French Formula

Famous quotes containing the words french and/or formula:

    ‘Are ye right there, Michael? are ye right?
    Do you think that we’ll be there before the night?
    Ye’ve been so long in startin’,
    That ye couldn’t say for sartin’—
    Still ye might now, Michael, so ye might!’
    —William Percy French (1854–1920)

    Hidden away amongst Aschenbach’s writing was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work.
    Thomas Mann (18751955)