Partiality Quotes

“I know that I am going to meet a personal variation on reality; a partial view of reality. But I know also that by that partiality, that distancing from the shared experience, it will be new: a revelation. It will be a vision, a more or less powerful or haunting dream. A space-voyage through somebody else's psychic abysses. It will fall short of tragedy, because tragedy is the truth, and truth is what the very great artists, the absolute novelists, tell. It will not be truth; but it will be imagination. Truth is best. For it encompasses tragedy and partakes of the eternal joy. But very few of us know it; the best we can do is recognize it. Imagination - to me - is the next best. For it partakes of Creation, which is one aspect of the eternal joy. All the rest is either Politics or Pedantry, or Mainstream Fiction, may it rest in peace.”

“I know that I am going to meet a personal variation on reality; a partial view of reality. But I know also that by that partiality, that distancing from the shared experience, it will be new: a revelation. It will be a vision, a more or less powerful or haunting dream. A space-voyage through somebody else's psychic abysses. It will fall short of tragedy, because tragedy is the truth, and truth is what the very great artists, the absolute novelists, tell. It will not be truth; but it will be imagination. Truth is best. For it encompasses tragedy and partakes of the eternal joy. But very few of us know it; the best we can do is recognize it. Imagination - to me - is the next best. For it partakes of Creation, which is one aspect of the eternal joy. All the rest is either Politics or Pedantry, or Mainstream Fiction, may it rest in peace.”

“Impartiality is to accept that we are partial.”

“Blame yourself if you have no branches or leaves don't accuse the sun of partiality.”

“Discount my partiality, but my report is that so far The Winds of War is looking good.”

“I have developed a very strong partiality for the dead: they don't talk back, they don't sue, and they don't have angry relatives.”

“As long as there is the egoism of ‘I-ness’ (hoonpanu) and the partiality towards ‘my-ness’ (marapanu), how can there be liberation till then?”

“Never was a man further from a partiality for Spain than I am. But I think I now have left them in a sincere and steady intention to cultivate the friendship of America.”

“The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party.”

“Death reduces all men to the same rank. It strips the rich of his millions and the poor man of his rags . . .Death knows no age limits, no partiality. It is a thing that all men fear.”

“No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality.”