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)
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.
I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better Knowledge, sent to where I met him, down the Lachlan, years ago. He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him, Just 'on spec', addressed as follows: 'Clancy, of the Overflow'. And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected, (And I think the same was written with a thumbnail dipped in tar) 'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it: 'Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'
Banjo (Andrew Barton) Paterson— 1895 'Clancy of the Overflow', first published in the Bulletin, collected in The Man from Snowy River and OtherVerses (1895).
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
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))
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.
The delight of the Torah is ignited by an inner awareness. A man begins to sense the great tapestry of each letter and point. Every concept and content, every notion and idea, of every spiritual movement, of every vibration, intellectual and emotional, from the immediate and general to the distant and detailed, from matters lofty, spiritual, and ethical according to their outward profile, to matters practical, obligatory, seemingly frightening, and forceful, and at the same time complex and full of content and great mental exertion all together become known by a supernal holy awareness.
— XXVIII : The Inner Light of Torah in the Land of Israel, as translated by Rabbi Bezalel Naor, p. 208.
Dear Prue, If a servant I sent last night got to Hampton-court, you received 29 walnuts and a letter from me. I inclose the Gazette; and am, with all my soul, Your passionate lover, and faithful husband,
Gertrude Stein— RICH. STEELE 1708 Letter, 20 Sep (published1787).
Inevitably, we’ve fastened on those last memorable lines about hope, optimism and love. But the letter was, at its heart, a manifesto for social democracy. And if there was one word that might sum up Jack Layton’s unabashed, social democratic message, it would be “generosity.” He wanted, in the simplest and most visceral terms, a more generous Canada.
jack layton— Stephen Lewis' Eulogy for Jack Layton
It's ten years since I heard, andThen one day a letter comes.It's neutral stuff, until IDelve into the envelopeAgain and find your photo,Handsome still, and not a lineTo tell me why you sent it.
edward lucie-smith— Poem A Former Lover
"I love things made out of animals," Sedaris says, holding a knife with a hoof for a handle. "It's just so funny to think of someone saying, 'I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer.'"
david sedaris— Interview with Robert David Sullivan
There were a lot of people who were willing to write a letter for me. Not because I was academically inclined, but because I worked hard.
smith, leighton w., jr.— On his admission to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1958 as an appointment of US congressman Frank W. Boykin, as quoted in Afterburner : Naval Aviators and the Vietnam War (2004) by John Darrell Sherwood, Ch. 20 : Leighton Warren Smith and the Fall of Thanh Hoa, p. 272
Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a ‘poetic mood’. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one’s thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.
ludwig wittgenstein— p. 75e (Culture and Value (1980))
I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
Blaise Pascal— In Provincial Letters: Letter XVI; similar statements have been attributed to Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, Cicero, and others besides.
Your letter firmed me up a lot. It certainly is a comfort to know that my work is respected by someone whom I respect and am as fond as you. It confirms my beliefe that life is notall nonsense and cruelty the inversion of Victorian complacency but has hard spots of sense and love bobbing about in it here and there.
e. m. forster— Letter 330, to Christopher Isherwood, 28 August 1938
Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. ... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.
george pólya— p. 148 (How to Solve It (1945))
"That light," said the Chaplain, "is it going up or coming down?" "It's coming down," said Lord Asriel, "but it isn't light. It's Dust ." Something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a capital letter, as if this wasn't ordinary dust. The reaction of the Scholars confirmed her feeling, because Lord Asriel's words caused a sudden collective silence, followed by gasps of incredulity.
philip pullman— Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay
I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
unknown— Often attributed to Mark Twain but believed to be said by Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar
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.
— p. 79 (They'd Rather Be Right (1954))
Thy letter sent to prove me, Inflicts no sense of wrong; No longer wilt thou love me, Thy letter, though, is long.
Heinrich Heine— Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, New Spring, No. 34.
A piece of simple goodness a letter gushing from the heart; a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth.
— Douglas Jerrold, Specimens of Jerrold's Wit, The Postman's Budget.
At this every lady drew up her mouth as if going to pronounce the letter P.
— Oliver Goldsmith, letter to Robert Bryanton. Sept., 1758
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.
A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.
honoré de balzac— Letters of Two Brides, Part I, chapter XXXI (1841-1842).
For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language; on earth it is called Forgiveness!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Children of the Lord's Supper, line 214
Nobody wants an apology letter 14 years later.
lennon parham— American actress and writer
