Life
Van Heijenoort was born in Creil, France. His family's financial circumstances were difficult as his Dutch immigrant father died when van Heijenoort was two. He nevertheless acquired a powerful traditional French formal education, to which his French writings attest. (He also published in Spanish.) Although he eventually became a naturalized American citizen, he visited France twice a year from 1958 until his death, and remained very attached to his French extended family and friends.
Read more about this topic: Jean Van Heijenoort
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 6:25.26.
Jesus.
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)