10 Thought-Provoking Quotes by Famous 20th Century Authors, Courtesy ChatGPT and Google Bard

Illustration by the author, with AI assistance.

I asked ChaptGPT for a list of the top 20 authors of the 20th century. I then asked Google Bard for five quotes for each author. I selected one for each from the five offered. The original list from ChatGPT included some disclaimers, noting that making lists like this is highly subjective. "This list represents a diverse range of authors from different regions and literary traditions, each contributing in unique ways to 20th-century literature."

"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."
--James Joyce

"Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."
--Franz Kafka

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
--Virginia Woolf

"The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
--Albert Camus

"If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself."
--George Orwell

"What matters in life is not what happens to you, but what you remember and how you remember it."
--Gabriel García Márquez

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places."
--Ernest Hemingway

"In a universe of silent stars, human speech is a pitifully tiny and inadequate noise."
--William Faulkner

"If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
--Toni Morrison

* * * * *

Who Am I? Where Am I Going? Why Am I Here?

Does God have a purpose for my life? How do I know? And how do I find it? These questions asked honestly (more than nearly any others) force us to confront the fundamental realities of who we are, who God is, and the meaning of life.

Though some have suggested that people can bear the sense of meaninglessness, Viktor Frankl argued that humans have an innate need to find meaning in their lives. This need, he stated in his book Man's Search For Meaning, is even stronger than the need for food, water or shelter. 

Albert Camus likewise spoke of our human desire for meaning and purpose. In his view the longing for meaning comes face to face with an apparently indifferent universe. He labeled this fundamental conflict "the Absurd." While the human mind seeks order and meaning, the universe remains silent, hence this sense of absurdity. Thus, in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, there is really only one question that matters. Does it make sense to go on living once the meaninglessness (Camus' conclusion) of human life is fully understood and assimilated?

Understandably, these are serious issues. For this reason such questions are seldom voiced, though deep inside they niggle and churn, unsettling those who have failed to find truly satisfying answers. It is as if we are living in a dark room with no windows, with no light. 

Ah, but what if indeed light has entered the world? What if indeed there were a living God who has not left us in the dark?

This is what the Bible claims. Light has indeed come into the world.

Thomas Paine, who died in 1809, wrote that the Bible would be a forgotten book in 50 years. I'm pretty sure that a majority of young people do not know who he was. 

I found this the other day in one of my 1983 notebooks. It is a list of various responses to the question. "Who am I?" 

Analogies: 

Man is a machine. 

Man is a collection of atoms. 

Man is an animal. 

Man is a bundle of habits. 

Man is divine. 

Man is a living soul.

Once we get clarity on this first question, we can begin to get on track with the others.

From my youth I have been interested in philosophy. I remember asking philosophical questions as early as elementary school while swinging on the swings in the playground. In college I was attracted to both philosophy and art, and there's a sense in which the latter is simply a visible representation of the former. Check out this famous painting by Gaugin: 

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Gaugin asked the right questions.

Are you still seeking answers to the questions rattling around within you?
When Jesus said "Seek and you shall find," the original verb meant 
"seek and keep seeking... and you will find."
Don't give up the fight.

A Thought Stimulated by Reflecting on the Lives of London, Fitzgerald, Orwell, Camus and Others

Now that I'm 68, I can't help but notice all the writers, rock stars and other famous sorts who never made it this far. I believe Michener was roughly this age when he declared it to be one of his great achievements to have never spent a night in jail. The tongue may have been in his cheek when he said this, and I know it's something Richard Branson can't say, though Branson would chime in that his night behind bars was a highly instructive and motivational experience.

Last night I was reading an essay on George Orwell, a significant writer who died in 1950, only 46 years old. Upon reading this it my mind clicked on a recent article that cited how Albert Camus likewise came to his end at age 46. Both Camus and Orwell left reverberations for decades afterwards.

These thoughts soon triggered my recollection that Jack London, author of 40 books and countless stories, died at age 40. I'm not envious, but am indeed in awe of such productivity. And then there's F. Scott Fitzgerald, 44 when he finished drinking himself to death.

London, pictured here, whose career peaked a little earlier than Fitzgerald's, was the highest paid short story writer of his day, until Fitzgerald exceeded him during the Roaring Twenties. Keep in mind, magazines had no radio or television competition. A century ago people read for entertainment, as opposed to watching videos or movies. It was a golden age for short story writers.

I can't recall my introduction to Camus. It was a reading of The Stranger, but whether in high school or college I can't recall. I do remember studying Camus in an Existential Literature class my second semester at O.U. Dr Trevas had us read and produce papers on Camus, Sartre and Joseph Fletcher, author of Situation Ethics. Both Camus and Sartre were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, though Sartre rejected the award.

The point of this random flow of semi-related notions has to do with the massive influence of these writers who died more than two decades younger than I.

And then there's Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Only 35, yet more than 40 symphonies and countless lesser works. Amazing. Chopin still lives on as well, though he never reached his fortieth birthday.

Let's not forget Franz Kafka (40), Stephen Crane (29), Anton Chekhov (44), Thomas Wolfe (37) and Thoreau (44).... all so young, yet unforgotten.

* * * *

As I began thinking about these many talented people whose lifespans seem so brief, I was reminded of all the artists, writers, actors and musicians who ended their careers by their own hand.  (Follow the link below to Tina Mion's New Year's Eve Party in Purgatory.)

* * * * 

Then my mind returns to the day the music died, that plane crash in an Iowa cornfield in 1959. Buddy Holly was only 22. Ritchie Valens (La Bamba) even younger, and 28 year old J.P. Richardson, the old man of the group, only 28. (Photo at right courtesy Gary Firstenberg)

* * * *

I've always told young people, "Life is longer than you think. Pursue your dreams and little by little you will achieve more than you can imagine." As I reflect on these productive giants, and especially those whose lives were cut short, I have to reconsider. 

We can't take tomorrow for granted. The time to begin really living is today.

Related Links
Shooting an Elephant
Tina Mion's New Year's Eve Party in Purgatory for Suicides
A Brief Glance at the Life of William Sydney Porter, a.k.a. O Henry

Flashback Friday: 20 Years Ago Today Dylan Released Not Dark Yet

FLASHBACK FRIDAY

When I saw this story in the Dylan Daily, it brought to mind how special the album Time Out Of Mind was when it appeared two decades ago in 1997. From the opening lines of "Love Sick," the tone is dark.

"I'm walkin'... down streets that are dead."

This was one of many songs on this album that resonated with me, and on at least two occasions I have blogged about it, the first in 2009.

4 April 2015

‘This thing I feel, I can’t name it straight out but it seems important, do you feel it too?’ — this sort of direct question is not for the squeamish. – David Foster Wallace, “Octet”

Something I’ve often wondered is why we’re so fascinated by things that frighten us. When I say “we” I do not mean to suggest that this is universal, but it does seem fairly pervasive. When sitting around a campfire we enjoy ghost stories that succeed in actually scaring us. We get a rush out of the horrors that give us nightmares. It’s a strange thing when we’re forced to choose between competing desires, whether to cover our eyes or to stare.

Sometimes I wonder if Death, or what is euphemistically called the Void or the Grim Reaper, is the real horror behind many of these stories and thereby the thing that fascinates and frightens us most deeply. Just as Victor Frankl identified the search for meaning as man’s ultimate quest, so it is that death renders all our quests meaningless. Meaninglessness is the close companion of Despair.

Despair is a scary matter that has been part of the human condition from the beginning. The Bible addresses this strangely suffocating mindset in the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes. From the outset the tone is set: "Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Many of the passages in this book were so devoid of hope that Martin Luther wanted to extract it from the Sacred Scriptures.

And yet, the despair found in Ecclesiastes may well be one of the foundation stones of wisdom.

There's something compelling about despair in a certain sense. It's akin to resignation, a resignation to fate, to a recognition of one's powerlessness and life's futility, a futility that may be the first step toward the humility that gives birth to wisdom. It's the ultimate undercutting of one's sense of self-importance, as Borges lays out in A Yellow Rose.

"Not Dark Yet" speaks directly to this matter.

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day 
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away 
Feel like my soul has turned into steel 
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal 
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere 
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Christopher Ricks in his Dylan’s Visions of Sin begins his fifteen-page discussion of this song with a one-word summation: Apocalypse. I can see this and he easily demonstrates that an apocalyptic theme is a recurring thread throughout Dylan's five decade career, explicit examples a-plenty beginning with "A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall" and "All Along the Watchtower" to "Whatcha Gonna Do When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky", and now here in "Not Dark Yet".

A portion of his segment on this song deals with how much Dylan’s "Not Dark Yet" corresponds with Keats’ "Ode to a Nightingale", a poem that attempts to put into words what one senses when standing on the precipice, at the edge of the abyss.

As Ricks puts it, “'Not Dark Yet' seeks – in the great phrase from Freud – to make friends with the necessity of dying.”

Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain 
Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain 
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind 
She put down in writing what was in her mind 
I just don’t see why I should even care 
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

There’s that written letter again. You may recall it from the last stanza of "Desolation Row". Something about seeing it in writing cuts us more deeply than just hearing it. We hear it, and then somehow alter it so we don’t quite hear it the way it was meant, or in some way we conveniently forget, or soften it, or dismiss it because… well, she was just frustrated and didn’t mean it. Now it’s right there, in ink, and it can’t be denied or ignored.

It’s the reality of the thing that especially hurts, causing us to distrust the beautiful, to recognize the ways in which we deceive ourselves when things seem good, forgetting that nothing ever really lasts. We’re outside the Gates of Eden now.

Well, I’ve been to London and I’ve been to gay Paree 
I’ve followed the river and I got to the sea 
I’ve been down on the bottom of a world full of lies 
I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes 
Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear 
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Yes, this is what Camus wrestled with in his essay on Sisyphus. “Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear.” And what’s the use in looking for hope in someone else’s eyes at this point of the game. Death will render all my achievements meaningless in the end anyways.

‘This thing I feel, I can’t name it straight out but it seems important, do you feel it too?’ 

For two years or more one of the websites to which I returned for thought stimulation was The Floating Library, which appeared to be hosted by a man named Dr. Sineokov. I had always assumed this was some elderly Russian philosopher who migrated to the West, something akin to a reclusive Solzhenitsyn in New England. What a surprise, and shock, to one day visit The Floating Library only to find that the caretaker/webmaster of this literary site was a young man of 27 who now committed suicide, at age 27.

The shock hit me more deeply than I expected. In part, because I identified with so many of the quotes he seemed to unearth on such a regular basis. Nevertheless, there were clues here, too, as toward he end they seemed to be especially bleak. Quotes from Orwell, Pessoa, Virginia Woolf, Yeats, Louise Glück, Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, and E.M. Cioran's The Trouble with Being Born.

In what we have agreed to call “civilization,” there resides, undeniably, a diabolic principle man has become conscious of too late, when it was no longer possible to remedy it. — E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

Dylan reflects similar sentiments in the final stanza.

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will 
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still 
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb 
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from 
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer 
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

“Suddenly I was alone with . . . I felt, that afternoon of my childhood, that a very serious event had just occurred. It was my first awakening, the first indication, the premonitory sign of consciousness. Before that I had been only a being. From that moment, I was more and less than that. Each self begins with a rift and a revelation.” — E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

For Dylan this rift and revelation occurred early in life. You don’t write songs like "Hard Rain" as a jester.

But Ricks takes a different tack here. He examines this song in a chapter titled Fortitude. In spite of the apparent futility of our life situation, our human condition and circumstances, we press on. Camus concluded that Sisyphus can choose to live for those special moments of relief from eternally rolling that boulder up the hill and utilize his time sauntering down the hill to take in the fragrance of the flowers, to absorb the splendor of the vista before shouldering his burden again.

Despair is a fiercer companion for some than for others. This is why a wise man exhorted us to "be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

Four centuries ago one of the foundation stones of the Reformation was the profound insight that “the just shall live by faith.” That message delivered countless millions from the burden of a crushing works-based medieval Catholicism. But in our modern/postmodern world it would seem to have become an overused coin, and two other “heavenly graces” have become even more necessary and needful: hope and charity.

In a world full of lies, in a world as dark as ours, hope is a miracle whose source is unseen, for what we see is a sinking twilight.

Artwork on this site is produced by ennyman

Friends Are the Sunshine of Life

Life is hard. That's why we shouldn't go it alone.

"A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway."
~Fr. Jerome Cummings

"Remember, the greatest gift is not found in a store nor under a tree, but in the hearts of true friends."

~Cindy Lew

Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure.

~Jewish Saying

"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you."
~Elbert Hubbard

"Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure."
~Jewish saying

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

~Aristotle

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.

~Albert Camus

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Hold a true friend with both your hands."

~Nigerian Proverb

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same."

~Anonymous

"Friends are like melons; shall I tell you why?
To find one good you must one hundred try."

~Claude Mermet

"Friendship needs no words..."
~Dag Hammarskjold.

"Friends are the sunshine of life."
~John Hay (1871)

One of the most illuminating passages on friendship that I've ever read is the chapter on Philia from C.S. Lewis' volume The Four Loves. Here are a few gems. You may also visit this Goodreads page, which displays several more.

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”  (EdNote: This is how Keith Richards' friendship with Mick Jagger began.)

“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.”

“People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.”

Thank you, friends, for all your encouragement and kindnesses. Have a wonderful day. Friends are indeed the sunshine of life.

It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be

I found Paul Arden’s book at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last year when we were on the West Coast visiting Micah & Ashlee, our son and his wife. The book appears to be a collection of insights and lessons about creativity, originality and success. Though written by a man in the ad agency scene, the book has much that is applicable to almost anyone in any career. What follows are a few thoughts which especially resonated with me.

“Everybody wants to be good, but not many are prepared to make the sacrifices it takes to be great.”

“There is no instant solution, the only way to learn is through experience and mistakes.”

“Failures and false starts are a pre-condition for success.”

“You can achieve the unachievable. Try to do the things you are not capable of.”

At one point he recommended James Webb-Young's excellent little volume, A Technique for Producing Ideas, which I read about ten years ago and would happily loan to anyone interested in an important summary of the creative process.

At the end of the book Arden shared some of his favorite quotes from other authors, a few of which are reproduced here.

“It’s better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” ~ Herman Melville

“Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” ~ Winston Churchill

“Early to bed. Early to rise. Work like hell and advertise.” ~ Dr. Scholl

“There are no short cuts to any place worth going.” ~ Beverly Sills

“You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead.” ~ Stan Laurel

“Those who lack courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.” ~ Albert Camus

“Some people take no mental exercise apart from jumping to conclusions.” ~ Harold Acton

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.” ~ C.G.Jung

“If everything seems under control you’re not going fast enough.” ~ Mario Andretti

Just thought a few of you might enjoy this little handful of seeds from a mind farm.

Two Books That Especially Influenced My Life

There are a number of books that have been significant in my life, so to select two and call them the most significant would be near impossible. Yet, without doubt these two books here were among the most significant books for me, for they came at a critical juncture in my life.

I had been in Bible school for several years, immersed in the Christian scene, but somewhat divorced from the academic intellectual atmosphere of my college years at Ohio University. At O.U. I had become immersed in Camus, Kafka, Nietzsche, Vonnegut, Sartre and the whole modern art oeuvre.

Whereas it can be true that Christians can also have intellectual strength, it is easy to get surrounded by a lot of lightweight reading material as well. At a certain point in time a friend of mine had been reading a Hemingway book with amazement at its power. The seed sown, I soon found myself picking up a copy of Hemingway’s first book of short stories, In Our Time. It would be an understatement to say it felt like I had been hit in the face with a fist.

I read the book through two and a half times straight. In certain stories I found myself analyzing the sentences, the structure, the force with which he hurled words at the reader, yet the simplicity of it all. I was amazed at the amount of tension created in his story The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife, with so few brush strokes. I wondered where the Christians were who could write like this.

The second book that influenced me at the time was Sherwood Wirt’s You Can Tell the World. Wirt had been editor of Billy Graham’s Decision magazine for many years. He, too, had a desire to see more power in Christian writing. More meat, more bite. He had undoubtedly seen plenty of insipid material flow across his desk over the years that was well intentioned but impotent. He says as much right up front. “The demand for Christian writing of quality far exceeds the supply.”

He goes on to say, “The simple expedient of seeking advice from the right people can make all the difference to an aspiring writer.” And such was I.

In the very first chapter he emphasizes the importance of being ourselves immersed in great literature before we can attempt to produce great literature. That is, if we do not know what great writing looks like how can we ourselves hope to produce it? He speaks of the influence of Darwin, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hemingway, Camus and even Hitler. Their prose was powerful indeed, for it did not simply titillate the senses. It moved people to action.

If it is your desire to write, and to write with power, whether in business or the arts or for whatever purposes that drive you… follow the path that others have trod. Read the classics. Study the manner in which ideas are assembled, and how language really works. Hemingway, despite his personal faults, be sheer force of will re-oriented modern literature.

I do not know what the catalyst will be for you, but these two books really lit my fuse.