WIST Quotations

Dinesen, Isak -- “The Deluge at Norderney,” Seven Gothic Tales [Kasparson] (1934)

Dave — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 15:24:16 +0000

Few people can say of themselves that they are free of the belief that this world which they see around them is in reality the work of their own imagination. Are we pleased with it, proud of it, then?

Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) Danish writer [pseud. of Karen Christence, Countess Blixen]
“The Deluge at Norderney,” Seven Gothic Tales [Kasparson] (1934)
(Source)

Lippmann, Walter -- (Attributed)

Dave — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 18:27:45 +0000

We are all captives of the picture in our head — our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
(Attributed)

Solzhenitsen, Alexander -- The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 1, Part 1, ch. 1 (1973) [tr. Whitney]

Dave — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 17:52:47 +0000

The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you “You are under arrest.” If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm? But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these displacements in our universe, and both the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life’s experience, can gasp out only: “Me? What for?”

Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 1, Part 1, ch. 1 (1973) [tr. Whitney]
(Source)

Adams, Douglas -- Hitchhiker’s Guide No. 2, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, ch. 19 (1980)

Dave — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 04:02:50 +0000

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humorist, screenwriter
Hitchhiker’s Guide No. 2, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, ch. 19 (1980)
(Source)

Proust, Marcel -- Remembrance of Things Past “The Sweet Cheat Gone” (1913-27)

Dave — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 12:37:36 +0000

The bonds that unite another person to ourself exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter relaxes them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we cheat other people and we exist alone. Man is the only creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary he is lying.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French author
Remembrance of Things Past “The Sweet Cheat Gone” (1913-27)