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Quotes About Letters

Songs of longing! And they will resound in my letters, just as they always have, sometimes loudly and sometimes secretly so that you alone can hear them… But they will also be different — different from how they used to be, these songs. For I have turned and found longing at my side, and I have looked into her eyes, and now she leads me with a steady hand." ?from a letter to Lou Andreas-Salome
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Of course, you must know that every letter of yours will always give me pleasure, and you must be indul
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
I have thought it best to group all the explanations which any letters of Rilke necessarily involve, at the end of the book and out of the way; indeed, no harm will be done if the ordinary reader ignores them altogether, and enjoys the letters simply for what they are. But the student will probably care to pursue further some of the astonishing wealth of ideas which the poet here raises.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
My emotions locked, as I saw her lipstick lying on the table and grabbed it, saying, Yes, yes, as I bent to write furiously across her belly in drunken inspiration: SYBIL, YOU WERE RAPED BY SANTA CLAUS SURPRISE and paused there; trembling above her, my knees on the bed as she waited with unsteady expectancy. It was purplish metallic shade of lipstick, and as she panted with anticipation the letters stretched and quivered, up hill and down dale, and she was lit up like a luminescent sign.
~ Ralph Ellison
If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
He opened the first letter, No Dear Mr. Woods. It was a page full of profanities. There was something oddly refreshing about honest, to-the-point hate mail. No hypocrisy and forced politeness. Too many letters ripped you to shreds, then closed off 'Sincerely yours.
~ Randy Alcorn
After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back. And he had not written anyone since.
~ Joseph Heller
In his first year as president he received 1,881 letters, not including internal correspondence from his cabinet, and sent out 677 letters of his own. This
~ Joseph J. Ellis
Let them write angry letters to the Government- they haven't been loved enough, there has been some crime
~ Joyce Carol Oates
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name. And I leave them where they are, for I know that wherever I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever.
~ Walt Whitman
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
~ Walt Whitman
Es ist wie bei einem gedruckten Satz: Er besteht aus lauter verschieden aussehenden Buchstaben, die scheinbar willkürlich durcheinanderstehen. Aber trotzdem kann man ihn lesen! Und er ergibt einen Sinn. Man kann sogar drüber lachen, wenn er komisch ist. So funktioniert Buchhaim. Das ist Biblionismus.
~ Walter Moers
It is possible to insult Americans?" "They are automatically insulted and enraged," said the young composer. "They form splenetic organizations by the hundreds, and write letters to periodicals and congressmen. They gather in mobs and pay no attention. They hang people without trial and shoot citizens down with machine guns out of passing cars. They will despise you because you do not eat the same things they eat for breakfast. They even apply indifference.
~ Walter Van Tilburg Clark
The childhood of our parents is forever inscrutable, the cave within the cave of our own. The light's too dim, the dancing shadows unreliable, fundamentally unstable, even the impromptu photographs and private letters somehow contrived.
~ Ward Just
I sometimes think one of the great blessings we shall enjoy in heaven, will be to receive letters by every post and never be obliged to reply to them.
~ Washington Irving
And in that state of nature, no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. —Thomas Hobbes
~ Dave Grossman
The Socratic-Platonic psychê, in other words, is none other than the literate intellect, that part of the self that is born and strengthened in relation to the written letters.
~ David Abram
One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.
~ James Buchan
in which great difficulties are found to the present day by Englishmen, whose language presents no certain laws for rendering any given sound into a fixed combination of letters.
~ James Cook
Look," Thomas said, pointing down the line of stacks they'd formed, confused, but happy that the letters were so obvious. "It spells FLOAT and then it spells CAT." "Float cat?" Newt asked. "Doesn't sound like a bloody rescue code to me.
~ James Dashner
Observe the great Advantage and Benefit, the Privilege and Prerogative that Christ's Servants have beyond all others; Christ writes his Letters to them; there is not a word written to Kings and great Men; but it is to shew his Servants things to come to pass
~ James Durham
Always write angry letters to your enemies. Never mail them.
~ James Fallows
Quoting Goethe :) "We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.
~ James Howe
Across the page the numbers moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes.
~ James Joyce