Literary Birthday – 24 July – Lord Dunsany

Lord Dunsany was born 24 July 1878, and died 25 October 1957.

Nine Quotes 

  1. Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in a automobile which is travelling downhill without lights at a terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child.
  2. A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.
  3. All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships. When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity with all that is ours, our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile upon Oblivion’s sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our names and a phrase or two and little else.
  4. Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.
  5. Of pure poetry there are two kinds, that which mirrors the beauty of the world in which our bodies are, and that which builds the more mysterious kingdoms where geography ends and fairyland begins, with gods and heroes at war, and the sirens singing still, and Alph going down to the darkness from Xanadu.
  6. How beautiful are dreams! In dreams the dead may live, even the long dead and the very silent.
  7. It has always struck me that one of the readiest ways of estimating a country’s regard for law is to notice what arms the officers of the law are carrying: in England it is little batons, in France swords, in many countries revolvers, and in Russia the police used to have artillery.
  8. Nothing is as certain as a closed mind.
  9. Once I found out the secret of the universe. I have forgotten what it was, but I know that the Creator does not take Creation seriously, for I remember that He sat in Space with all His work in front of Him and laughed.

Lord Dunsany (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany) was an Irish writer and dramatist who wrote fantasy and science fiction. He published more than 80 books, and his work includes short stories, successful plays, novels and essays. He wrote In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales.

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Amanda Patterson

by Amanda Patterson

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Posted on: 24th July 2015
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