William Gaddis

Let them look up in the sky then…! if they must be so blind, that cannot see the truth in broad daylight, but must have the whole world in darkness to see the conceit of the stars…

That was Youth with its reckless exuberance when all things were possible pursued by Age where we are now, looking back at what we destroyed, what we tore away from that self who could do more, and its work that’s become my enemy because that’s what I can tell you about, that Youth who could do anything.

Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in a number of grimy intellectual households in Greenwich Village.

There’s much more stupidity than there is malice in the world.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?

Merry Christmas! the man threatened.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

This is the comfort of the godly: the grave cannot hold them, and they live as soon as they die. For death is no more than turning us over from time to eternity.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, Know thyself, and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

Remember who you are.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.

Be confident, not certain

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

I teach that all men are mad.

Above anything else, I hate to lose.