A Quote by David Foster Wallace

I had four hundred thousand pages of continental philosophy and lit theory in my head. And by God, I was going to use it to prove to him that I was smarter than he was.

David Foster Wallace

Quote Topics

Continental Four God Going Had Head Him Hundred Lit Pages Philosophy Prove Smarter Than Theory Thousand Use

Quote Author

David Foster Wallace
American - Writer
February 21, 1962 - December 12, 2008

I always tell my students to go back after a hundred pages and rewrite from the beginning. It's really harder if you've already finished four hundred pages and realize the first hundred aren't working.

Yiyun Li

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

Elie Wiesel

I had some hesitations about philosophy because, if you worked out a philosophical theory, it was hard to know whether you were going to be able to prove it or whether other theories had just as good a claim on belief.

Stephen Cole Kleene

In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions.

Robert Toombs

One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.

William Morris

Raphael painted, Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton sang; and through it all, for four hundred years, the dark captives wound to the sea amid the bleaching bones of the dead: for four hundred years the sharks followed the scurrying ships; for four hundred years America was strewn with the living and dying millions of a transplanted race; for four hundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God.

W. E. B. Du Bois

It is really appropriate to call Jesus the word because God spoke him into existence through dozens probably a hundred different people over a four thousand year period of time. The Holy Spirit took these words and impregnated Mary.

Andrew Wommack

The last hundred years have been retinal; even the cubists were. The surrealists tried to free themselves, and earlier so had the dadaists, but unfortunately, these latter were nihilists and didn't produce enough to prove their point, which, by the way, they didn't have to prove - according to their theory.

Marcel Duchamp

In the case of Anathem, most of the research had to do with philosophy and metaphysics. Reading this sort of thing has never been my strong suit, so I actually had to be somewhat more "organized and results-driven" than is my habit. I just made up my mind that I was going to have to read some of these philosophy tomes, and I forced myself to read something like 10 pages a day until I had bashed my way through them.

Neal Stephenson

I've only been gone a week," I reminded him. Well, a week's a long time. It's seven days. Which is one hundred and sixty-eight hours. Which is ten thousand, eighty minutes. Which is six hundred thousand, for hundred seconds.

Meg Cabot

Ten thousand officers and men named Smith died in the First World War. One thousand four hundred Campbells died, six thousand Joneses, and one thousand Murphys. Smith, Campbell, Jones and Murphy: the names of the United Kingdom, whose presence in regiments from all four countries speaks of the ebb and flow of peoples within these islands, of a common sacrifice, and a shared agony that burned in so many million hearts down the decades.

Kevin Myers

Moral theory develops from the divine command theory of medieval Christian philosophy, mixed up with a bit of ancient pagan virtue theory, to the purely secular moral sentiment and interpersonal reaction theories of Smith and Hume, to Kant's attempt to restore command theory but with something supersensible in the individual rather than God as the source of authority.

Catherine Wilson

At thirty-five, having spent over twenty years running varied businesses for my family, I decided to sit down and write my first novel. I had never written anything longer than a couple of pages till then and was foolishly attempting to write a hundred-thousand words.

Ashwin Sanghi

I pledge to set out to live a thousand lives between printed pages. I pledge to use books as doors to other minds, old and young, girl and boy, man and animal. I pledge to use books to open windows to a thousand different worlds and to the thousand different faces of my own world. I pledge to use books to make my universe spread much wider than the world I live in every day. I pledge to treat my books like friends, visiting them all from time to time and keeping them close.

Cornelia Funke

It was like time would stop, and the dancer would sort of step through some kind of portal and he wasn't doing anything different than he had ever done, 1,000 nights before, but everything would align. And all of a sudden, he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity. And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was, you know, they called it by it's name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, "Allah, Allah, Allah, God God, God." That's God, you know.