The sage-like figure of Goethe looms over German literature like Shakespeare does over ours. This from his Italian Journey...
...knowing that life, taken as a whole, is like the Roman Carnival: unpredictable, unsatisfactory and problematic. I hope that this carefree crowd of maskers will make them [my readers] remember how valuable is every moment of joy, however fleeting and trivial it may seem to be.
Similarly, Tolstoy is the writer who towers over Russian literature. I've read Anna Karenina, but I'm ashamed to say I have yet to read War And Peace. I see I haven't noted down the origin of this Tolstoyan quotation...
Admit that human life can be guided by reason and all possibility of life is annihilated.
And while we're on Russian literature, Anton Chekhov, who penned some of the most sublime plays and short stories ever written, observed...
Every person lives his real, most interesting life under cover of secrecy.
The opening sentences of the Prologue to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography reverberate in the mind long after the book has been put down...
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I must have been subconsciously following Mark Twain's advice when I walked the Camino towards the end of last year...
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
And finally two quotes about the power of language, and its potential force for good. The first from John Berger...
One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannnot be hostile to man.
Developing this theme, the distinguished academic and Bob Dylan critic Christopher Ricks writes in his fascinating, deep and detailed book Dylan's Visions Of Sin...
Words trust, and they can keep faith. They are built upon faith, the faith that people will tell the truth - or at any rate that people may betray themselves when they are failing to do so... A language is a body of agreement, and acts of trust. A word is not a matter of fact, or matter of opinion, it is a social contract. Like all contracts, its life is a pledge and a faith. (And, like all contracts, it can be dishonest, suspect.) Songs and poems likewise keep faith alive. They "strengthen the things that remain" - words of the Book of Revelation...
As Dylan aficionados will know, Dylan quotes these Biblical words in his song When You Gonna Wake Up from the album Slow Train Coming. Unlike many, I never did turn against Dylan during his evangelical, religious phase - and some very good songs did come out of this period, for instance Precious Angel...
I've really enjoyed leafing through my old notebooks of quotations. I hope some of the sentiments struck a chord with some of you. Perhaps I'll do the same again some time...
