Died on July 2 — Quotes

. . . Aristotle . . . said that men were not at all euqal by nature, since some were born for slavery and others born to be masters.
Aristotle was right; but he mistook the effect for the cause . . . if there are slaves by nature, it is only because there has been slavery against nature. Force made the first slaves; and their cowardice perpetuates their slavery.

AVREMEL: You came to us from Zhironov?
YANKEL: Were you there when—
MENDEL: Yes, I was there.
AVREMEL: How did you manage to escape?
SAM: There is always one singled out to escape.
YANKEL: A miracle!
SAM: There is always someone to call it a miracle.

As far as I could discover, the notion that a play could succeed without any further help from the actor than a simple impersonation of his part never occurred to Tree.

I often think, what if one were to begin life over again, knowing what one is about! If one life, which has been already lived, were only a rough sketch so to speak, and the second were the fair copy! Then, I fancy, every one of us would feel compelled not to repeat himself, at the very least to rearrange his manner of life.

I am not worried about pleasing clever minds or fashionable people. In every period there will be men fated to be governed by the opinions of their century, their country, and their society. For that very reason, a freethinker or philosopher today would have been nothing but a fanatic at the time of the League.* One must not write for such readers, if one wishes to live beyond one’s own age.

I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be

L’harmonie, me disait-il, n’est qu’un accessoire éloigné dans la musique imitative; il n’y a dans l’harmonie proprement dite aucun principe d’imitation. Elle assure, il est vrai, les intonations; elle porte témoignage de leur justesse; et, rendant les modulations plus sensibles, elle ajoute de l’énergie à l’expresson, et de la grâce au chant. Mais c’est de la seule mélodie que sort cette puissance invincible des accents passionés; c’est d’elle que dérive tout le pouvoir de la musique sur l’âme. Formez les plus savantes successions d’accords sans mélange de mélodie, vous serez ennuyés au bout d’un quart d’heure. De beaux chants sans aucune harmonie sont longtemps à l’épreuve de l’ennui. Que l’accent du sentiment anime les chants les plus simples, ils seront intéressants. Au contraire, une mélodie qui ne parle point chante toujours mal, et la seule harmonie n’a jamais rien su dire au coeur.

Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

Yo me empecinaba en mi paraíso escogido:
Un paraíso cuyos cielos tenían el color de las llamas infernales, pero con todo un paraiso

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

'Darling, would you like to grow a beard?'
'Would you like me to?'
'It might be fun. I'd like to see you with a beard.'
'All right. I'll grow one. I'll start now this minute. It's a good idea. It will give me something to do.'

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

wonder what day god created the egg' 'how should we know? we should not question. our stay on earth is not for long. let us rejoice and believe and give thanks'. 'eat a egg

You see, we find comfort in telling ourselves that the world could not exist without us, that it exists only inasmuch as we ourselves exist, inasmuch as we can represent it to ourselves. Death, infinite space, galaxies, all this is frightening, exactly because it transcends the limits of our perception.