Letter Quotes - page 26
The German Rendering. The German language was divided into as many dialects as tribes and states, and none served as a bond of literary union. Saxons and Bavarians, Hanoverians and Swabians, could scarcely understand each other. Each author wrote in the dialect of his district, Zwingli in his Schwyzerdütsch. "I have so far read no book or letter," says Luther in the preface to his version of the Pentateuch (1523), in which the German language is properly handled. Nobody seems to care sufficiently for it; and every preacher thinks he has a right to change it at pleasure, and to invent new terms." Scholars preferred to write in Latin, and when they attempted to use the mother tongue, as Reuchlin and Melanchthon did occasionally, they fell far below in ease and beauty of expression.
Philip Schaff
I am overwhelmed by your letter yesterday, and I hope with all my heart and for you and for the patriotic work that we are pursuing that you do not persevere in your desire to leave the administration of the Congo. Please come and see me in Brussels on Saturday at a quarter past one.
Leopold II of Belgium
We can say that in terms of town planning - before the letter - he was a precursor. If there is an area where its reputation is guaranteed to survive for a long time to come, this is it. Belgium found itself since the end of his reign at the forefront of architectural movements and we can still see today in the Brussels landscape, and almost everywhere in the country, the mark of the king-builder.
Leopold II of Belgium
This is not a letter on Pakistan. If it were, I could have written a small book entitled "Glimpses of Pakistan's history". Time does not permit it. The nation is gripped in her worst crisis, standing in the middle of the road between survival and disintegration. Since the birth of Pakistan, crisis has followed crisis in rapid escalation. Millions of lives were sacrificed to create this country. Pakistan is said to be the dream of Mohammad Iqbal and the creation of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam. Was anything wrong with the dream or with the one who made the dream come true? Opinions have differed and continue to differ. The next few years will most probably decide the issue, perhaps once and for all, and not without bloodshed. This process is not inevitable but the present policies of the ruling junta are driving this country towards a sad inevitability.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
[There was a] long standing contention between the sees of York and Canterbury as to the right of either metropolitan to bear his cross erect in the province of the other. ...Peckham, on hearing that his brother [ William of Wickwane, Archbishop] of York had returned from abroad, and was intending to pass through his province with his cross erect, wrote a letter forbidding the clergy to show him any mark of respect, ordering them to shut the church-doors in his face, and threatening all persons, clerical and lay, with excommunication, who ventured to supply him with food, or render him the slightest service.
John Peckham
[Letter received to the Banksy website:] "I don't know who you are or how many of you there are but i am writing to ask you to stop painting your things where we live. In particular XXXXXX road in Hackney. My brother and me were born here and have lived here all our lives but these days so many yuppies and students are moving here neither of us can afford to buy a house where we grew up anymore. Your graffities are undoubtably part of what makes these wankers think our area is cool. You're obviously not from round here and after you've driven up the house prices you'll probably just move on. Do us all a favour and go do your stuff somewhere else like Brixton. -daniel" [sic; name and address not withheld].
Banksy
I received an impassioned letter from Sonoko. There was no doubt that she was truly in love. I felt jealous. Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?
Yukio Mishima
The letter was a complete repudiation of the agreement he [H. H. Asquith] had entered into with me on Sunday and confirmed in writing on Monday. He had reached his decision to go back on his word without giving me an opportunity of further discussion with him. He saw all the critics. He resolutely refused to see me although he had promised to do so. Had I gone back on my word I know the nature of the comment that would have been passed on me by those who worked with frenzy to persuade Mr. Asquith to break faith. How it would have fitted into that legend of distrust which they so assiduously worked up for years, and which seems to be their sole article of unwavering faith!
David Lloyd George
[The Stalinists at the same time] accused Hindus of having destroyed Buddhist and Jain monuments... The letter was in keeping with the concocted history which the Stalinists had been selling for quite some time through the Indian History Council of Historical Research, and the National Council of Educational Research and Training, all of which they had come to control...
Sita Ram Goel
Comrade Fyodorov, It is obvious that a whiteguard insurrection is being prepared in Nizhni. You must strain every effort, appoint three men with dictatorial powers (yourself, Markin and one other), organise immediately mass terror, shoot and deport the hundreds of prostitutes who are making drunkards of the soldiers, former officers and the like. Not a minute of delay. I can't understand how Romanov could leave at a time like this! [...] Peters, Chairman of the Extraordinary Commission, says that they also have reliable people in Nizhni. You must act with all energy. Mass searches. Execution for concealing arms. Mass deportation of Mensheviks and unreliables. Change the guards at warehouses, put in reliable people. They say Raskolnikov and Danishevsky are on their way to see you from Kazan. Read this letter to the friends and reply by telegraph or telephone. Yours, Lenin.
Vladimir Lenin
Dear Does [= Theo van Doesburg ], thank you for your letter.. .I was glad to know that in principle you are in favour of the diamond hanging [Mondrian's painting, he made in 1919, hanging in a rhombus] and I think that in practice you will approve of this method for some of my things. You look at the thing [painting] itself, and not only the outward appearance..
Piet Mondrian
...Drift is the tension and play between spirit and matter. Spirit wants to be unbound. It's the tension between spirit and letter as well, the play between spirit and letter, the tangential way of knowing that the expression "you get my drift” gets at, not to mention the turns spirit and letter take toward each other and away from each other. Language, especially poetic language, replicates or is infused with the relationship between spirit and matter, the traffic between spirit and letter, its analogue...
Nathaniel Mackey
He [Hockney's father] hardly ever left Bradford. He was a member of CND and a socialist with a rather romantic and naive idea of what Soviet Russia was like, all cornfields and ballet. He would have gone mad for email because he was always sending letters to world leaders - Eisenhower, Mao, Stalin - telling them what was what. I think he imagined the Politburo would hold up his letter and say, "Hold everything, Kenneth Hockney has written again!"
David Hockney
We had a malfunction with a cluster bomb unit, and a couple of grenades fell on a schoolyard, and some, I think three, school children were killed... And two weeks later, I got a letter from a Serb grandfather. He said, "You've killed my granddaughter.” He said, "I hate you for this, and I'll kill you.” And I got this in the middle of the war. And it made me very, very sad. We certainly never wanted to do anything like that. But in war, accidents happen. And that's why you shouldn't undertake military operations unless every other alternative has been exhausted, because innocent people do die.
Mike Jones
I thought if I can still be the central voice but without having an ‘I' there, and by not having it there, it makes it easier for the reader to slip into the consciousness of the narrator. If you remove the letter ‘I' it becomes a universal I. Everybody is the author walking down those streets while they are in the prose.
Alan Moore
My Zen master, because I've studied Zen for a long time, told me that every one (and all the stories weren't written then) of the Mary Poppins stories is in essence a Zen story. And someone else, who is a bit of a Don Juan, told me that every one of the stories is a moment of tremendous sexual passion, because it begins with such tension and then it is reconciled and resolved in a way that is gloriously sensual. ... A great friend of mine at the beginning of our friendship (he was himself a poet) said to me very defiantly, "I have to tell you that I loathe children's books.” And I said to him, "Well, won't you just read this just for my sake?” And he said grumpily, "Oh, very well, send it to me.” I did, and I got a letter back saying: "Why didn't you tell me? Mary Poppins with her cool green core of sex has me enthralled forever.”.
P. L. Travers
