Autobiographers From The United States

"Magnificent desolation."

"The enormous and half-educated publics of present-day England and America… acclaim as masterpieces books that are soon forgotten, while ignoring all that is exquisite and rare."

"The disconcerting fact may first be pointed out that if you write badly about good writing, however profound may be your convictions or emphatic your expression of them, your style has a tiresome trick (as a wit once pointed out) of whispering: ‘Don’t listen!’ in your readers’ ears. And it is possible also to suggest that the promulgation of new-fangled aesthetic dogmas in unwieldy sentences may be accounted for—not perhaps unspitefully—by a certain deficiency in aesthetic sensibility; as being due to a lack of that delicate, unreasoned, prompt delight in all the varied and subtle manifestations in which beauty may enchant us."

"What draws us to him so closely is that he combined a disillusioned estimate of human nature sufficient to launch twenty little cynics, with a craving for love and sympathy urgent enough to turn a weaker nature into a benign sentimentalist."

"Time spent in labouring to perfect one’s style, or to make of it an instrument for the production of imaginative effects, is, Mr. Read tells us, just so much time wasted. Indeed Mr. Middleton Murry says it is worse than this, for nothing could be more dangerous than the notion that the more poetic is prose, the finer it is; this is a heresy that cannot be too much deplored and combated. ‘The terrible attraction of words, the impulse to use them for anything more than exact symbols of the things they stand for, is another danger; any sacrifice of sense to euphony being, these critics tell us, the beginning of decadence: ‘it is a step on the downward path.’ The histories and associations of words, are, Mr. Read says, entirely irrelevant to prose-style, their face-value in current usage being their only value. The young writer is also warned against rhythmical effects and the use of images, and is told that any conscious care for such devices, any playing, like Stevenson, of the sedulous ape to the masters of this technique, must be carefully eschewed."

"May it [the opposition to fine writing] be accounted for by the fact that the spirit of Puritanism, having been banished from the province of moral conduct, has found a refuge among the arts?"

"We frequently fall into error and folly, Dr. Johnson tells us, “not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered.” To compress, therefore, the great and obvious rules of life into brief sentences which are not easily forgotten is, as he said, to confer a real benefit upon us."

"Few things are more shocking to those who practice the arts of success than the frank description of those arts."

"Experience is always seeking for special literary forms in which its various aspects can find their most adequate expression; and there are many of these aspects which are best rendered in a fragmentary fashion, because they are themselves fragments of experience, gleams and flashes of light, rather than the steady glow of a larger illumination."

"That one should practice what one preaches is generally agreed, but anyone who has the indiscretion to preach what both he and his hearers practice must always incur—as Lord Chesterfield has incurred—the gravest moral reprobation."

"It is certainly curious that among all the millions of books that have been written on every conceivable subject, so few writers have really tried to describe the tissue of their thoughts and the actual taste of consciousness. And yet this is, after all, our most immediate and direct experience, the only experience of whose reality we are absolutely certain."

"Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it."

"There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of intoxications. We fall in love with a book; it is our book, we feel, for life; we shall not need another. We cram-throat our friends with it in the cruellest fashion; make it a Gospel, which we preach in a spirit of propaganda and indignation, putting a woe on the world for a neglect of which last week we were equally guilty."

"Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds."

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading."

"How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?"

"All Reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for."

"We all endeavour, as Spinoza says, to persist in our own being; and that endeavour is, he adds, the very essence of our existence. When, therefore, we find that what delighted us once can still delight us: that though the objects of our admiration may be intermittent, yet they move in fixed orbits, and their return is certain, these reappearances will suggest that we have after all maintained something of our own integrity; that a sort of system lies beneath the apparent variability of our interests; that there is, so to speak, a continuity within ourselves, a core of meaning which has not disintegrated with the years."

"How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!"

"There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail."

"There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second."

"To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and keep absolutely sober."

"If we find, when we read again one of our classics—say Virgil for instance—that we like it better than ever, the experience may suggest an even more pleasing conjecture. Psychologists tell us that fullness of life is the goal of everything that lives, that the impulse towards completeness, towards ripeness and self-realization, is the most compelling of all motives. These discoveries in old books of new beauties and aspects of interest may persuade us, therefore, that we are not only still ourselves, but more ourselves than ever: that our spirit has not only persisted in its being, but has become more lucid in the process."

"The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work on the proceeds, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists."

"It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people."

"When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, Idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter."

"The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star."

"The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood."

"Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own."

"I cannot forgive my friends for dying; I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing."

"The truth is that the phenomena of artistic production are still so obscure, so baffling, we are still so far from an accurate scientific and psychological knowledge of their genesis or meaning, that we are forced to accept them as empirical facts; and empirical and non-explanatory names are the names that suit them best. The complete explanation of any fact is the very last step in human thought; and it is reached, as I have said, if indeed it is ever reached, by the preliminary processes of recognition, designation, and definition. It is with these preliminary processes that our aesthetic criticism is still occupied."

"The emergence of a new term to describe a certain phenomenon, of a new adjective to designate a certain quality, is always of interest, both linguistically and from the point of view of the history of human thought. That history would be a much simpler matter (and language, too, a much more precise instrument) if new thoughts on their appearance, and new facts at their discovery, could at once be analysed and explained and named with scientific precision. But even in science this seldom happens; we find rather that a whole complex group of facts, like those for instance of gas or electricity, are at first somewhat vaguely noticed, and are given, more or less by chance, a name like that of gas, which is an arbitrary formation, or that of electricity, which is derived from the attractive power of electrum or amber when rubbed — the first electric phenomenon to be noticed."

"What music is more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?"

"The disconnected impressions which we derive from life form a kind of knowledge ‘in growth,’ as Bacon called it; an over-early and peremptory attempt to digest this knowledge into a system tends, as he suggests, to falsify and distort it."

"The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves."

"Perhaps not only in his attitude towards truth, but in his attitude towards himself, Montaigne was a precursor. Perhaps here again he was ahead of his own time, ahead of our time also, since none of us would have the courage to imitate him. It may be that some future century will vindicate this unseemly performance; in the meanwhile it will be of interest to examine the reasons which he gives us for it. He says, in the first place, that he found this study of himself, this registering of his moods and imaginations, extremely amusing; it was an exploration of an unknown region, full of the queerest chimeras and monsters, a new art of discovery, in which he had become by practice “the cunningest man alive.” It was profitable also, for most people enjoy their pleasures without knowing it; they glide over them, and fix and feed their minds on the miseries of life. But to observe and record one’s pleasant experiences and imaginations, to associate one’s mind with them, not to let them dully and unfeelingly escape us, was to make them not only more delightful but more lasting. As life grows shorter we should endeavour, he says, to make it deeper and more full. But he found moral profit also in this self-study; for how, he asked, can we correct our vices if we do not know them, how cure the diseases of our soul if we never observe their symptoms? The man who has not learned to know himself is not the master, but the slave of life: he is the “explorer without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and when all is done, the fool of the play.”"

"Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still. Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still. Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still. Listen to the words long written down, When the man comes around."

"We were in the studio, getting ready to work — and I popped it in, by the end I was really on the verge of tears. I’m working with Zach de la Rocha, and I told him to take a look. At the end of it, there was just dead silence. There was, like, this moist clearing of our throats and then, "Uh, OK, let’s get some coffee.""

"So we raise her up every morning And we bring her down slow every night, We don't let her touch the ground, And we fold her up right. On second thought I do like to brag. Cause I'm mighty proud of That Ragged Old Flag."

"There's a man goin' 'round takin' names. An' he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same. There'll be a golden ladder reaching down. When the man comes around."

"The hairs on your arm will stand up. At the terror in each sip and in each sup. Will you partake of that last offered cup, Or disappear into the potter's ground. When the man comes around."

"Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers. One hundred million angels singin'. Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum. Voices callin', voices cryin'. Some are born an' some are dyin'. It's Alpha and Omega's Kingdom come."

"When, I was just a baby, My mama told me, son Always be a good boy, Don't ever play with guns. But I shot a man in Reno Just to watch him die. When I hear that whistle blowin' I hang my head and cry."

"Just around the corner there's heartache Down the street that losers use. If you can wade in through the teardrops, You'll find me at the Home of the Blues."

"Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry, And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky. And the tears that I cried for that woman are gonna flood you Big River. Then I'm gonna sit right here until I die."

"I hear the train a comin', It's rollin' round the bend. An' I ain't seen the sunshine' Since I don't know when. I'm stuck in Folsom prison, And time keeps draggin' on. But that train keeps a rollin' On down to San Antone."

"I lie awake at night to wait 'til you come in. You stay a little while and then you're gone again. Every question that I ask, I get a lie, lie, lie. For every lie you tell, you're gonna cry, cry, cry!"

"I do my best to hide this low-down feelin'. I try to make believe there's nothing wrong. But they're always askin me about you, darlin' And it hurts me so to tell 'em that you're gone. If they ask me I guess I'd be denyin' that I've been unhappy all alone. But if they heard my heart, they'd hear it cryin' Where's my darling, when's she comin' home?'"

"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine; I keep my eyes wide open all the time. I keep the ends out for the tie that binds. Because you're mine, I walk the line."

"At my door the leaves are falling; A cold wild wind has come. Sweethearts walk by together; And I still miss someone."