A Quote by Edmund White
I longed for literary celebrity even as I saw with my own eyes how little happiness it brought.
Related Quotes
Everyone at school knew who my dad was. It made me a little self-conscious a little introverted because I had a lot of attention drawn towards me, but in a way I guess it gives you a little bit of a celebrity skin, even though I wasn't a celebrity.
It is boring to haunt a writer, and even more so to haunt a celebrity. I would haunt a literary figure! Possibly some superhero, maybe even James Bond. Constant adventures, fights, beautiful women--much more interesting that watching a writer who taps on computer all day long, or a celebrity posing in front of cameras.
I was brought up to believe that how I saw myself was more important than how others saw me.
In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, and even then he was little molested until his copy was turned in at the desk; today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire, and the reduction of his observations to prose is commonly farmed out to literary castrati who never leave the office, and hence never feel the wind of the world in their faces or see anything with their own eyes.
How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked.
Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose.
How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.
Ah, how little you know of human happiness - you comfortable and benevolent people! For happiness and unhappiness are brother and sister - or even twins who grow up together - or in your case - remain small together!
Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves.
Here I saw, with my own eyes, that laughter was the most terrible weapon: you can kill anything with laughter - even murder itself.
Most people have no idea how unhappy they are because they don't know what happiness is. When they get a little break from their total pain, they feel a little better and they call it happiness.
Finally getting control of myself, I kissed her again, then brought my hand to her face, gently running my fingers over her cheek. I marveled at the softness of her skin, the gentleness I saw in her eyes. Even now she was perfect.
Students who have attended my [medical] lectures may remember that I try not only to teach them what we know, but also to realise how little this is: in every direction we seem to travel but a very short way before we are brought to a stop; our eyes are opened to see that our path is beset with doubts, and that even our best-made knowledge comes but too soon to an end.
I was wondering about my eyes; one of my eyes--the left--saw everything golden and yellow and orange, and the other eye saw shades of blue and grey and green; perhaps one eye was for daylight and the other was for night. If everyone in the world saw different colors from different eyes there might be a great many new colors still to be invented.
I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but profound happiness, even soaring happiness. And what could possibly bring a person more soaring happiness than romantic love.
Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.
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