Died on April 16 — Quotes

everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure

And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness, I'm a desperate man – but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate. So I approach it through division so I denounce and I defend and I hate and I love.

"You've always been fond of understanding people too well."
"They should arrange not to be understood quite so easily."

That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their INNER eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality.

The notes went out crystalline into the clean winter morning, to sound on the far, snowy peaks.

Running from the birds to what, I didn't know. I ran. Why was I here at all? I ran through the night, ran within myself. Ran.

I gave myself up to my tears. It was as though my head had turned to clear water, it was falling pleasantly away drop by drop; soon nothing would remain.

As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. Thus there is no authority on earth so inherently worthy of respect, or invested with a right so sacred, that I would want to let it act without oversight or rule without impediment (p. 290).

He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

I loved the newspaper work, but I like fiction better. Newspaper writing is fine but it doesn’t do to stay at it too long.

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.

ربما ليس هناك بوذا للعجائز لكى يبتهلوا إليه لكن فتاة عارية جميلة يضمونها بين أذرعهم ذارفين دموعا باردة غارقين فى شهقات قوية منتحبين , فتاة غافلة عن كل شىء ولن تستفيق مطلقاً تمنحهم حريتهم المطلقة فى الندم حريتهم المطلقة فى النحيب دون أن يشعروا بأى ندم أو طعن كبريائهم أفلا يمكن إذا إعتبار الجميلات النائمات من هذه الوجهة إلهات مثل بوذا ونابضات بالحياة فوق ذلك ؟ أليست رائحة فتاة شابة وبشرتها تكفيراً للعجائز التاعسين وتعزية لهم !؟ ص 91

Early in my short-story career I hit upon the character of a traveling saleswoman named Mrs. Emma McChesney. I never had met or seen a traveling saleswoman and I don't know why I named her Emma McChesney, but she became enormously popular and very nearly turned out to be my undoing. The first story, entitled Representing T. A. Buck, was published in the American Magazine in 1911. I hadn't meant to write a series, but at the urging of the editors I tried a second, called Roast Beef Medium. Well, that did it. The American businesswoman, inexplicably enough, had not been presented in fiction. This now seems incredible, but it was so. The magazine-reading public took Emma to its heart...Emma was hearty, salty, good as gold (better), and oh, so courageous. She was fine in her day, but this is not it; she is as dated as the Featherloom Petticoats she sold...