Wieland Quotes

The presence of cats exercises such a magic influence upon highly organized men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom...have been the favorite animal of a Mahommed, Cardinal Richelieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland.

Let no one despair, even though in the darkest night the last star of hope may disappear.

What is it, she asks me, why do people cry? Why do we cry when we're happy and when we're sad or hurt? I tell her what I know or think I know: that the body does not distinguish between emotional and physical pain; the muscles around the lachrymal glands receive a message from the brain, then tighten and squeeze out tears. Tears contain high levels of the hormone ACTH and prolactin, endorphins (which we know are mood-altering and pain-killing), as well as thirty times more manganese than is found in blood, suggesting that human tears can concentrate and remove harmful substances from the body. Prolactin in humans controls fluid balance; by the age of eighteen women have 60 percent more prolactin than men, which may explain why women seem to cry more often. I tell her that sadness--like happiness--is an intense feeling of being alive, of having essence. I try to explain to her my own nonscientific theory: that crying is about weight or heft, that we cry when our bodies feel too light or too heavy to bear or hold on to language.

Let no one despair, even though in the darkest night the last star of hope may disappear. —Christoph Martin Wieland

Berlin. November 18, 1917. Sunday. I think Grosz has something demonic in him. This new Berlin art in general, Grosz, Becher, Benn, Wieland Herzfelde, is most curious. Big city art, with a tense density of impressions that appears simultaneous, brutally realistic, and at the same time fairy-tale-like, just like the big city itself, illuminating things harshly and distortedly as with searchlights and then disappearing in the glow. A highly nervous, cerebral, illusionist art, and in this respect reminiscent of the music hall and also of film, or at least of a possible, still unrealized film. An art of flashing lights with a perfume of sin and perversity like every nocturnal street in the big city. The precursors are E.T.A. Hoffmann, Breughel, Mallarmé, Seurat, Lautrec, the futurists: but in the density and organization of the overwhelming abundance of sensation, the brutal reality, the Berliners seem new to me. Perhaps one could also include Stravinsky here (Petrushka). Piled-up ornamentation each of which expresses a trivial reality but which, in their sum and through their relations to each other, has a thoroughly un-trivial impact. All round the world war rages and in the center is this nervous city in which so much presses and shoves, so many people and streets and lights and colors and interests: politics and music hall, business and yet also art, field gray, privy counselors, chansonettes, and right and left, and up and down, somewhere, very far away, the trenches, regiments storming over to attack, the dying, submarines, zeppelins, airplane squadrons, columns marching on muddy streets, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, victories; Riga, Constantinople, the Isonzo, Flanders, the Russian Revolution, America, the Anzacs and the poilus, the pacifists and the wild newspaper people. And all ending up in the half-darkened Friedrichstrasse, filled with people at night, unconquerable, never to be reached by Cossacks, Gurkhas, Chasseurs d'Afrique, Bersaglieris, and cowboys, still not yet dishonored, despite the prostitutes who pass by. If a revolution were to break out here, a powerful upheaval in this chaos, barricades on the Friedrichstrasse, or the collapse of the distant parapets, what a spark, how the mighty, inextricably complicated organism would crack, how like the Last Judgment! And yet we have experienced, have caused precisely this to happen in Liège, Brussels, Warsaw, Bucharest, even almost in Paris. That's the world war, all right.

Wieland hosted a “quilt-in” at her New York City loft and invited friends, including Canadian expatriates, to help sew La raison avant la passion as a gift for Trudeau.58 The following year, she hosted a huge party attended by Canadian expatriates, various New York artists and writers, and Trudeau himself. Throughout the late 1960s, Wieland had both an artistic and personal relationship with Trudeau. This was unusual because very few artists, if any, had such a close relationship with the prime minister and because what appears to be Wieland’s fascination with Trudeau was, I would argue, far more complex than simple adoration. It seems clear that Wieland had initially been both fascinated by Trudeau-the-person and supportive of his campaign for Liberal leader. She formed a group in New York City, for example, called Canadians Abroad for Trudeau, and, in a 1986 interview, she told Barbara Stevenson that she had initially supported his leadership campaign.59 After Trudeau became prime minister in 1968, however, Wieland’s opinion shifted as she increasingly expressed skepticism towards him and his governing philosophy to the point that, by 1986, she referred to him as a “psychopath.”60 Wieland

Then will I lay down my head in the lap of death. Hushed will be all my murmurs in the sleep of the grave.

Something whispered that the happiness we at present enjoyed was set on mutable foundations. Death must happen to all.

Add wings to thy speed, sweet evening; and thou, moon, I charge thee, shroud thy beams at the moment when my Pleyel whispers love. I would not for the world, that the burning blushes, and the mounting raptures of that moment, should be visible.

I can demonstrate very easily that the term “genetic,” which today is the exclusive term for biological evolution, was actually coined in Germany in the eighteenth century by a man like Herder, Wieland, and Schiller, and was used in the quite modern term by Wilhelm von Humboldt long time before Darwin. The Humboldt passages are so interesting that I will even quote some. Humboldt spoke in 1836 about the fact that the definition of language can only be a genetic one, “nur eine genetische seyn,” and goes on to argue that the formation of language successively through many stages, like the origin of natural phenomena, is clearly a phenomena of evolution. All that was ready in the theory of languages thirty years before Darwin applied it to the natural sciences. Yet it had been forgotten, or at least ignored, outside the two classical instances of language, law, and I may now add economics including the market and money. And when it was reintroduced by the social Darwinists, all the parts of the explanation of the mechanism were also taken over

Die Verantwortung für das Risiko der Enttäuschung liegt stets bei dem, der vertraut.

In his first published work, the magazine essay series, The Rhapsodist, Brown suggests that the role of the writer is "to enchain the attention and ravish the souls of those who study and reflect.

Endless improvements turn out to be merely endless transformations, thus announcing the uncomfortable truth that identity is permanently insubstantial and mutable.

Books are cold," declared Arthur Merwyn. They "allow no questions, offer no explanations... They talk to us behind a screen. Their tone is lifeless and monotonous. They charm not our attention by mute significances of gesture and look.

Make what use of the tale you shall think proper. If it be communicated to the world, it will inculcate the duty of avoiding deceit. It will exemplify the force of early impressions, and show, the immeasurable evils that flow from an erroneous or imperfect discipline.

Fear and wonder rendered him powerless. An occurrence like this, in a place assigned to devotion, was adapted to intimidate the stoutest heart.

Their creeds, however, were in many respects opposite. Where one discovered only confirmations of his faith, the other could find nothing but reasons for doubt. Moral necessity, and calvinistic inspiration, were the props on which my brother thought proper to repose. Pleyel was the champion on intellectual liberty, and rejected all guidance but that of his reason. Their discussions were frequent , but, being managed with candour as well as with skill, they were always listened to by us with avidity and benefit.

Six years of uninterrupted happiness had rolled away, since my brother's marriage. The sound of war had been heard, affording objects of comparison.

The will is the tool of the understanding, which must fashion its conclusions on the notices of sense. If the senses be depraved, it is impossible to calculate the evils that may flow from the consequent deductions of the understanding.

So flexible, and yet so stubborn is the human mind. So obedient to impulses the most transient and brief, and yet so unalterably observant of the direction which is given to it! How little did I then foresee the termination of that chain, of which this may be regarded as the first link?

I said to myself, we must die. Sooner or later, we must disappear for ever from the face of the earth. Whatever be the links that hold us to life, they must be broken. This scene of existence is, in all its parts, calamitous. The greater number is oppressed with immediate evils, and those, the tide of whose fortunes is full, how small is their portion of enjoyment, since they know that it will terminate.

All unaware, and in a manner which I had no power to explain, I was pushed from my immoveable and lofty station, and cast upon a sea of troubles.

Fear me not: the space that severs us is small, and visible succour is distant. You believe yourself completely in my power; that you stand upon the brink of ruin. Such are your groundless fears. I cannot lift a finger to hurt you. Easier it would be to stop the moon in her course than to injure you. The power that protects you would crumble my sinews, and reduce me to a heap of ashes in a moment, if I were to harbour a thought hostile to your safety.

Surely," said I, "there is omnipotence in the cause that changed the views of a man like Carwin. The divinity that shielded me from his attempts will take suitable care of my future safety. Thus to yield to my fears is to deserve that they should be real.

They refuse to credit my tale; they impute my act to the influence of daemons; they account me an example of the doom me to death and infamy. Have I power to escape this evil? If I have, be sure I will exert it. I will not accept evil at their hand, when I am entitled to good; I will suffer only when I cannot elude suffering.

When I lay down the pen the taper of life will expire: my existence will terminate my tale.

Der Verfasser dieser Werke ist es vorzüglich , der uns Deutschen das genauere Beobachten des Ganges der Politik und der Politiker gleichsam angezaubert hat ; und noch immer ist er für uns --- nach seiner Art - das , was Macchiavelli für Italien , und Montesquieu , Raynal , Voltaire und Rousseau - nach ihrer Art - für Frankreich waren . Er hat das Verdienst , unsere Fürsten auf ihre Pflichten , und deren Untergebne auf ihre Rechte aufmerksam gemacht zu haben [...]. Trophäen also , Freund , und noch mehr als diese , hätte Wieland längst verdient, wenn wir schwerfällige Deutsche nicht gleichsam mit Vorwürfen und wie bey den Haaren herbeigezogen seyn wollten , wenn auch von weiter keiner Belohnung die Rede ist , als von einer Bildsäule nach dem Absterben für -- Leibnitz , Wolff , Lessing , Sulzer und Mendelssohn .

I had a few people ask me if I might one day write my own autobiography. I just tell them, 'It's already being written. My books are my autobiography.

Since humanity could write on paper, we were destined to tell our story with the heavens as our only reader and our biggest critic.

Creo que fue Wieland quien dijo que los pensamientos de los hombres valen más que sus acciones, y las buenas novelas más que el género humano. Podrá esto no ser verdad; pero es hermoso y consolador.