Matthew Pearl Quotes

'Pity without rigor would be cowardly egotism, mere sentimentality.'

A man's library opens up his character to the world.

Longfellow smiled. "A great part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, my dear Lowell, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.

Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print

Books do pretend ...but squeezed in between is even more that is true—without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?

People hate the idea of politicians, you see, but love the idea of authors, at least until they meet one.

It is not when a man is at the end of his life, but when a man is at the end of his profession, that his soul shows itself.

Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on...

Believe that when I am at once a man's friend I am always so-nor is it so very hard to bring me to it. And though a man may enjoy himself in being my enemy, he cannot make me HIS for longer than I wish. Good afternoon." Lowell had a way of leaving a conversation with the other person needing more from him.

He worshipped at the temple of her intellect and I believe it was a comfort to him to know that she left our world with it still shining.

Avoid the Holy Grail, the heroic journeys, the pursuit of a legend--that is not the life of the bookaneer, who must keep his eyes on the ground while other book people live by dreaming.

An obscure character by the name of Belial. He is interpreted as a minion of the devil by some scholars, but that is wrong. It is ignorance. The name means, literally speaking, 'one who cannot be yoked,' and it is really every one of us who takes control of our own destiny while others blow in the wind. We may be punished for it, but we would never do it another way. We are all Belials.

These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves.

A man was leaning idly against an elm. ... The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at him with the familiar, insatiable gleam of the literary admirer.

...It is the one time Dante calls such explicit attention to the idea of contrapasso-a word for which we have no exact translation, no precise definition in English, because the word in itself is its definition... Well, my dear Longfellow, I would say countersuffering ... the notion that each sinner must be punished by continuing the damage of his own sin against him... just as these Schismatics are cut apart...

exaggeration is the octopus of the English language