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In Deep Sadness There Is No Place For Sentimentality. It Is As Final As The Mountains: A Fact. There It Is. When You Realize It You Cannot Complain.
-William S. Burroughs
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In Deep Sadness There

William S. Burroughs
...
In Deep Sadness There Is No Place For Sentimentality. It Is As Final As The Mountains: A Fact. There It Is. When You Realize It You Cannot Complain.

Understanding the Quote: "in deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. it is as..."

This quote by William S. Burroughs reflects deeply on the theme of sadness. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Sadness, Mountain, Complaining, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how William S. Burroughs interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs is celebrated for insightful thoughts on sadness and mountain. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Sadness
Mountain
Complaining
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A Doctor Is Not Criticized For Describing The Manifestations And Symptoms Of An Illness, Even Though The Symptoms May Be Disgusting. I Feel That A Writer Has The Right To The Same Freedom In Fact, I Think That The Time Has Come For The Line Between Literature And Science, A Purely Arbitrary Line, To Be Erased.
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To Concern Yourself With Surface Political Conflicts Is To Make The Mistake Of The Bull In The Ring, You Are Charging The Cloth. That Is What Politics Is For, To Teach You The Cloth. Just As The Bullfighter Teaches The Bull, Teaches Him To Follow, Obey The Cloth.
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The Essence Of White Supremacy Is This: They Are People Who Want To Keep Things As They Are. That Their Children's Children's Children Might Be A Different Color Is Something Very Alarming To Them - In Short They Are Committed To The Maintenance Of The Static Image.
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Wish
Mexico
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Hate
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Life Is A Cutup. And To Pretend That You Write Or Paint In A Timeless Vacuum Is Just Simply . . . Not . . . True, Not In Accord With The Facts Of Human Perception.
Writing
Perception
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Vacation
Two
Life Is
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Queens
Stupid
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Hippie
Flower
Way
I'm Against Capitol Punishment In All Forms, And I Have Written Many Pamphlets On This Subject In The Manner Of Swift's Modest Proposal Pamphlet Incorporated Into Naked Lunch; These Pamphlets Have Marked Naked Lunch As An Obscene Book.
Book
Lunch
Punishment
People Have Nothing To Say, But They Are Afraid Of Saying Nothing, So What They Do Say Comes Out Flat And Vapid And Meaningless. The Shadow Of Death Is On Every Face.
Shadow Of Death
People
Saying Nothing
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Moving
America
Political
I Detest Limitations Of Any Kind, And Intend To Establish My Ass Some Place Where I Am A Virgin On The Police Blotter.
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Kind
Ass
Cut Word Lines — Cut Music Lines — Smash The Control Images — Smash The Control Machine — Burn The Books — Kill The Priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!
Book
Cutting
Machines
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Mistake
Party
Thinking
Smash The Control Images. Smash The Control Machine.
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What Are Americans? We've Got Everything From Sharecroppers To Atomic Physicist Here, And There's Certainly No Uniformity In Their Thought Processes. There's Very Little They Have In Common. In Fact, Americans Should We Say, Have Less In Common Than Any Other Nationality.
Here And There
Littles
Facts
Danger Is A Biologic Necessity, Like Dreams. If You Face Death, For That Time, For The Period Of Direct Confrontation, You Are Immortal.
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Faces
Danger
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Has Beens
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Atheism
Looks
I See Painting As An Evocative Magic, And There Must Always Be A Random Factor In Magic, One Which Must Be Constantly Changed And Renewed.
Magic
Painting
Changed
No Atomic Physicist Has To Worry, People Will Always Want To Kill Other People On A Mass Scale. Sure, He's Got The Fridge Full Of Sausages And Spring Water.
Spring
People
Water
A Paranoid Is Someone Who Has All The Facts.
Knowledge
Facts
Paranoid
Kerouac Opened A Million Coffee Bars And Sold A Million Pairs Of Levis To Both Sexes. Woodstock Rises From His Pages.
Sex
Hippie
Coffee
Once The Law Starts Asking Questions, There's No Stopping Them.
Asking Questions
Government
Law
Be Just And If You Can't Be Just, Be Arbitrary.
Arbitrary
Ifs
I Miss You So Much Your Absence Causes Me, At Times, Accute Pain. I Don't Mean Sexually. I Mean In Connection With My Writing.
Pain
Writing
Mean
England Has The Most Sordid Literary Scene I've Ever Seen. They All Meet In The Same Pub. This Guy's Writing A Foreword For This Person. They All Have To Give Radio Programs, They Have To Do All This Just In Order To Scrape By. They're All Scratching Each Other's Backs.
Writing
Order
Giving
Tell Allen I Plead Guilty To Vampirism And Other Crimes Against Life. But I Love Him And Nothing Else Cancels Love.
I Love Him
Guilty
Crime
Some People Like Neat Suburbs. I Always Am Attracted To The Rundown And The Old And The Offbeat.
People
Offbeat
Neat
How Far Would People Get In Physics If Discovery Was Described As Disgusting - "your Formula Is Disgusting And Filthy"? Not Very Far.
Discovery
People
Physics
Whether You Like It Or Not, You Are Committed To The Human Endeavor. I Cannot Ally Myself With Such A Purely Negative Goal As Avoidance Of Suffering. Suffering Is A Chance You Take By The Fact Of Being Alive.
Goal
Suffering
Facts
If You Talk You Always End Up With Politics, It Gets Nowhere. I Mean Man It's Strictly From The Soft Typewriter.
Mean
Men
Typewriters
Ever See A Hot Shot Hit, Kid? I Saw The Gimp Catch One In Philly. We Rigged His Room With A One-way Whorehouse Mirror And Charged A Sawski To Watch It. He Never Got The Needle Out Of His Arm. They Don't If The Shot Is Right. That's The Way They Find Them, Dropper Full Of Clotted Blood Hanging Out Of A Blue Arm. The Look In His Eyes When It Hit --- Kid, It Was Tasty.
Kids
Eye
Mirrors
Addiction Is A Disease Of Exposure. Doctors And Nurses, For Instance, Have A High Addiction Rate.
Doctors
Nurse
Addiction
[political Movements] Both Favor Alcohol And Are Against Pot.
Alcohol
Political
Movement
So Many People In The Western World Are Just Automatically Made Ill By Any Sort Of Frank Writing About Sexual Matters.
Writing
People
World
If You Weren't Surprised By Your Life You Wouldn't Be Alive. Life Is Surprise.
Live Life
Alive
Life Is
Gentle Reader, The Fountain Of Youth Is Radioactive, And Those Who Imbibe Its Poisonous Heavy Waters Will Suffer The Hideous Fate Of Decaying Metal. Yet Almost Without Exception, The Wretched Idiot Inhabitants Of Our Benighted Planet Would Gulp Down This Radioactive Excrement If It Were Offered.
Fate
Water
Suffering
I Know That Nature Designs That This Whole Continent, Not Merely These Thirty-six States, Shall Be, Sooner Or Later, Within The Magic Circle Of The American Union.
Circles
Design
Magic
I Think There Are Innumerable Gods. What We On Earth Call God Is A Little Tribal God Who Has Made An Awful Mess. Certainly Forces Operating Through Human Consciousness Control Events.
God
Thinking
Religion
The Federal Narcotics Bureau Does A Grave Disservice By Disseminating A Lot Of Misinformation. Most Of What They Say Is Such Nonsense That I Didn't Believe Them About Addiction.
Believe
Addiction
Doe
I'm Creating An Imaginary — It's Always Imaginary — World In Which I Would Like To Live.
Creating
World
Imaginary
The Purpose Of Technology Is Not To Confuse The Brain But To Serve The Body.
Technology
Brain
Purpose
We Have A Great Elaborate Machine Which I Feel Has To Be Completely Dismantled - In Order To Do That We Need People Who Understand How The Machine Works - The Mass Media - Unparalleled Opportunity.
Opportunity
Media
Order
Changes... Can Only Be Effected By Alterations In The Original. The Only Thing Not Prerecorded In A Prerecorded Universe Are The Prerecordings Themselves. The Copies Can Only Repeat Themselves Word For Word. A Virus Is A Copy. You Can Pretty It Up, Cut It Up, Scramble It - It Will Reassemble In The Same Form.
Cutting
Viruses
Form
I Think That Richard Nixon Will Go Down In History As A True Folk Hero, Who Struck A Vital Blow To The Whole Diseased Concept Of The Revered Image And Gave The American Virtue Of Irreverence And Skepticism Back To The People.
Hero
Thinking
Blow
Love Is A Haunting Melody That I Have Never Mastered, And I Fear I Never Will.
Love
Heartbreak
Haunting
The Most Deadly Picture Is A Picture Of Nothing At All. The Colors Are There, But There Is No Image, Nothing.
Color
I Awoke From The Sickness At The Age Of Forty-five, Calm And Sane, And In Reasonably Good Health Except For A Weakened Liver And The Look Of Borrowed Flesh Common To All Who Survive The Sickness.
Age
Looks
Flesh
Always Remember, There's No Point Trying To Be Faithful To The Book Because Film And Writing Are Just Two Completely Different Things. Any Film Stands On Its Own, Apart From Whether It's Based On A Novel.
Book
Writing
Two
The Idea Was That We Would Decide The Order When We Looked At The Proofs. I Remember Brion Gysin Saying "well, Why Change It? It's Perfect The Way It Is, The Way It Came From The Printer." Made One Major Change, That Is, The First Chapter That Came From The Printers, Which Would Be The Beginning, We Moved To The End. The First Chapter Became The Last Chapter. There's No Actual Cutups In Naked Lunch.
Order
Ideas
Lunch
The Whole Point Is, I Feel The Machine Should Be Eliminated. Now That It Has Served Its Purpose Of Alerting Us To The Dangers Of Machine Control.
Purpose
Machines
Danger
This Is A War Universe. War All The Time. That Is Its Nature. There May Be Other Universes Based On All Sorts Of Other Principles, But Ours Seems To Be Based On War And Games. All Games Are Basically Hostile. Winners And Losers. We See Them All Around Us: The Winners And The Losers. The Losers Can Oftentimes Become Winners, And The Winners Can Very Easily Become Losers.
War
Games
Principles
If The Mortality Rate Seems High We Must Realize That Nature Is A Ruthless Teacher. There Are No Second Chances In Mother Nature's Survival Course.
Mother
Teacher
Second Chance
Dream Long Enough And Dream Hard Enough You Will Come To Know Dreaming Can Make It So.
Dream
Long
Enough
Like Pregnant Women Lose Their Teeth Feeding The Stranger, Junkies Lose Their Yellow Fangs Feeding The Monkey.
Yellow
Teeth
Monkeys
Tangier Is One Of The Few Places Left In The World Where, So Long As You Don't Proceed To Robbery, Violence, Or Some Form Of Crude, Antisocial Behavior, You Can Do Exactly What You Want.
Long
Tangier
World
Given Certain Known Factors In An Equation And The Equation Comprising A Situation Of Absolute Need - Any Form Of Need - You Can Predict The Results. Leave A Sick Junkie In The Back Room Of A Drugstore And Only One Result Is Possible.
Sick
Rooms
Needs
If You Consider Any Set Of Data Without A Preconceived Viewpoint, Then A Viewpoint Will Emerge From The Data.
Data
Viewpoints
Ifs
For God's Sake, Keep Your Eyes Open. Notice What's Going On Around You.
Eye
Sake
Everything Jack Says Is To Be Taken With Considerable Reserve.
Taken
Reserves
We Must All Face The Fact That Our Leaders Are Certifiably Insane Or Worse
Leader
Insane
Faces
Criminal Law Is One Of The Few Professions Where The Client Buys Someone Else's Luck. The Luck Of Most People Is Strictly Non-transferrable. But A Good Criminal Lawyer Can Sell All His Luck To A Client, And The More Luck He Sells The More He Has To Sell.
Law
People
Luck
[arab Peoples] Are Stuck Back Thousands Of Years And They Think They're Going To Get Out With A Tv Set.
Thinking
Years
Tvs
A Consumer Society Is About Simplfying And Degrading The Consumer As Well As The Product.
Wells
Consumers
Degrading
In Deep Sadness There Is No Place For Sentimentality.
Grief
Sadness
Sentimentality
You Do An Awful Lot Of Bad Writing In Order To Do Any Good Writing. Incredibly Bad. I Think It Would Be Very Interesting To Make A Collection Of Some Of The Worst Writing By Good Writers.
Writing
Thinking
Order
My General Theory Since 1971 Has Been That The Word Is Literally A Virus, And That It Has Not Been Recognized As Such Because It Has Achieved A State Of Relatively Stable Symbiosis With Its Human Host; That Is To Say, The Word Virus (the Other Half) Has Established Itself So Firmly As An Accepted Part Of The Human Organism That It Can Now Sneer At Gangster Viruses Like Smallpox And Turn Them In To The Pasteur Institute.
Past
Viruses
Half
We Can Translate Word And Letter Into Color - [arthur] Rimbaud Stated That In His Color Vowels, Words Quote "words" Can Be Read In Silent Color.
Color
Vowels
Letters
Most Serious Writers Refuse To Make Themselves Available To The Things That Technology Is Doing. I've Never Been Able To Understand This Sort Of Fear.
Technology
Able
Serious
No Body Of Knowledge Needs An Organizational Policy. Organizational Policy Can Only Impede The Advancement Of Knowledge. There Is A Basic Incompatibility Between Any Organization And Freedom Of Thought.
Organization
Advancement
Needs
My Characters Are Quite As Real To Me As So-called Real People; Which Is One Reason Why I'm Not Subject To What Is Known As Loneliness. I Have Plenty Of Company.
Real
Loneliness
Character
Black Magic Operates Most Effectively In Preconscious, Marginal Areas. Casual Curses Are The Most Effective.
Black
Magic
Casual
The Planet Drifts To Random Insect Doom.
Apocalypse
Insects
Planets
The Orgasmic Death Gimmick Is Rather Complicated. It Could Be Called The Whole Birth-death Cycle Of Action, Persuading People That Birth And Death Are Realities.
Reality
People
Gimmicks
After One Look At This Planet Any Visitor From Outer Space Would Say 'i Want To See The Manager.'
Funny
Hilarious
Witty
Look At These Poisonous Color Maps Where Flesh Trees Grow From Human Sacrifices; Listen To These Sniggering Half-heard Words Of Tenderness And Doom From Lips Spotted With Decay
Sacrifice
Color
Tree
Sometimes Paranoia's Just Having All The Facts.
Facts
Sometimes
Paranoia
Whether You Sniff It Smoke It Eat It Or Shove It Up Your Ass The Result Is The Same: Addiction.
Recovery
Addiction
Alcohol
Fear Of Death Is Form Of Stasis Horrors. The Dead Weight Of Time.
Weight
Horror
Fear Of Death
If You Build A Good Name, Eventually, That Name Will Be Its Own Currency.
Names
Currency
Ifs
Dennis Cooper, God Help Him, Is A Born Writer.
Helping
Born
God Help
Kerouac And I Are Not Real At All. The Only Thing About A Writer Is That He Has Written, And Not His So-called Life. 'and We (will) All Die And The Stars Will Go Out, One After Another.
Stars
Real
Dies
He [samuel Beckett] Is Great, A Very Great Writer. Any Modern Writer Is Bound To Be Influenced By [james] Joyce. Of Course, By Beckett As Well.
Modern
Beckett
Joyce
Hemingway Was A Prisoner Of His Style. No One Can Talk Like The Characters In Hemingway Except The Characters In Hemingway. His Style In The Wildest Sense Finally Killed Him.
Character
Style
Prisoner
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