Ludwig Wittgenstein

26 April 1889 - 29 April 1951

He considered Confessions to be possibly ‘the most serious book ever written’. He was particularly fond of quoting a passage from Book I, which reads:

‘Yet woe betide those who are silent about you! For even those who are most gifted with speech cannot find words to describe you’, 

but which Wittgenstein, in discussing it with Drury, preferred to render:

‘And woe to those who say nothing concerning thee just because the chatterboxes talk a lot of nonsense.’

In conversation with Waismann and Schlick the text was translated even more freely:

‘What, you swine, you want not to talk nonsense! Go ahead and talk nonsense, it does not matter!’

Ray Monk - Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius