Sunbeams: A Book of Quotations PDF
Preview Sunbeams: A Book of Quotations
QUNBEAMQ V^ V^ A BOOK OF QUOTATIONS SAFRANSKY SY ^W Sunbeams : a book of quotations / PM6081 S96 1990 21361 «U COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA (SF) PN 6081 S96 1990 UJaU cUe^ \JooA v^vo^VjiVs are- CK (Xi^.rxS-r $ edited by SAFRANSKY SY North Atlantic Books Berkeley, California Sunbeams: A Book of Quotations © 1990 hyThe Sun PublishingCompany, Inc. ISBN 1-55643-045-0 Published by North Atlantic Bcxiks 2800 Woolsey Street Berkeley, California 94705 This is issue #42 of the lo series. Cover and book design by Paula Morrison Typeset by Campai^ne 61 AsscKiatesTypography Printed in the United States of America Sunbeams: A Booh of Quotations is sponsored by the Society for the Study ofNative Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corptiration whose goals are to develop an ecological and crosscultural perspective linking various scien- tific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holis- tic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and heal- ing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, btxiy, and nature. INTRODUCTION Once a month, my desk at The Sun becomes amazing how often a quote will affect us in a way extravagantly cluttered with stacks ofbooks and the author could never have imagined. Some- magazines and letters and scribbled notes. For times the meaning of a quote changes simply — hours, I sift through them reading, jotting because it appears out of context. But it's also down a few words, staring out the window, read- true that certain words have a life oftheir own. ing some more, searching through hundreds of Clear as a window, they allow us to see through quotations for the handful that will become them; reading them, we see whatwe need to see. next month's Sunbeams. I haven't deliberately left out well-known quota- It's a familiar ritual. But, even after all these tions, though I tend to shy away from them. years, I still don't know why 1 tall in love with Certain favorite authors come up again and some quotes and not others. Drawn from such again, but if the same quote appears twice, it's diverse sources as stories, essays, speeches, inter- in spite ofthe most rigorous proofreading. Every views, novels, memoirs, and poems, the Sun- effort has been made to make sure the quotes beams page surely reflects my own likes and dis- are accurately worded and attributed; if the likes, passions and confusions. Yet some strange name of the work was known, it too was alchemy seems to be at work: I can't be sure included. If a quote seemed worth using hut, whether I choose Sunbeams or they choose me. because of its gender-exclusive language, was plainly sexist, it appears unedited. Such a deci- This is a collection of the best S—unbeams from sion can be argued endlessly; I saw no choice more than a decade. Mercifully for my sake but to be faithful to the original text. — and yours 1 didn't try to organize the quotes into subjects; instead, they appear as they did Perhaps all anthologies owe a debt to kindred in the magazine, with all the startling juxta- anthologies, and this one is no exception. I positions that honor, more accurately than any have more quote books than many small libraries; subject headings, the rich and paradoxical nature special favorites are Richard Kehl's Silver Depar- of our lives. tures, Art Spiegelman and Bob Schneider's Whole Grains, Russell McDougal's Mirror Of — — Placing certain quotations together is like seat- Mind and yes John Bartlett's Familiar Quota- ing strangers around a dinner table; you can't he tions, which I find surprisingly readable. sure where the conversation will lead. Also, it's Thanks, tinally, to all the readers oi The Sun who have sent in suggestions for Sunbeams, and to everyone at The Sun who helped to prepare this Kxik. It you'd like to know more aKuit The Sun, an independent journal that publishes a wide range of essays, interviews, fiction, and — poetry—and still, every month, a paj,'e of Sun- beams drop me a line at 107 North Roberson NC Street. Chapel Hill, 27516.— Sy Safransky Most quote Kii^ks bc>j to be opened at random, but consider reading; this bot)k front to back. It's divided into "chapters" that correspond to the original Sunbeams pages from The Sun, set off from each other by o o o o o He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the Since everything is but an apparition wild elephant goes. — Perfect in being what it is, Randolph Bourne Having nothing to do with good or bad, accep- tance or rejection. Properly, we shd. read for power. Man reading One may well burst out in laught—er. shd. be man intensely alive. The book shd. be Longchenpa a ball of light in one's hands. — Ezra Pound When men dream, each has his own world. When they are awake, they have a common world. — Heraclitus Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself. — Desiderius Erasmus The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. ^Annie Dillard People talk about love as if it were something you could give, like—an armful of flowers. Anne Morrow Lindbergh Prayer is not the moment when God and humans are in relationship, for that is always. Prayer is taking initiative to intentionally respond to God's presence. — L. Robert Keck Prayers are answered in the way th—ey're asked. Ram Tirth I felt itbetter to speak t—o God than about Him. St. Theresa of Lisieux Sl'NBEAMS I lcK>ked more widely around me, I studied the churning out draft after draft of crap, waiting lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that, like a neglected baby for just one drop of not two OT three, or ten, but hundreds, mother's milk. thousands, millions, had so understood the —Philip Roth meaning of life that they were able both to live and to die. All these men were well acquainted A writer is someone for whom writing is more with the meaning oi lite and death, quietly difficult than it is for other pe—ople. laK)red, endured privation and suffering, lived Thomas Mann and died, and saw in all this, not a vain, but a gocxJ thing. — One must learn to love, and go through a gcxxl Leo Tolstoy deal o\ suffering to get to it, like any knight of the grail, and the journey is always toward the Whenever you get there, there'—s no there there. other st)ul, not away from it. Do you think that Gertrude Stein K)ve is an accomplished thing, the day it is rec- ognized? It isn't. To love, you have to learn to understand the other more than she understands o o o o o herself, and to submit to her understanding of you. It is damnably difficult and painful, but it is the only thing which endures. You mustn't After fifteen years of total solitude, St. think that yourdesire or \xmr fundamental need Seraphim ofSarow exclaimed at the sight ot the is to make a career, or to fill up your life with least visitor, "Oh joy!" Wi)uld one who had activity, or even provide for your family mate- never refrained from rubbing sht>ulders with his rially. It isn't. Your most vital necessity in life fellow men have dared to greet them in such an is that you shall love your wife ci^mpletely and extravagant fashion.' implicitly and in entire nakedness of Kxly and — E.M. Cioran spirit. Then you will have peace and inner secu- rity no matter how many things go wrong. And What doesn't kill me, makes mc stronger. this peace and security will leave you free to act — Albert Camus and to produce your own work, a real and inde- pendent workman. — 1 wouldn't write a Kmk to win a fight. I'd rather D.H. Lawrence go fifteen rounds with Sonny Liston. At least it would be over in an hour and I could go to bed. There are so many little dyings every day, it But a btH)k takes me two years, if I'm lucky. doesn't matter which one o—f them is death. Eight hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days Kenneth Patchen a year, that's the only way I know how to do it. You have to sit alone in a room with only a tree Our own heart always exc—eeds us. out the window to talk to. Yt)u have to sit there Rainer Maria Rilke
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