Quote

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

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
Though
Result
Write
Horse
Utters
Doe
Creation
Creations
Reason
Proud
Accident
Nothing
Wise
Beast
Writing
Results
River
Something
Humanity
Accidents
Men
Small
Rivers

More quotes by 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
Intellectual sodomy, which comes from the refusal to be simple about plain matters, is as gross and abundant today as sexual perversion and they are nowise different from one another.
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
Look at this poet William Carlos Williams: he is primitive and native, and his roots are in raw forest and violent places he is word-sick and place-crazy. He admires strength, but for what? Violence! This is the cult of the frontier mind.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
The newspaper has debauched the American until he is a slavish, simpering, and angerless citizen it has taught him to be a lump mass-man toward fraud, simony, murder, and lunacies more vile than those of Commodus or Caracalla.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
I know sage, wormwood, and hyssop, but I can't smell character unless it stinks.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Ambition is a Dead Sea fruit, and the greatest peril to the soul is that one is likely to get precisely what he is seeking.
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
We are ruled by chance but never have enough patience to accept its despotism.
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
I have no confidence in a man whose faults you cannot see.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
We are always talking about being together, and yet whatever we invent destroys the family, and makes us wild, touchless beasts feeding on technicolor prairies and rivers.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Perhaps Samuel Johnson was a great man he was certainly a drumbling one.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
A man who can be entertaining for a full day will be in his grave by night-fall.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Every decision you make is a mistake.
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
We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
A strong foe is better than a weak friend.
Edward Dahlberg
Image
Man pines to live but cannot endure the days of his life.
Edward Dahlberg