Quotes

Borges me llama desde su casa y me refiere: «Madre y yo nos volvimos en taxi. Apenas subimos al automóvil, fue como andar en una montaña rusa. El hombre estaba borracho. La última vez que estuvo a punto de chocar fue en la puerta de casa, donde felizmente quedó en llanta. Madre y yo estábamos jadeantes. Entonces el destino nos deparó uno de los momentos más felices de la Historia argentina. Protestando contra todos los que pudo atropellar, el chofer, con voz aguardentera, crapulosa, recitó: “Hijos de Espejo, de Astorgano, de Perón, de Eva Perón, de Alsogaray y de todos los ladrones hijos de una tal por cual”. ¿Te das cuenta? ¡Si un hombre así está con nosotros hay esperanzas para la Patria!»

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Borges, Barcelona, 2006, p. 868

Estuve pensando que nadie me piensa. Que estoy absolutamente sola. Que nadie, nadie siente mi rostro dentro de sí ni mi nombre correr por su sangre. Nadie actúa invocándome, nadie construye su vida incluyéndome. He pensado tanto en estas cosas. He pensado que puedo morir en cualquier instante y nadie amenazará a la muerte, nadie la injuriará por haberme arrastrado, nadie velará por mi nombre. He pensado en mi soledad absoluta, en mi destierro de toda conciencia que no sea la mía. He pensado que estoy sola y que me sustento sólo en mí para sobrellevar mi vida y mi muerte. Pensar que ningún ser me necesita, que ninguno me requiere para completar su vida.

Alejandra Pizarnik and Ana Becciú, Diarios, Barcelona, 1956

No creo que yo sea un cara pálida ni un piel roja, pero las chicas igual se interesan por mí. Las seduzco con la palabra. Un amigo en Adrogué, Ribero, que jugaba muy bien al billar, era un soltero empedernido, siempre decía que la mayor hazaña de su vida había sido llevarse una mujer a la cama sin haberla tocado nunca. “Sólo con la voz y las palabras, la seduje”, decía.

Ricardo Piglia, Los diarios de Emilio Renzi, Barcelona, 2017, p. 48

A narcissist […], inspired by the homage paid to great painters, may become an art student; but, as painting is for him a mere means to an end, the technique never becomes interesting, and no subject can be seen except in relation to self. The result is failure and disappointment, with ridicule instead of the expected adulation. The same thing applies to those novelists whose novels always have themselves idealized as heroines. All serious success in work depends upon some genuine interest in the material with which the work is concerned. […] The man who is only interested in himself is not admirable, and is not felt to be so. Consequently the man whose sole concern with the world is that it shall admire him is not likely to achieve his object.

Bertrand Russell, The conquest of happiness, New York, 2013, p. 22

Come en casa Borges. De una alumna dice: «Como no es linda, ni es fea, esa chica no es nada, logra no existir, logra la ausencia».

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Borges, Barcelona, 2006, p. 495

Qué importa que queden mis libros. Sobrevivir espiritualmente en la obra. Qué tontería. Voy a estar muerto, me dicen, pero seguiré viviendo. Mentira. No soy tan vanidoso como para dejarme engañar.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, quoted in Patricia Arias Chachero, Aproximación a la vida y obra de Victoria Álvarez Ruiz de Ojeda, Madrygal. Revista de Estudios Gallegos, vol. 21, no. 0, 2016, pp. 355–379, p. 21

Let a six-year-old girl with brown hair need thousands of dollars for an operation that will prolong her life until Christmas, and the post office will be swamped with nickels and dimes to save her. But let it be reported that without a sales tax the hospital facilities of Massachusetts will deteriorate and cause a barely perceptible increase in preventable deaths—not many will drop a tear or reach for their checkbooks.

Samuel Chase (ed.), Problems in public Expenditure Analysis, 1968

If we believe that there are some irreducibly normative truths, we might be believing what we ought to believe. If there are such truths, one of these truths would be that we ought to believe that there are such truths. If instead we believe that there are no such truths, we could not be believing what we ought to believe. If there were no such truths, there would be nothing that we ought to believe.

Derek Parfit, On what matters, Oxford, 2011, p. 619

There is no reason to fear nihilism. What we should fear is mistaken belief in nihilism.

Guy Kahane, If nothing matters, Noûs, vol. 51, no. 2, 2017, pp. 327–353

Derek Parfit tells me that, if the amount of evil in the world outweighed any actual or forthcoming good, as Hardy and Schopenhauer held, then he would prefer it to be the case that nothing matters. I have to admit that I don’t understand this preference.

Guy Kahane, If nothing matters, Noûs, vol. 51, no. 2, 2017, pp. 327–353

Sir Joshua Reynolds once asked him by what means he had attained his extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told him, that he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, and in every company: to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by constant practice, and never suffering any careless expressions to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it became habitual to him.

James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, p. 109

[A]ny company, any employment whatever, he preferred to being alone. The great business of his life (he said) was to escape from himself.

James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, London, 1791, pp. 167-168

Any death prior to the heat death of the universe is premature if your life is good.

Nick Bostrom, The World I Dream of, Hants, 2010, p. 26

Sir, it is no matter what you teach [children] first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time, your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your children, another boy has learnt them both.

Samuel Johnson, Life of Mr Richard Savage, London, 1744, p. 245

[W]hen a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Samuel Johnson, Life of Mr Richard Savage, London, 1744, p. 152

I don’t travel for fun anymore—I think it’s a huge investment in discomfort and time with a small happiness payoff, since you don’t spend much time consuming the memories you got from traveling. Yes, you can learn from travel, but it’s an inefficient way to learn, make friends, or even have fun when you can do all that better at home.

Nick Winter, The Habitual Hustler: Daily Habits of 50 Self-Employed Entrepreneurs, 2016

There was a charming scene on Broad’s eightieth birthday, when he had tea with the Senior Bursar of Trinity, Dr Bradfield, Mrs Bradfield, and their son. There was a superb birthday cake, with eighty lighted candles. Broad was proud of his feat in blowing them all out with a single breath. Commenting on his exploit, Broad writes: ‘The practice of emitting hot air, of which philosophy so largely consists, had no doubt been a good training for me.’

Theo Redpath, C. D. Broad, Philosophy, vol. 72, no. 282, 1997, pp. 571–594, p. 594

[W]e have all met persons basking in self-satisfaction that seems both to be justified and not to be justified: justified because they have good reasons for being satisfied with themselves, and not justified because we sense that they would be just as satisfied were the reasons to disappear.

Martin Hollis & Steven Lukes (ed.), Rationality and Relativism, Massachusetts, 1982, p. 140

“Any defect or fault in this garment is intentional and part of the design.” This label on a denim jacket I bought in a San Francisco store epitomizes for me some of the morally and intellectually repelling aspects of the society in which I live[.]

Jon Elster, States that are essentially by-products, Social Science Information, vol. 20, no. 3, 2016, pp. 431–473, p. 456

A one-legged man, seeking a State mobility allowance, had to struggle up four flights of stairs to the room where a tribunal was to decide his claim.

When he got there the tribunal ruled that he could not have the allowance because he had managed to make it up the stairs.

Geoffrey Lean, Catch 22 for a man with one leg, The Observer, 1980, pp. 5, p. 5