Recognitions Gaddis Quotes & Sayings

The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body. — Jostein Gaarder

You should watch what you say to people. — Bob Benson

The Celtic ideal for clothing was that it had to be easy to move in if you needed to fight and easy to take off if you wanted a quickie. — Kevin Hearne

When I approach villains, unless it's a drama, I'm a comedian, so I approach most things from a comedic point of view. — Rob Riggle

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. — G.K. Chesterton

He stopped, though, after we gave him crabs." "You infected your father with a disease?" "Not those kinds of crabs." He rolled his eyes. "We filled his expensive BMW with real ones. Turns out they're rough on leather. — Eve Langlais

There are no problems - just endless possibilities. — Debasish Mridha

To this I replied, "I still think that my body is not merely a sensory appearance, for surely it came from my parents, who were its cause and condition."
He said, "If you think that your body came from your father and mother, then what are the beginning and end of these parents? What are their source, their location, their final destination? Tell me!"
I answered, "I think that they exist, but I am not aware of what they are. It seems to me that a physical body without parents is not possible."
He retorted, "Consider this. Who are the parents of the body in a dream, in the bardo, and in the hell realms?" With that, I arrived at the decision that this body has never existed, being simply a sensory experience. — Dudjom Lingpa

Venerable age had not, for him, arranged that derelict landscape against which it is privileged to sit and pick its nose, break wind, and damn the course of youth groping among the obstacles erected, dutifully, by its own hands earlier, along the way of that sublime delusion known as the pursuit of happiness.
Not to be confused with the state of political bigotry, mental obstinacy, financial security, sensual atrophy, emotional penury, and spiritual collapse which, under the name "maturity", animated lives around him, it might be said that Reverend Gwyon had reached maturity. — William Gaddis

Laws against things like drugs are inhumane, and create an inhumane society and inhumane law enforcement. I know what's causing violence in America - the damn drug laws. — Michael Moriarty

I, it's just, listen, criticism? It's the most important art now, it's the one we need most now. Criticism is the art we need most today. But not, don't you see? not the "if I'd done it myself . . ." Yes, a, a disciplined nostalgia, disciplined recognitions — William Gaddis

For a breath she wished for a shape-shifter's heart so she could shed her skin and weave herself into something else, the music or the wind, and blow across the world. — Sarah J. Maas

Then, what is sacrelige [sic]? If it is nothing more than a rebellion against dogma, it is eventually as meaningless as the dogma it defies, and they are both become hounds ranting in the high grass, never see the boar in the thicket. Only a religious person can perpetrate sacrelige: and if its blasphemy reaches the heart of the question; if it investigates deeply enough to unfold, not the pattern, but the materials of the pattern, and the necessity of a pattern; if it questions so deeply that the doubt it arouses is frightening and cannot be dismissed; then it has done its true sacreligious [sic] work, in the service of its adversary: the only service that nihilism can ever perform.
(unused 1949 prefatory note to The Recognitions) — William Gaddis

He wanted one night with her when he did not have to be on his guard waiting for the Douglases to discover that she was English and a lass; one night when he could sit and talk with her by the fire without another soul in sight; one night when when he did not need to pretend he did not want her. — Margaret Mallory

I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which 'The Recognitions' ' debt to 'Ulysses' was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read 'Ulysses. — William Gaddis

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Most people are clever because they don't know how to be honest. William Gaddis, The Recognitions. — William Gaddis