Quote

We are ruled by chance but never have enough patience to accept its despotism.

Edward Dahlberg

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edward Dahlberg
Age: 76 †
Born: 1900
Born: July 22
Died: 1977
Died: February 27
Novelist
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Never
Despotism
Ruled
Patience
Accept
Accepting
Chance
Enough

More quotes by Edward Dahlberg

Image
Every decision you make is a mistake.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
A painter can hang his pictures, but a writer can only hang himself.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Of all the animals on earth, none is so brutish as man when he seeks the delirium of coition.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
The earnings of a poet could be reckoned by a metaphysician rather than a bookkeeper.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
A man who can be entertaining for a full day will be in his grave by night-fall.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
I have no confidence in a man whose faults you cannot see.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Though man is the only beast that can write, he has small reason to be proud of it. When he utters something that is wise it is nothing that the river horse does not know, and most of his creations are the result of accident.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
I know sage, wormwood, and hyssop, but I can't smell character unless it stinks.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Man hoards himself when he has nothing to give away.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
We are uneasy with an affectionate man, for we are positive he wants something of us, particularly our love.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
What is most appalling in an F. Scott Fitzgerald book is that it is peopleless fiction: Fitzgerald writes about spectral, muscledsuits dresses, hats, and sleeves which have some sort of vague, libidinous throb. These are plainly the product of sickness.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Man pines to live but cannot endure the days of his life.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
A strong foe is better than a weak friend.
Edward Dahlberg