The Impossible Takes Longer (11 page)
Read The Impossible Takes Longer Online
Authors: David Pratt
Joseph Brodsky
LITERATURE, 1987
596. Ah, but it's impossible to live without poetry.
Pyotr Kapitsa
PHYSICS, 1978
597. Literature that does not rise to the level of poetry— whether it takes the form of verse or prose—bears no relation to literature at all.
Naguib Mahfouz
LITERATURE, 988
598. The only thing politics and poetry have in common is the letter "p" and the letter "0."
Joseph Brodsky
LITERATURE, 1987
599. We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
William Butler Yeats
LITERATURE, 1923
600. Love is a metaphysical affair whose goal is either accomplishing or liberating one's soul . . . That is and always has been the core of lyric poetry.
Joseph Brodsky
LITERATURE, 1987
601. Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T. S. Eliot
LITERATURE, 1948
602. The relationship between eroticism and poetry is such that it can be said, without affectation, that the former is a poetry of the body and the latter an eroticism of language.
Octavio Paz
LITERATURE, 1990
603. Between poetry and literature there is the same distance, as, for example, between love and appetite, sensuality and sexuality, word and wordiness.
Juan Ramön Jiménez
LITERATURE, 1956
604. The experience of a poem is the experience both of a moment and of a lifetime.
T. S. Eliot
LITERATURE, 1948
605
.
In the house of poetry nothing endures that is not written with blood to be heard with blood.
Pablo Neruda
LITERATURE, 1971
606. The closest thing to poetry is a loaf of bread or a ceramic dish or a piece of wood lovingly carved, even if by clumsy hands.
Pablo Neruda
LITERATURE, 1971
607. Contemporary poetry should be such that the listener or reader can say, "That is how I should talk if I could talk poetry."
T. S. Eliot
LITERATURE, 1948
608. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T. S. Eliot
LITERATURE, 1948
609. No poetry is free for the man who wants to do a good job.
T. S. Eliot
LITERATURE, 1948
610. The instinct to rhyme is one we're born with . . . The delight of the two sounds joining means there's some sense in something . . . Everything is a couplet: two eyes, husband and wife, man and woman . . . As you travel towards the rhyme, it's a form of prayer. It's a form of prayer that says, I'm heading toward something that appears to be wisdom, saying, I hope for an order, there is order, I'm obedient to that order . . . The sort of anarchy and atheism or agnosticism that's contained in free verse is inferior to rhyme, because it's inferior as agnosticism is to the idea of God.
Derek Walcott
LITERATURE, 1992
611. The feature of my schooling that in retrospect I value most is one that modern American educational theory rejects: the practice of memorizing poetry.
Salvador Luria
MEDICINE, 1969
612. I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.
Eugenio Montale
LITERATURE, 1975
613. I think inspiration is a refuge for poets. All poets are generally very lazy. They're loafers!
Camilo José Cela
LITERATURE, 1989
614. I was born in Sardinia. My family consisted of wise as well as violent people, and primitive artists. The family was respected and of good standing, and had a private library. But when I started writing at thirteen, they objected. As the philosopher says: If your son is writing poems, send him to the mountain paths; the next time you may punish him; but the third time, leave him alone, because then he is a poet.
Grazia Deledda
LITERATURE, 1926
615. As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
T. S. Eliot
LITERATURE, 1948
616. To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes: to hear it is to see it with our ears.
T S. Eliot
LITERATURE, 1948
617. If a society without social justice is not a good society, a society without poetry is a society without dreams . . . If society abolishes poetry it commits spiritual suicide.
Octavio Paz
LITERATURE, 1990
618. The only job in which one cannot lie is poetry. You can't lie in poetry. If you are a liar you'll always be discovered. Perhaps now, perhaps in five years, in ten years, but you are
going
to be discovered eventually if you are lying.
Giorgos Seferis
LITERATURE, 1963
619. Bureaucrats and bus passengers respond with a touch of incredulity and alarm when they find out that they're dealing with a poet.
Wislawa Szymborska
LITERATURE, 1996
620. Been writing much poetry lately, Mr. Keats?
J. J. Thomson
PHYSICS, 1906
To William Buder Yeats, guest of honor at dinner
621. There is no friend as loyal as a book.
Ernest Hemingway
LITERATURE, 1954
622. A man can never have too many books, too much red wine, or too much ammunition.
Rudyard Kipling
LITERATURE, 1907
623. I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
Wislawa Szymborska
LITERATURE, 1996
624. There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky
LITERATURE, 1987
625. Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folk have lent me.
Anatole France
LITERATURE, 1921
626. I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalog.
Anatole France
LITERATURE, 1921
627. All these people who call themselves publishers—they are no better than people who sell books off a barrow.
V. S. Naipaul
LITERATURE, 2001
628. Almost all publishers belong to the ruling technocracies and therefore worship the dubious social sciences, scorn the classics, and mistrust poetry, considering it a fruidess activity or an archaic pastime.
Octavio Paz
LITERATURE, 1990
629. Best-sellers are not works of literature, they are merchandise.
Octavio Paz
LITERATURE, 1990
630. As long as I don't read the newspapers, I feel fine.
Otto Hahn
CHEMISTRY, 1944
631. Turn off the television. Don't read the newspaper. It's all full of what went wrong yesterday.
Betty Williams
PEACE, 1976
632. No poem can be the true image of our world. The true, the appalling image of our world is the newspaper.
Elias Canetti
LITERATURE, 1981
633. Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.
George Bernard Shaw
LITERATURE, 1925
634. As journalists have occasionally said, What is there that will happen next that you can't even imagine?
Paul Lauterbur
MEDICINE, 2003
635. Probably the most important thing my parents did to encourage me was to NOT get a television. We lived way out in the woods and once a week we would drive into town (nearly an hour away) to buy groceries. On those trips my parents always took us to the public library.
Carl Wieman
PHYSICS, 2001
636. Television has proved that millions of people passionately love lust and violence.
Saul Bellow
LITERATURE, 1976
637. Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
Shimon Peres
PEACE, 1994
Nobel prizes are geographically concentrated in North America and western Europe. Less than 5 percent of all prize winners were born south of the equator, almost all of them in Australia or New Zealand. About 40 percent of laureates have been citizens of the United States. Germany comes second, closely followed by Britain, then France. The tiny Caribbean island of St. Lucia, population 150,000, has produced two laureates, Arthur Lewis
in
Economics and Derek Walcott in Literature.
The most significant event affecting the distribution of prizes by nationality was the accession of the Nazis to power in Germany. Dismissed from German universities, many Jewish scientists, including several who had won or would later win the Nobel Prize, left Axis-dominated Europe, mainly for Britain and the United States. Before Hider took charge, Germany was the acknowledged world leader in the sciences. Up to 1932, Germany won 40 percent of the prizes in Chemistry and Physics, with the United States taking 9 percent. Since 1932, these figures have been reversed; Germany has won 9 percent, while American scientists have won 45 percent. Poland was similarly affected by the politics of the twentieth century, losing ten of its fifteen laureates to emigration.
Exile has consequently been the experience of many Nobel
laureates, while many others have left their native land in the pursuit of their calling. This gives a particular poignancy to their observations on their countries of birth and adoption.
638. I'm the happiest combination you can think of. I'm a Russian poet, an English essayist, and an American citizen!
Joseph Brodsky
LITERATURE, 1987
639. I am proud to have become an American. Here is the last refuge of freedom. It is only the United States that can save the world.
Albert Einstein
PHYSICS, 1921
640. What America means to the rest of the world is the hope for people everywhere that they shall be able to walk with their heads erect.
Henry Kissinger
PEACE, 1973
641. I had never come across so many good people ready to help their neighbor.
Czeslaw Milosz
LITERATURE, 1980
Referring to the United States
642. The most fascinating and exotic people in the world—the Average Citizens of the United States, with their friendliness to strangers and their rough teasing, their passion for material advancement and their shy idealism, their interest in all the world and their boastful provincialism.
Sinclair Lewis
LITERATURE, 1930
643. The Americans will always do the right thing after trying all other alternatives.
Winston Churchill
LITERATURE, 1953
644. History had created something new in the USA, namely crookedness with self-respect or duplicity with honor.
Saul Bellow
LITERATURE, 1976
645. Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
Sinclair Lewis
LITERATURE, 1930
646. You've got to have a society which is concerned with justice. It's quite clear that American society for the past decade has been concerned with greed, not justice.
James Watson
MEDICINE, 1962
647. The poor in America are unorganized and largely mute . . . They are the least revolutionary proletariat in the world.
Gunnar Myrdal
ECONOMICS, 1974
648. We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming power on the other.
George C. Marshall
PEACE, 1953
649. For the moment we are the strongest power in the world. It is very important that we do not become the most hated.
Ernest Hemingway
LITERATURE, 1954
650. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.
Martin Luther King
PEACE, 1964
651. The United States leads the world economically and militarily, but it no longer does so morally . . . You have to prove your high moral standing by deeds, not words.
Lech Walesa
PEACE, 1983
652. I put it to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love.
Harold Pinter
LITERATURE, 2005
653. My feeling about the United States is this. To live alongside this great country is like living with your wife. At times it is difficult to live with her. At all times it is impossible to live without her.
Lester Pearson
PEACE, 1957
As Prime Minister of Canada to General Charles de Gaulle
654. The municipal authorities here consist of thieves so skilled in their profession that European corruption pales into insignificance in comparison.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
LITERATURE, 1905
655. It is easy to earn much money in America but difficult to spend it in pleasant ways.
Wolfgang Pauli
PHYSICS, 1945
656. Potatoes.
PaulDirac
PHYSICS, 1933
Answer to an American reporter's question, "What do you like best in America?"
657. There are too many famous people in America.
Eugene Wigner
PHYSICS, 1963
658. I have always thought that in the United States a liberal is a conservative with a heart and a conservative is a liberal without one.
Franco Modigliani
ECONOMICS, 1985
659. Unconquerable England that did not submit to the war, but submitted the war to its habits and traditions. Adapted it to its proprieties. What a debt to her we had contracted when, alone, she stood fast against the monster!
Fraçois Jacob
MEDICINE, 1965
660. No sum of money can adequately and appropriately express our gratefulness to the British people. What this country of our adoption gave us was not just a new home and livelihood . . . We also found a new and better way of life coming from an atmosphere of political oppression and persecution . . . We found a spirit of friendliness, humanity, tolerance and fairness. It is this way of life with which some of us, I for one, fell in love. We were given here a new home—not merely a shelter but a true home.
Hans Krebs
MEDICINE, 1953
Speech in 1965 on behalf of ex-German refugees presenting a check to the presidents of the Royal Society and the British Academy in gratitude for the welcome they received in Britain
661. It was in Hopkins's laboratory where I saw for the first time at close quarters some of the characteristics of what is sometimes referred to as "the British way of life." The Cambridge laboratory included people of many different dispositions, convictions, and abilities. I saw them argue without quarrelling, quarrel without suspecting, suspect without abusing, criticize without vilifying or ridiculing, and praise without flattering.
Hans Krebs
MEDICINE, 1953
662. I can understand and like the English only after they are dead.
François Mauriac
LITERATURE, 1952
663. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
George Bernard Shaw
LITERATURE, 1925
664. You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient.
James Watson
MEDICINE, 1962
665. In spite of all the horrors of the past, I believe in you. Let us remember the victims and then let us walk together into the future to seek again a new beginning.
Nelly Sachs
LITERATURE, 1966
On being awarded the German Book Publishers Association Peace Prize, October 1965
666. A good German cannot be a nationalist. A good German knows that he cannot be other than a good European.
Willy Brandt
PEACE, 1971
667. To be anti-German seems to me just as bad as being antisemitic.
Hans Krebs
MEDICINE, 1953
668. I then remarked that we were inflicting damage on ourselves by forcing Jews whose talents we needed to emigrate and that their talents would now be used for the benefit of foreigners. This he [Hider] did not accept at all and held forth at great length about quite general matters, ending up by saying: "It is said that I suffer on occasion from weak nerves. That is a slander. I have nerves of steel." With that, he slapped his knee with great force, spoke more and more rapidly and began to shake with such uncontrollable rage that there was nothing I could do but keep silent and take my leave as soon as I decendy could.
Max Planck
PHYSICS, 1918
669. For a man whose mother tongue is Russian to speak about political evil is as natural as digestion.
Joseph Brodsky
LITERATURE, 1987
670. On account of what you are doing to the Russian intelligentsia—demoralizing, annihilating, depraving them—I am ashamed to be called a Russian!
Ivan Pavlov
MEDICINE, 1904
671. The guilt of Stalin and his immediate entourage before the Party and the people for the mass repression and lawlessness they committed is enormous and unforgivable.
Mikhail Gorbachev
PEACE, 1990
672. Actually, the demands of the hierarchy are very slight. There is only one thing they really want. You should hate what you like and love what you abhor! But this is the most difficult of all.
Boris Pasternak
LITERATURE, 1958
673. At the Novosibirsk Transit Prison in 1945 they greeted the prisoners with a roll call based on cases. "So and so! Article 51 and 58-1A, twenty-five years." The chief of the convoy guard was curious. "What did you get it for?" "For nothing at all." "You are lying. The sentence for nothing at all is ten years."
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
LITERATURE, 1970
674.1 can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less . . . than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
LITERATURE, 1970
675. One is more foreign in France than in other countries.
SaulBellow
LITERATURE, 1976
676. The Almighty in His infinite wisdom did not see fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen.
Winston Churchill
LITERATURE, 1953