“But in that strange way our world is arranged, petty causes have always given birth to great events, just as great ventures have always ended up with petty consequences.”

“And anyway, I am not fond of ruminations if ruminations are all they remain.”

From The Old World Landowners

Gogol, Nikola Vasilevich. And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon: Essential Stories. Translated by Oliver Ready. London: Pushkin Press, 2019.

Writing doesn’t prove anything,
And it only rarely persuades.
It does something much better.
It attests.
It witnesses.
It shares your interest in what you’ve noticed.
It reports on the nature of your attention.
It suggest the possibilities of the world around you.
The evidence of the world as it presents itself to you.

Proof is for mathematicians.
Logic is for philosophers.
We have testimony.

Klinkenborg, Verlyn. Several Short Sentences about Writing. First Vintage books edition. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 2013.

“There’s nothing but what’s bearable as long as a man can work,” he said to himself, “the nature o’things doesn’t change, though it seems as if one’s own life was nothing but change. The square o’four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man’s miserable as when he’s happy; and the best o’working is it gives you a grip hold o’things outside your own lot.”

I’m early in the book — 100 pages or so — so the only caveat I’d add for the 21st century is that Adam Bede is a craftsman. He’s not talking of work that’s crud work for someone else or mindless work in service of nothing…

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

“That depends,” said Caleb, turning his head on one side and lowering his voice with the air of a man who felt himself to be saying something deeply religious. “You must love your work, and not always be looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and learning to do it well, and not be always saying there’s this and there’s that — if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is, I wouldn’t give two pence for him” — here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers “whether he was the prime-minister or the rick-thatcher if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do.”

(p.527 from the 2015 Penguin edition.)