Gilbert Wesley Purdy > Gilbert's Quotes

“He who knows how to be poor knows everything.”
― Jules Michelet 1798-1874

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― Francois Mauriac

“Ningún lugar es aburrido si me dan una mesa, buen café y unos libros. Eso es una patria.”
― George Steiner

“Dans l’adversité de nos meilleurs amis nous trouvons toujour quelque chose qui ne nous déplaît pas.”
― La Rochefoucauld

“El Tamarit tiene un manzano
con una manzana de sollozos.
Un ruiseñor apaga los sospiros,
y un faisán los ahuyente por el polvo.

Pero los ramos son alegres,
los ramos son como nosotros.
No piensan en la lluvia y se han dormido,
como si fueran árboles, de pronto.”
― Federico García Lorca

“...language is never innocent.”
― Roland Barthes

“I believe that all aesthetic observation that is not immediate accomplishment will be impossible from now on, — basically impossible, for example, to 'admire pictures' in a church, […] You would not believe at all,[…] how different, how different the world has become, the point is to understand that. Whoever thinks he can live from now on as he was 'accustomed' to live, will find himself continually facing the sheerest repetition, the bare once-again and its whole desperate unfruitfulness.”
― Ranier Maria Rilke

“Doesn't nature reach her goal even though most people falsely determine the purpose of their own efforts?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“What if the 'brutal thunderclap of halt' takes the form of the choice, Dishonesty or insanity?”
― Colin Wilson

“...es cierto que, como decía Hegel, la lectura de los periódicos es la oración de la mañana del hombre moderno.”
― Umberto Eco

“Chi non legge, a 70 anni avrà vissuto una sola vita. Chi legge avrà vissuto 5000 anni. A lettura è una immortalità all’indietro.”
― Umberto Eco

“...speak ill of yourself when by yourself; then you will become accustomed both to speak and to hear the truth.”
― Seneca Lucius Annaeus

“Avoid the suave flow of prose that’s the trademark of the glib writer. An easy and smooth style is all very well, but it takes no chances and has no seductive wrinkles, no pauses for thought.”
― Guy Davenport

“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“I was too far away to observe what color Enid Starkie's eyes were; all I remember of her is that she dressed like a matelot, walked like a scrum-half, and had an atrocious French accent.”
― Julian Barnes

“I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”
― Marcel Duchamp

“Above all, my dear Lucilius, make this your business: learn how to feel joy.”
― Seneca Lucius Annaeus

“And where do you see in all this the influence of the Castle?" asked K. "So far it doesn't seem to have come in. What you've told me about is simply the ordinary senseless fear of the people, malicious pleasure in hurting a neighbor, specious friendship, things that can be found anywhere,...”
― Franz Kafka

“Cuántas veces Maddalena Strozzi cortó una rosa blanca y la sintió gemir entre sus dedos, retorcerse y gemir débilmente como una pequeña mandrágora o uno de esos lagartos que cantan como las liras cuando se les muestra un espejo.”
― J. Cortázar

“Para el hombre de la generación novísima, el arte es una cosa sin trascendencia.”
― Jose Ortega y Gasset

“If superior abilities and services to society deserve special rewards it may be regarded as axiomatic that the rewards are always higher than the services warrant. No impartial society determines the rewards. The men of power who control society grant these perquisites to themselves.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr

“In the end we’re nothing more substantial,
it would seem,
than so much tiny star-stuff and a dream;
coordinates of will so existential
that, in the final analysis,
there is no thinker, just the thought.
We create ourselves to learn we can’t exist.
It could be said we think therefore we’re not.
We’re just a place that atoms hurdle through,
a vortex with a cosmic attitude.


fr. "The Lady Cavendish's Atoms”
― Gilbert Wesley Purdy

“The stars dehisce.

By "stars" I mean, of course, tradition,
and by "tradition" I mean nothing at all.
A pronoun disembowels his antecedent.
Stop me if you've heard this one before.”
― Ben Lerner

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“...we shall not dwell for the present on the effort to delve down to the depths of our being. If possible at all, it is exceptional: and it is on the surface, at the point where it inserts itself into the close-woven tissue of other exteriorised personalities, that our ego generally finds its point of attachment; its solidity lies in this solidarity.”
― Henri Bergson

“One of these days I'm going to get myself an avatar
so I can ride an Archaeopteryx in cyberspace --
goodbye, the meat cage.
Pray the server doesn't crash, pray
against the curse of carpal tunnel syndrome.”
― Lucia Perillo

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“Occhi, stelle mortal!,
Ministre de mei mali,—
Se chiusi m' uccidete,
Aperti che farate”
― Battista Guarini

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked