Quotes from John Williams

He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world.

He felt a renewal of the old passion for study and learning; and with the curious and disembodied vigor of the scholar that is the condition of neither youth nor age, he returned to the only life that had not betrayed him. He discovered that he had not gone far from that life even in his despair.

Though he seldom thought of his early years on the Booneville farm, there was always near his consciousness the blood knowledge of his inheritance, given him by forefathers whose lives were obscure and hard and stoical and whose common ethic was to present to an oppressive world faces that were expressionless and hard and bleak.

It hardly mattered to him that [his] book was forgotten and that it served no use; and the question of its worth at any time seemed almost trivial...He let his fingers riffle through the pages and felt a tingling, as if those pages were alive… The fingers loosened, and the book they had held moved slowly and then swiftly across the still body and fell into the silence of the room.

He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance.

Ach, wie anständig finden wir uns doch, wenn wir keinen Anlass haben, unanständig zu sein!

He was our enemy, but as it is strange, after so many years the death of an old enemy is like the death of an old friend.

she had never been alone to care for her own self one day of her life, nor could it ever have occurred to her that she might become responsible for the well- being of another.

it led his eyes outward and upward into the sky, where he looked as if toward a possibility for which he had no name.

They talked late into the night, as if they were old friends. And Stoner came to realize that she was, as she had said, almost happy with her despair; she would live her days out quietly, drinking a little more, year by year, numbing herself against the nothingness her life had become. He was glad that she had that, at least; he was grateful that she could drink.

But we were never really - together. Even when we made love.

He saw good men go down into a slow decline of hopelessness, broken as their vision of a decent life was broken;

Todos somos unos pobres diablos, y todos tenemos frio

Soms, ondergedoken in zijn boeken, werd hem duidelijk hoeveel hij nog niet wist, hoeveel hij nog niet gelezen had, en het was gedaan met de sereniteit waarmee hij had gewerkt toen tot hem doordrong hoeveel tijd hij in zijn leven nog had om dat allemaal te lezen, te leren wat hij moest leren.

Stafford was late again, as he had expected he would be late. He signaled the bartender and indicated his empty glass. He burrowed a little more securely in his separate awareness, he nestled a little more deeply into his private darkness, and he waited. In the long run, he thought, that is all one does; wait for people or keep people waiting.

Innocent of fashion or custom, they came to their studies as Stoner had dreamed that a student might—as if those studies were life itself and not specific means to specific ends.

Sloane looked at him for a moment, his eyes bright and intent as they had been before the war. Then the film of indifference settled over them, and he turned away from Stoner and shuffled some papers on his desk.

Beneath his awe, he had a sudden sense of security and serenity he had never felt before.

It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the heart, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance.

Supongo que hago esto porque no importa si lo hago o no. Y puede ser divertido pasear por el mundo una vez más antes de regresar a los claustros y a la lenta extinción que nos aguarda a todos».

Then he smiled fondly, as if at a memory; it occurred to him that he was nearly sixty years old and that he ought to be beyond the force of such passion, of such love. But he was not beyond it, he knew, and would never be. Beneath the numbness, the indifference, the removal, it was there, intense and steady; it had always been there

I hate and I love, Catullus said, speaking of that Clodia Pulcher whose family caused so much difficulty in Rome, even in our time and long after her death. It is not enough; but what better way might we begin to discover that self which is never wholly pleased or displeased with what the world offers?

And the consciousness of his inadequacy distressed him so greatly that the sense of it grew habitual, as much a part of him as the stoop of his shoulders.

and as he walked slowly through the evening, breathing the fragrance and tasting upon his tongue the sharp night-time air, it seemed to him that the moment he walked in was enough and that he might not need a great deal more.