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Correspondence Quotes

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Correspondence Quotes

“I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me. I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.”

SolitudeLettersCorrespondenceCommunicationsLoners
Author:Saul Bellow
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“I have tonight begun reading a stupid, shitty book by Kerouac called Big Sur, and I would give a ball to wake up tomorrow on some empty ridge with a herd of beatniks grazing in the clearing about 200 yards below the house. And then to squat with the big boomer and feel it on my shoulder with the smell of grease and powder and, later, a little blood.”

CriticismLettersHuntingCorrespondenceBeatnikBig Sur1962Kerouac
Book:The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
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“North Brooklin, Maine 30 March 1973 Dear Mr. Nadeau: As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness. Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man's curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out. Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day. Sincerely, [Signed, 'E. B. White']”

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Author:E.B. White
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“I don't have to point out, I'm sure, that letters received should be answered within a reasonable time- say a month; but there is such a thing as answering too promptly and writing too long a letter. It makes answering a burden to your correspondent, who will feel obligated to do at least as well as you have done, and will soon be heartily sick of the whole thing.”

LettersCorrespondenceLetter WritingPenpal
Book:We Took to the Woods
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“I am in no mood to fulminate on paper--I wish the two of us were in a room together talking of what matters most, the air thick with affinity. In January a man crawls into a cave of hopelessness; he hallucinates sympathies catching fire. Letters are glaciers, null frigates, trapping us where we are in the moment, unable to carry us on toward truth.”

LettersWinterJanuarySoul MatesCorrespondenceConversationsGlaciersEpistolary
Book:Frances and Bernard
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“Let us consider letters - how they come at breakfast, and at night, with their yellow stamps and their green stamps, immortalized by the postmark - for to see one's own envelope on another's table is to realize how soon deeds sever and become alien. Then at last the power of the mind to quit the body is manifest, and perhaps we fear or hate or wish annihilated this phantom of ourselves, lying on the table. Still, there are letters that merely say how dinner's at seven; others ordering coal; making appointments. The hand in them is scarcely perceptible, let alone the voice or the scowl. Ah, but when the post knocks and the letter comes always the miracle seems repeated - speech attempted. Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost.”

LettersCorrespondence
Book:Jacob's Room
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“There is no single thing... that is so cut and dried that one cannot attend to its secret whisper which says 'I am more than just my appearance'. If each object quivers with readiness to imply something other than itself, if each perception is a word in a poem dense with connotations, then the poet's selection of any given subject of speculation will become... a means of attuning himself to the rhythms and harmonies of reality at large. ... The notion of a network of correspondence is not an outmoded Romantic illusion: it represents a crucial intuition...”

PoetryPerceptionIntuitionPoetsRomanticismSymbolismCorrespondencePoetics
Book:Figures of Reality
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“...there is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false.”

ReasonTruthMetaphorMeaningObjectivityCorrespondenceConceptualizationEmbodied MindEmbodied Realism
Book:Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
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“...if there be some points which correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed, which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than ten hours of oral intercourse!”

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Book:What is Property?
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“For the most part, of course, the presence of the great spiritual universe surrounding us is no more noticed by us than the pressure of air on our bodies, or the action of light. Our field of attention is not wide enough for that; our spiritual senses are not sufficiently alert. Most people work so hard at developing their correspondence with the visible world, that their power of correspondence with the invisible is left in a rudimentary state.”

PeopleWorldHardStatesEnoughBodyLightActionSpiritualUniverseCoursesLeftAttentionSeeingAirFieldsPressureWideSensesInvisibleDevelopingVisibleCorrespondenceGreat Spiritual
Author:Evelyn Underhill
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“Belshazzar had a letter,-- He never had but one; Belshazzar's correspondence Concluded and begun In that immortal copy The conscience of us all Can read without its glasses On revelation's wall.”

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Book:Selected poems and letters of Emily Dickinson: together with Thomas Wentworth Higginson's account of his correspondence with the poet and his visit to her in Amherst
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“It seems like I always wrote, I just didn't think of it as a career choice. I just liked to tell stories ... to myself, to pen pals (I had a lot of them, all over the world). Of course this was in the days before computers were everywhere, and anyone could access the Web. You had to make an effort keeping up a correspondence, and the arrival of the mail once a day was a big deal. I think if modern technology had been around when I was a kid, I would never have left my bedroom except to take the dogs out for their run three times a day.”

IfsThinkingWorldStoriesBigsSeemsRunningKidsChoicesThreeCoursesLeftDealsEffortCareersTechnologyModernDogComputerAccessPensMailBedroomThree TimesBig DealArrivalsCorrespondencePalsModern TechnologyCareers Choices
Author:Charles de Lint
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“"There is one basis of science," says Descartes, "one test and rule of truth, namely, that whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is true." A profound psychological mistake. It is true only of formal logic, wherein the mind never quits the sphere of its first assumptions to pass out into the sphere of real existences; no sooner does the mind pass from the internal order to the external order, than the necessity of verifying the strict correspondence between the two becomes absolute. The Ideal Test must be supplemented by the Real Test, to suit the new conditions of the problem.”

MindFirstsDoeTwoRealProblemOrderExistenceMistakeConditionsIdealsTestsLogicBasesAbsolutesProfoundQuittingPsychologicalSuitsAssumptionInternalsSpheresFormalStrictNever QuitCorrespondence
Author:George Henry Lewes
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“When I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, having in himself a fairer harmony than that of the lyre.”

MenVirtueHe ManMusicianHarmonyNotesWorthyCompareThemeDelightedCorrespondenceTrue Man
Book:The Dialogues of Plato
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“Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato , interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato , looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge.”

MenHumansLooksMayCoursesProcessUnderstandingViewsModernMiddlePositionObjectsDevelopmentConsciousOriginalsSeekingFollowingPoint Of ViewImpressionRelativeBehaviourPlatoEvaluationModern ManCorrespondenceHuman KnowledgeDialecticsHuman PsycheCongruenceUnderstanding Nature
Author:Wolfgang Pauli
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“From the very beginning, art meant something very important to the people who made it. It was a correspondence of the emotions to what you saw; it wasn't knowledge. You were being at one with something eternal; something outside of yourself. And no matter how many fake things have been brought in to suit other conditions... That is still true.”

PeopleHas BeensArtMadeStillsImportantMatterEmotionSawsConditionsEternalImportanceSuitsMade ItFakeCorrespondence
Author:Milton Resnick
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“Painting is... a correspondence between what you are and what you see. It's a moment when something is holding together in such a way that it is a universe in itself... Within this is a test and also a judgment upon yourself, your capabilities, your promises, and the part that you play in the world. And nobody else can test that for you. Certainly not the Museum of Modern Art.”

WorldWayArtPlayMomentsTogetherUniverseModernPaintingPromiseJudgmentTestsMuseumsCapabilityModernismCorrespondenceModern Art
Author:Milton Resnick
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