics (2 May 2007)

Sharp Nails

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

-- Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784), French philosopher, as quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 338

Instructions For Living

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

-- Mary Jane Oliver (1935 - 2019), American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Red Bird (2008) "Sometimes", § 4

3 Steps

Be, beget, begone.

-- William Saroyan (1908 - 1981), Armenian American author, Jim Dandy : Fat Man in a Famine (1947)

Some Things Count

Don't forget that some things count more than other things.

-- William Saroyan (1908 - 1981), Armenian American author, The Time of Your Life (1939)

Value Of A Sentiment

The value of a sentiment is the amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it.

-- John Galsworthy OM (1867 - 1933), English novelist and playwright, 1932 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Windows, Act II (1922)

Mind Modifies Body

Mind modifies body involuntarily.

-- William Godwin (1756 - 1836), English journalist and political philosopher, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) Vol. 2, bk. 8, ch. 7

The Chosen Vehicle

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

-- Herman Melville (1819 - 1891), American novelist, short story writer, and poet, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) Bk. IV, ch. 5