William Gaddis

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

It is a naked city. Faith is not pampered, nor hope encouraged; there is no place to lay one’s exhaustion: but instead pinnacles skewer it undisguised against vacancy.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people…

It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.

If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist.

Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

A good scare is worth more than good advice.

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.

Hate has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.

For disappointments, that come not by our own folly, they are the trials or corrections of Heaven: and it is our own fault, if they prove not our advantage.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.