Quotes by Translators - Page 7

Through her the battling man becomes sublime,and fairy tales are spun from gray-maned storms;From moments' tears immortal pearls are formedAnd dulcet wonders cradle bloody times("She Rests")
Konstantin Balmont
I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man.
Fernando Pessoa
He awoke, opened his eye. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. ... In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into on the the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one.
Paul Bowles
To be a prophet, Knox emphasizes, requires living in and looking at the present, at what is really going on around you.
Anne Carson
People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the world lasts.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Everything is interconnected. My readings of classical authors, who never speaks of sunsets, have made many sunsets intelligible to me, in all their colors. There is a relationship between syntactical competence, by which we distinguish the values of beings, sounds and shapes, and the capacity to perceive when the blue of the sky is actually green, and how much yellow is in the blue green of the sky. It comes down to the same thing - the capacity to distinguish and to discriminate. There is no enduring emotion without syntax. Immortality depends of the grammarians.
Fernando Pessoa
Where would I be (and what would happen to me), if I could see all round me and above and below at once ?
Nanamoli Thera
I am writing this on a computer that I can’t imagine living without. This is an alarming thought, the extent to which I have organised my life around a metal box full of wires (and, via the Internet, to many other metal boxes full of wires). Someone told me most of the Internet is stored in a warehouse somewhere in North Carolina. I don’t know enough about technology to gauge if this is true, but it made me realise how little I actually understand about the world I inhabit. The world of Dr Wong’s childhood was significantly smaller than mine, but he understood every square inch of it.
Jeremy Tiang
No one feels good at four in the morning.If ants feel good at four in the morning—three cheers for the ants.
Wisława Szymborska
you have to live by fighting each other, it's the law, the only way that things areworth while but it hurts
Julio Cortázar
In this atmosphere Where you have to go perennially crazy only to survive, Which auspicious moment should I choose to become mad?
Suman Pokhrel
You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.
Dorothy L. Sayers
As time passes in Heaven, the stars do not change places, not till the day when Zig changes the complete backdrop. I tell my students this is a metaphor for life; we go along thinking nothing will be different, till the day everything suddenly changes at once.
Neil Smith
Refutations of the views of inherently existent production are not just refutations of rival systems but should be taken as a branch of the process of overcoming one's own innate sense that things are inherently produced. The innate non-analytical intellect does not conceive cause and effect to be either the same, or inherently different, or both, or neither; however, if the objects that the intellect misconceives as inherently existent did in fact inherently exist, they would necessarily exist in one of these four ways. Thus, through eliminating these four possibilities, the inherently existent products that are the objects of this innate ignorance are shown to be non-existent. By attacking in this way the falsely conceived object, the falsely conceiving subject is gradually overcome. The false subject is removed by overcoming belief in the false object.
Jeffrey Hopkins
The Buddha-nature which is ours from the very beginning is like the sun which emerges from the clouds, or like a mirror which, when rubbed, regains its original purity and clarity. (217)
Edward Conze
even there a shining is flowing from all the stonesthough the eyes are not yet made that can see it
W.S. Merwin
The departure of the church-going element had induced a more humanitarian atmosphere.
Dorothy L. Sayers
You must have been working very hard here, with so few distractions.”Mary’s eyes darkened and she looked away.“Not quite as much as I hoped for. At times the loneliness and the unanswered questions can get overwhelming, like very loud voices echoing inside my head, just asking ‘why’ ‘who’ and making me think about my wasted life.
Olga Núñez Miret
It’s…The only way I can get on with my life is by forgetting what went on before. Dave used to tell me that I didn’t have control over what the bastard of my father did to me, and that he’d been punished for it, and I might as well concentrate on the rest of my life, because over that…I had some control and I could decide what to do. I could change it over; I could become anything I wanted if I just tried hard enough.
Olga Núñez Miret
I thought part of the idea of having therapy was putting one in touch with his or her feelings. And don’t give me all that about transference, and counter-transference and all that. I know what I feel. And it has nothing to do with all that. And you also feel for me. And if you don’t know that, then maybe it’s you who needs to have therapy to gain a better knowledge of yourself.
Olga Núñez Miret
The way I look at it is this: If you try to obey the law, and the judges call you a criminal anyway, then you might as well live up to the name.
Ken Liu
there are so many unpunished crimes in the world; indeed, they cover an area so vast, so ancient, so broad and wide that, up to a point, what do we care if a millimetre more is added to it?
Javier Marías
But if you were investigating a crime,” said Lady Swaffham, “you’d have to begin by the usual things, I suppose — finding out what the person had been doing, and who’d been to call, and looking for a motive, wouldn’t you?”“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter, “but most of us have such dozens of motives for murderin’ all sorts of inoffensive people. There’s lots of people I’d like to murder, wouldn’t you?”“Heaps,” said Lady Swaffham.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Parker looked distressed. He had confidence in Wimsey's judgment, and, in spite of his own interior certainty, he felt shaken."My dear man, where's the flaw in [this case]?""There isn't one ... There's nothing wrong about it at all, except that the girl's innocent.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be.
Dorothy L. Sayers
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women actors on it" says Shakespeare. But actually only the men and women in the public gaze are actors on it. I, for instance, whom — and this I hold one of my greatest blessings while it is so — the public does not gaze on, am not an actor, but only a scene-shifter: the stage is curtained when I and those like me move on it. (Addition:) Or that is how I should like it to be always
Nanamoli Thera
The earth is buzzing with metaphor
Osip Mandelstam
The work of human thought should withstand the test of brutal, naked reality. If it cannot, it is worthless. Probably only those things are worthwhile which can preserve their validity in the eyes of a man threatened with instant death.
Czesław Miłosz
The cause of my profound sense of incompatibility with others is, I believe, that most people think with their feelings, whereas I feel with my thoughts.For the ordinary man, to feel is to live, and to think is to know how to live. For me, to think is to live, and to feel is merely food for thought.
Fernando Pessoa
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.
Dorothy L. Sayers
For the first time in human history, most people are doing things that could never interest a child enough to want to tag along. That says less about the child than about us.
Anthony M. Esolen
Are there many little boys who think they are a Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded himJoyfully
Anne Carson
I,' she began in her thoughts, as we all do when thinking of ourselves. But this I was her, something, someone whose life she really lived. She was this I, in body and soul, one with its very flesh, its memories, its past, present and future, all of which we seal into a single destiny each time we face ourselves and utter that tiny, unalterable word: 'I.
Dezső Kosztolányi
To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.
Fernando Pessoa
The horns of a rabbit do not inherently exist because they do not exist at all. The mere realization of their non-existence reveals that the horns of a rabbit do not inherently exist; therefore, the non-inherent existence of the horns of a rabbit is not an emptiness. An emptiness is not understood through realizing the mere non-existence of an object; it is known through comprehending in an existent object the absence of the quality of inherent or objective existence.
Jeffrey Hopkins
The people need poetry that will be their own secretTo keep them awake forever,And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.
Osip Mandelstam
Although this was not a comforting point of view, he did not reject it, because it coincided with one of his basic beliefs: that a man must at all costs keep some part of himself outside and beyond life. If he should ever for an instant cease doubting, accept wholly the truth of what his senses conveyed to him, he would be dislodged from the solid ground to which he clung and swept along with the current, having lost all objective sense, totally involved with existence.
Paul Bowles
There are moments, such as the one that oppresses me now, when I feel my own self far more than I feel external things, and everything transforms into a night of rain and mud where, lost in the solitude of an out-of-the-way station, I wait interminably for the next third-class train.
Fernando Pessoa
In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
Lin Yutang
Why didn't you become a sorcerer, Geralt? Weren't you ever attracted by the Art? Be honest.''I will. I was.''Why, then, didn't you follow the voice of that attraction?''I decided it would be wiser to follow the voice of good sense.''Meaning?''Years of practice in the witcher's trade have taught me not to bite off more than I can chew. Do you know, Vilgefortz, I once knew a dwarf, who, as a child, dreamed of being an elf. What do you think; would he have become one had he followed the voice of attraction?
Andrzej Sapkowski
If they finally move, is it because they are warm enough, or is it that they are stiff, or bored?
Lydia Davis
I studied mathematics which is the madness of reason.
Benjamin Moser
Ideals make reason inaccessible.
Floriano Martins
The wind languished. The floral curtain ceased flapping. The moonlight streamed through, lighting up her face. It was a young, animated face. At that moment, it touched a string, a peg, deep inside him.
Qiu Xiaolong
Without asking anybody’s advice I turned myself insane sitting under the same sun and the same clouds.
Suman Pokhrel
Should I ask everyone the question that should not have been asked? Or should I turning up to the sky be answering the question that’s not been asked?
Suman Pokhrel
The human being is not a fallen being in need of redemption but rather a forgetful being who must be reminded of God and his own nature.
Joseph E. B. Lumbard
...Amar was made conscious in an instant of a presence in the air, something which had been there all the time, but which he had never isolated and identified. The thing was in him, he was a part of it, as was the man opposite him, and it was a part of them; it whispered to them that time was short, that the world they lived in was approaching its end, and beyond was unfathomable darkness. It was the premonition of inevitable defeat and annihilation, and it had always been there with them and in them, as intangible and as real as the night around them. Amar pulled two loose cigarettes out of his pocket and handed one to the potter. "Ah, the Moslems, the Moslems!" he sighed. "Who knows what's going to happen to them?
Paul Bowles
For us (Muslims) death is an incident: for them (the Europeans), the end.
Marmaduke William Pickthall
What happened is the least of it. It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matter are the possibilities and ideas that the novelist’s imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.
Javier Marías
This dull, difficult novel I have brought with me on my trip—I keep trying to read it. I have gone back to it so many times, each time dreading it and each time finding it no better than the last time, that by now it has become something of an old friend. My old friend the bad novel.
Lydia Davis
The greatest tribute one can give to a writer is that it is simply enough to read him.
Isaac Goldberg
In 90 percent of cases, you could tell within a page or two whether the writer could write.
Jonathan Galassi
No one is treated with more patronizing condescension than the unpublished author or, in general, the would-be artist. At best he is commiserated. At worst mocked. He has presumed to rise above others and failed. I still recall a conversation around my father’s deathbed when the visiting doctor asked him what his three children were doing. When he arrived at the last and said young Timothy was writing a novel and wanted to become a writer, the good lady, unaware that I was entering the room, told my father not to worry, I would soon change my mind and find something sensible to do. Many years later, the same woman shook my hand with genuine respect and congratulated me on my career. She had not read my books.
Tim Parks
The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.
Alberto Manguel
It used to be that a novel would put you among people, tell you a story or stories, give you some sense of what it might be like to see a different cut-out and perspective of the world: as a schoolteacher, an adulteress, the wife of a member of Parliament, an officer, a cockroach.
Michael Hofmann
This is a love story. It’s about the good old days, when men were men and women were women and books were books.
Jonathan Galassi
For the one who writes it . . . a story is like a mirror.
Sylvia Iparraguirre
A law of life: at the precise instant when someone tells a truth, that truth is transformed into a story
Enrique de Hériz
The modern story begun, one might say, with Edgar Allan Poe, which proceeds inexorably, like a machine destined to accomplish its mission with the maximum economy of means.
Julio Cortázar