Edward Dahlberg
Edward Dahlberg
Edward Dahlbergwas an American novelist, essayist and autobiographer...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth22 July 1900
writing painter
A painter can hang his pictures, but a writer can only hang himself.
life men endure
Man pines to live but cannot endure the days of his life.
men taught citizens
The newspaper has debauched the American until he is a slavish, simpering, and angerless citizen; it has taught him to be a lump mass-man toward fraud, simony, murder, and lunacies more vile than those of Commodus or Caracalla.
art writing people
Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.
mimicking toady poet
The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature.
genius neglected shabby
Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.
achievement failing dies
Everything ultimately fails, for we die, and that is either the penultimate failure or our most enigmatical achievement.
literature earth atlantis
Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.
men perfect vices
So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.
strong weak friends-and-enemies
A strong foe is better than a weak friend.
liberty regulation understood
The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty.
writing farming scruples
Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.
men evil long
There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment.
men water usual
Men are too unstable to be just; they are crabbed because they have not passed water at the usual time, or testy because they have not been stroked or praised.