William Gaddis

Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as “rank presumption”.

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.

The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa….Leonardo had eye trouble….Art couldn’t explain it….But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf…

Merry Christmas! the man threatened.

Fearful of missing anything, he read on, filled with this anticipation which was half terror, of coming upon something which would touch him, not simply touch him but lift him and carry him away.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.

The stars are the apexes of what triangles!

What do sad complaints avail if the offense is not cut down by punishment.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.