Letter Quotes
More Letter Quotes
I started to work on this book in 1954, when, having been called to active duty in the Navy, I was relieved of the burdens of a full-time psychoanalytic practice... Within a year of its publication, the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene demanded, in a letter citing specifically 'The Myth Of Mental Illness', that I be dismissed from my university position because I did not "believe" in mental illness.
thomas szasz— Preface to the Second Edition
After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
jean cocteau— On the journal of Franz Kafka; diary entry (7 June 1953); Past Tense: Diaries Vol. 2 (1988)
He used to say that personal beauty was a better introduction than any letter; 18 but others say that it was Diogenes who gave this description of it, while Aristotle called beauty "the gift of God"; that Socrates called it "a short-lived tyranny"; Theophrastus , "a silent deceit"; Theocritus , "an ivory mischief"; Carneades , "a sovereignty which stood in need of no guards".
diogenes laërtius— The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics, Aristotle, 9.
Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter- writing.
george eliot— Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 8 June 1856. Collected in The George Eliot Letters, edited by G. S. Haight (1954), volume 2.
The diocesan papers are full of stories about atrocities in China and the sufferings of the Church and I get a letter from Betty Chang from Tientsin about the communes and the full-employment, etc. When we see the migrant camps, and our factories in the fields, our system does not offer much.
dorothy day— 12 February 1959
When Henry Mulcahy, a middle-aged instructor of literature at Jocelyn College, Jocelyn, Pennsylvania, unfolded the President's letter and became aware of its contents, he gave a sudden sharp cry of impatience and irritation, as if such interruptions could positively be brooked no longer.
mary mccarthy— The Groves of Academe (1952) First lines
A wonderfully funny letter was sent to me signed by a fraternity in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., medical school; the fraternity for doctors had voted me the body on which they would most like to operate.
dyanne thorne— Fabian Paffendorf (November, 2003). Dyanne Thorne Interview. wicked-vision.com. Retrieved on 2007-09-30.
— (also available in German)
In either event he could only adhere to the letter of the law, but then for every yea in the law there was a nay, and it always boiled down to simple expediency. Like a psychiatric diagnosis, it could always be juggled around to fit anything you chose.
mark clifton— p. 79 (They'd Rather Be Right (1954))
Words are transient, and vanish in the air as soon as spoken, and there can be no tenor of them . . . but when a thing is written, though every omission of a letter may not make a variance, yet, if such omission makes a word of another signification, it is fatal.
— Holt, C.J., Queen v. Drake (1706), 3 Salkeld, 225.
Your peers will respect you for your integrity and character, not your possessions.
David Robinson— Letter to My Younger Self (November 22, 2016)
He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realize,' he said 'The bitterness of life!'
— 1889 Sylvie and Bruno, ch.5.
There is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all TomJones.
— 1772 Remark, 6 Apr. Quoted in James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.
As to those who have debarred themselves from the Revelation of God, they have indeed failed to understand the significance of a single letter of the Qur’án, nor have they obtained the slightest notion of the Faith of Islám, otherwise they would not have turned away from God, Who hath brought them into being, Who hath nurtured them, hath caused them to die and hath proffered life unto them, by clinging to parts of their religion, thinking that they are doing righteous work for the sake of God.
báb— XVII, 2 (The Kitáb-I-Asmá)
The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers — stern and wild ones, — and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Nathaniel Hawthorne— Chapter XVIII: A Flood of Sunshine
Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.
ernest hemingway— "Trout Fishing in Europe" The Toronto Star Weekly (17 November 1923)
No one has ever told me precisely what is wrong with me. Morrell's method of cure is so logical that I have the greatest confidence in him. I shall follow his prescriptions to the letter.
theodor morell— Adolf Hitler
I have owed you this letter for a very long time — but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.
john steinbeck— Letter to his literary agent, found on his desk after his death in 1968
Thought may well be ever ranging, And opinion ever changing, Task-work be, though ill begun, Dealt with by experience better; By the law and by the letter Duty done is duty done Do it, Time is on the wing!
arthur hugh clough— Love, Not Duty, st. 1 (1841).
Goethe said, “The author whom a lexicon can keep up with is worth nothing”; Somerset Maugham says that the finest compliment he ever received was a letter in which one of his readers said: “I read your novel without having to look up a single word in the dictionary.” These writers, plainly, lived in different worlds.
Randall Jarrell— "The Obscurity of the Poet", p. 13
I regard criticism as an art, and if in this country and in this age it is practiced with honesty, it is no more remunerative than the work of an avant-garde film artist. My dear anonymous letter writers, if you think it is so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets.
Pauline Kael— "Replying to Listeners", broadcast on KPFA (January 1963)
I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten and Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of 'arisch' origin from all persons of all countries? ... I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.
j. r. r. tolkien— No. 30: Letter to Stanley Unwin (25 July, 1938); Tolkien's German publishers had written to ask him whether he was of "Aryan" origin.
No doubt he had acted in direct opposition to the spirit of the injunction, but legal orders are read by the letter, and not by the spirit.
Anthony Trollope— Ch. 28 (Phineas Redux (1874))
The only road, the sure road to unquestioned credit and a sound financial condition is the exact and punctual fulfilment of every pecuniary obligation, public and private, according to its letter and spirit.
— Rutherford B. Hayes, speech at N. E. Society Dinner, Brooklyn, Dec. 21, 1880.
I read your letter, made me feel better, How did you know that I was singing the blues? I felt your sunshine, made me feel so fine, How did you know that I was thinking of you?
Paul Davis— "Thinking of You" (1976)
For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick O'Teen. And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear, But I have been priest of Partagas a matter of seven year. And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cherry light Of stumps that I burned to friendship, and pleasure and work and fight.
rudyard kipling— Rudyard Kipling, The Betrothed.
The advent of other Greek letter fraternities met the social needs or supposed needs of underclass men and left Phi Beta Kappa to give sole concern to scholarly affairs.
— Rev. E. B. Parsons, D. D., Phi Beta Kappa Hand-Book and General Address Catalogue (1900), p. 14
By our rules we cannot receive a letter from a friend.
— Bayley, J., King v. Knowles (1820), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 515.
Although Hinduism has no official symbol, the religious symbol most sacred to most Hindus is the mythical syllable Om [also spelled aum]...the symbol is composed of equivalent of our letter a, u, and m. Although as a syllable it has no literal meaning, Om symbolizes the fundamental hidden reality of the universe and is the basic spiritual sound the universe makes, particularly the sound of World Soul.
— Hinduism, in RELG: World, p.76
It's a letter to my dad...it's got blood on it..
— Who: Private Adrian Carpazo (Vin Diesel)
— Note: Last words after being shot by a German sniper, he tries to show Mellish his letter, telling him to send it for him. He ends up bleeding to death.
