Famous Halmos quotation

[Marko Lindner]

I'm looking for the original English version of a
quotation by Paul R. Halmos which is known to me
in German language only. In German it reads :

"Es bleibt immer etwas ungetan,
immer entweder etwas mehr zu sagen
oder eine bessere Art, etwas zu sagen,
oder zumindest ein stoerendes vages Gefuehl,
dass die vollkommene Hinzufuegung
oder Verbesserung greifbar nahe ist
und die Befuerchtung, dass die Unterlassung
ein ewig andauernder Grund
des Bedauerns sein wuerde.

PAUL R. HALMOS"

If I translate this to English it is something
like :

"There's always something undone,
always something more to say
or a better way to say it
or at least a vague feeling
the final addition or improvement
could be very near
and there's the fear
that the omission
could be an everlasting reason
for sadness."

Ok - my English translation is
maybe bad and far away from being
grammatically or even historically
correct. But at least you know now,
which quotation I mean.

Maybe someone can help me with the
original one. I know that many good
quotations by Halmos can be found at :

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/
Quotations/Halmos.html

But there's not the one I'm looking for.

Thanks,
Marko

[William C Waterhouse]

In article <01be81e4$1c57df40$0b60...@ml.csn.tu-chemnitz.de>,

"Marko Lindner" <ma...@hrz.tu-chemnitz.de> writes:
> I'm looking for the original English version of a
> quotation by Paul R. Halmos which is known to me
> in German language only. In German it reads :
>
> "Es bleibt immer etwas ungetan,
> immer entweder etwas mehr zu sagen

>...

It's from an essay called "How to Write Mathematics".
It appeared first in L'Enseignement Math. 16, 123-152,
and shortly thereafter (as originally planned) in a
booklet of that same title published by the American
Mathematical Society. I'm fairly sure it's also in his
Selecta: Expository Writing.

It is toward the beginning of a section, which
I'll quote from the beginning:

"19. Stop

"The battle against copyreaders is the author's last task,
but it's not the one that most authors regard as the last.
The subjectively last step comes just before; it is to
finish the book itself -- to stop writing. That's hard.
There is always something left undone, always either
something more to say, or a better way to say something,
or, at the very least, a disturbing vague sense that the
perfect addition or improvement is just around the corner,
and the dread that its omission would be everlasting
cause for regret. [...]"

William C. Waterhouse
Penn State