Although I had been scribbling in English all my literary life in the margin, so to say, of my Russian writings, [Despair] was my ...first serious attempt (not counting a wretched poem in a Cambridge University review, circa 1920) to use English for what may be loosely termed an artistic purpose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The difference between a photograph and even the most realistic painting--say, one of Courbet's landscapes--is that in the latter ...there has been selection, emphasis and some discreet distortion. The painter's deep instinctive feeling for mass and force has rearranged everything.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A cow does not know how much milk it has until the milkman starts working on it. Then it looks round in surprise and sees the pail... full to the brim. In the same way a writer has no idea how much he has to say till his pen draws it out of him. Thoughts will then appear on the paper that he is amazed to find that he possessed. "How brilliant!" he says to himself. "I had no idea I was so intelligent." But the reader may not be so im pressed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Married love is a stream that, after a certain length of time, sinks into the earth and flows underground. Something is there, but... one does not know what. Only the vegetation shows that there is still water.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As soon as you begin to say "We have always done things this way--perhaps that might be a better way," conscious law-making is beg...inning. As soon as you begin to say "We do things this way--they do things that way--what is to be done about it?" men are beginning to feel towards justice, that resides between the endless jar of right and wrong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is only because a person has volitions of the second order that he is capable both of enjoying and of lacking freedom of the wi...ll.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, edu...cation, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves ... beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others ... and at the same time attesting facts, performed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »