Allusion Quotes - Page 2

• It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The truth is, fancy destroys feeling. The quick eye to the ridiculous turns every thing to the absurd side; and the neat sentence, the lively allusion, and the odd simile, invest what they touch with something of their own buoyant nature. Humor is of the heart, and has its tears; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles - and the majority of those are bitter.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Witty, Heart, Humor

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1854). “The Complete Works of L. E. Landon: Containing Romance and Reality, Francesca Carrara, Traits and Trials of Early Life, Ethel Church, the Book of Beauty, Improvisatrice, the Troubadour, Venetian Bracelet, Golden Violet, Vow of the Peacock, Easter Gift, &c., &c”, p.401

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• If you can imagine the story of the world as a giant movie, to not have some understanding of the Bible - its story, its history, and its impact - would be like watching a great movie and removing part of the plot. It can't be done. The real truth is that everyone regardless of faith tradition benefits from knowing and understanding these aspects of the Bible. It enhances one's knowledge of literature, science, art etc. It's difficult to read any classic work of literature for instance and not see biblical allusions.

  Steve Green

  Art, Real, Biblical

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• The appearance is the allusion of abstraction when in fact I am in control of every aspect of that symmetry.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Facts, Appearance, Aspect

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers.

  Amy Waldman

  Religious, Emotional, Community

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• The Book of Revelation, difficult as it may be for "literalists," becomes much simpler when we read it typologically, as a mosiac of allusions to Old Testament prophecy.

  Northrop Frye

  Book, May, Old Testament

  "The Great Code: The Bible and Literature". Book by Northrop Frye, 1981.

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• Know verily that the purpose underlying all these symbolic terms and abstruse allusions, which emanate from the revealers of Gods holy cause, hath been to test and prove the peoples of the world; that thereby the earth of the pure and illuminated hearts may be known from the perishable and barren soil.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Heart, Purpose, World

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• When I encountered "The Lady of Shallot" (to take a "for instance" allusion from the many in the book, this one from the "Etiology" section) it was still considered a "great poem." What does that poem - or rather a particular presentation of that poem (hey, admire this!) - do to a young woman?

  Laura Mullen

  Book, Doe, Hey

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think controversy has this allusion of being controversial but it's totally not, which is why I'm trying to get away from it because it's just easy and automatic.

  Bo Burnham

  Thinking, Trying, Controversial

  Source: mancunion.com

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• One would naturally expect that the Lord Jesus Christ would be sufficiently important to receive ample notice in the literature of his time, and that extensive biographical material would be available. He was observed by multitudes of people, and his own followers numbered into the hundreds (1 Cor. 15:6), whose witness was still living in the middle of the first century. As a matter of fact, the amount of information concerning him is comparatively meager. Aside from the four Gospels, and a few scattered allusions in the epistles, contemporary history is almost silent concerning him.

  Merrill C. Tenney

  Jesus, People, Important

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• The absolutely Non-Manifested cannot be designated by any expression which could limit It, Separate It, or include It. In spite of this, every allusion alludes only to Him, every designation designates Him, and He is at the same time the Non-Manifested and the Manifested.

  Abdelkader El Djezairi

  Time, Expression, Limits

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• If I am allowed to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blessed, I should imagine it by the orange-grove in that sheltered glen on which the sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are at the same time, loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one eternal feeling.

  Humphry Davy

  Sweet, Flower, Blessed

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• Graphic design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, color and light, scale and tension, form and content. But it is also an idiomatic language, a language of cues and puns and symbols and allusions, of cultural references and perceptual inferences that challenge both the intellect and the eye.

  Jessica Helfand

  Eye, Light, Color

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• He was extremely reticent in his religious sentiments, at least in all that he wrote. Allusions to his belief are rarely, if ever, to be met with in his correspondence.

  Daniel Coit Gilman

  Religious, Atheism, Belief

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• A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail. Index-hunter is a term used mockingly, meaning one who acquires superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes. The '[holding] the eel of science by the tail' allusion was used in 1728 by Alexander Pope (q.v.).

  Tobias Smollett

  Learning, Science, Superficial Knowledge

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• I actually dislike, more than many people, working through literary allusion. I just feel that there's something a bit snobbish or elitist about that. I don't like it as a reader, when I'm reading something. It's not just the elitism of it; it jolts me out of the mode in which I'm reading. I've immersed myself in the world and then when the light goes on I'm supposed to be making some kind of literary comparison to another text. I find I'm pulled out of my kind of fictional world, I'm asked to use my brain in a different kind of way. I don't like that.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Reading, People, Brain

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Children have no use for psychology. They detest sociology. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff. When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don't expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish allusions.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Children, Believe, Book

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• This is going to sound pretentious, but I like comedy that addresses something I find either worrisome or interesting in my life. I like Louis C.K.'s stuff or Bill Burr's stuff. I feel like there's comedy where someone will think of something that they think will work comedically, and then they reverse engineer that point of view so they can say that funny thing. The comedians I like, it could be an allusion, but it feels like their point of view comes first and then the jokes are a reflection of what they actually believe, or are frightened of, or are curious about, or are interested in.

  Zach Woods

  Believe, Reflection, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• When I die Bookchinism comes to an end, and all the allusions to it both among Marxists and anarchists.

  Murray Bookchin

  Anarchist, Ends, Marxist

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• The classical allusions and the Platonic disquisitions on beauty are no longer a form of cover, but integral to Aschenbach's complex sexuality. Moreover, the wandering around Venice in pursuit of Tadzio isn't a prelude to some sexual contact for which Aschenbach is yearning.

  Philip Kitcher

  Venice, Wandering Around, Sexuality

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence and the verbal facility of the company. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable.

  Jack Vance

  Challenges, Deception, Fleeting

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• Women have always collected things and saved and recycled them because leftovers yielded nourishment in new forms. The decorative functional objects women made often spoke in a secret language, bore a covert imagery. When we read these images in needlework, in paintings, in quilts, rugs and scrapbooks, we sometimes find a cry for help, sometimes an allusion to a secret political alignment, sometimes a moving symbol about the relationships between men and women.

  Miriam Schapiro

  Quilts, Women, Moving

  Miriam Schapiro (1985). “Miriam Schapiro: Femmages, 1971-1985 : Brentwood Gallery, 1221 South Brentwood Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri 63117 : May 17-June 30, 1985”

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• The spirit of tanka interests me more than following rigid conventions. As I understand it, the tradition allows a variety of approaches, from simple description and heartfelt expression to classical allusion and evocative wordplay. Succeeding generations rediscover and renew the form so that it retains its vitality.

  Harryette Mullen

  Simple, Expression, Heartfelt

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• This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion

  Jean Baudrillard

  Distance, Spy, Use

  Jean Baudrillard (1998). “The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures”, p.121, SAGE

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• When in company with literary women, make no allusions to 'learned ladies,' or 'blue stockings,' or express surprise that they should have any knowledge of housewifery, or needle-work, or dress; or that they are able to talk on 'common things.' It is rude and foolish and shows that you really know nothing about them, either as a class or as individuals.

  Eliza Leslie

  Blue, Should Have, Class

  Eliza Leslie (1839). “Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book: A Guide and Manual for Ladies as Regards Their Conversation; Manners; Dress; with Full Instructions and Advice in Letter Writing [!]; Receiving Presents; Incorrect Words”, p.259

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• British conversation is like a game of cricket or a boxing match; personal allusions are forbidden like hitting below the belt, and anyone who loses his temper is disqualified.

  Andre Maurois

  Games, Boxing, Hitting

  "The Silence of Colonel Bramble". Book by Andre Maurois, 1918.

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