Life
Vendler was born and raised in Hungary, where he learned to speak both Hungarian and German. He studied there until he began to train as a Jesuit priest in Maastricht. Vendler later went to Harvard University to study philosophy, and earned his doctorate in 1959 with a dissertation entitled "Facts and Laws." After holding several teaching positions at various American universities, he became a professor at the University of Calgary, where he was one of the founding members of the Department of Philosophy. After leaving the University of Calgary in 1973, he taught at several other schools, including Rice University and the University of California, San Diego.
He was married twice—his first wife was poetry critic Helen Hennessy Vendler—and had two sons. Vendler died on 13 January 2004 at the age of 83.
Read more about this topic: Zeno Vendler
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse’s good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)