20th-century Translator Quotes

The long-haired Yak has long black hair, He lets it grow — he doesn't care. He lets it grow and grow and grow, He lets it trail along the stair. Does he ever go to the barbershop? NO! How wild and woolly and devil-may-care A long-haired Yak with long black hair Would look when perched in a barber chair!

William Jay Smith

Just go along with things and let your mind move freely. Resign yourself to what cannot be avoided and nourish what is within you - this is best. What more do you have to do to fulfill your mission? Nothing is as good as following orders (obeying fate) - that's how difficult it is!

I don't know what a personal gift is. I think if I really gave someone a personal gift, it would scare him to death. I don't know what a personal gift for myself would be, either. But I'm sure that if it were really personal, I would burst into tears. At least I'd know then what sort of person I am.

The world has no hold on you. Whatever has a hold on you comes from your mind.

Red Pine (author)

I'll be somewhere listening for my name.... You, then, are charged by the possibility of your good health, by the broadness of your vision, to remember us.

What is the gospel according to Jesus? Simply this: that the love we all long for in our innermost heart is already present, beyond longing.

Stephen Mitchell (translator)

Inclusivism: Whereas Exclusivists regard general revelation as informative only and special revelation as both informative and salvific, Inclusivists, by contrast, regard general revelation as both informative and salvific and special revelation as even mere deeply informative and even more effectively and widely salvific!

Don Richardson (missionary)

Venerable Mother Toothache
Climb down from the white battlements,
Stop twisting in your yellow fingers
The fourfold rope of nerves;
And tomorrow I will give you a tot of whisky
To hold in your cupped hands,
A garland of anise flowers,
And three cloves like nails.

John Heath-Stubbs

There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly.

The revolt of the poet is invariably conservative at its roots. … Not politically conservative, but imaginatively conservative, with a profound regard for what is given, as earth or air, sun or moon or stars, or the dreams of man.

The air is full of a farewell- deserted by the silver lake lies the wild world, overturned. Cities rise where the mountains fell, the furnace where the phoenix burned

What I love is slowness. Slow people, slow reading, slow traveling, slow eggs, and slow love. Everything good comes slow.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

One wonders why Christians today get off so easily. Is it because unchristian Americans are that much better than unchristian Romans, or is our light so dim that the tormentor can't see it? What are the things we do that are worth persecuting?

Clarence Jordan

The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow.

I divested myself of despair and fear when I came here. Now there is no more catching one's own eye in the mirror, there are no bad books, no plastic, no insurance premiums, and of cours eno illness. Contrition does not exist, nor gnashing of teeth. No one howls as the first clod of earth hits the casket. The poor we no longer have with us. Our calm hearts strike only the hour, and God, as promised, proves to be mercy clothed in light.

Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.

Eknath Easwaran

A translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print

Gregory Rabassa

I am naturally anti-Russian just as most Germans are. I admire their achievements in industrial fields. I was in Moscow personally. I would not be in favor of the Russian system in the western nations. I don't condemn the system — I recognize the good results that it has produced in its proper setting. But in order to be Communist, one must be a fanatic. I am very suspicious of all systems requiring fanaticism. I am convinced that the world would be a better place if people were satisfied with enough to eat and a job to keep them occupied.

Anybody looking for a quiet life has picked the wrong century to born in.

Whittaker Chambers

Offspring were a joy or a shame, but still the crown of their elders, nature's unpredictable creatures.

Yes, my boy. I often wonder where the mathematics stops and witchcraft begins.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

The Hindus are busy letting themselves be seen riding in Cadillacs instead of smearing themselves with sandalwood paste and bowing in front of Ganpati. The Moslems would rather miss evening prayer than the new Disney movie. The Buddhists think it's more important to take over in the name of Stalin and Progress than to meditate on the four basic sorrows. And we don't even have to mention Christianity or Judaism.

Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all.

If man is part and parcel of the universe, and is ruled by the same laws as govern the sky, it is not unreasonable to search the heavens for the patterns of our lives, and for those impersonal attractions which induce our success and our errors.

Marguerite Yourcenar

Humility means that one should not be anxious to have the satisfaction of being honored by others.

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada