Characteristics Quotes - Page 31

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  Photo © Michel Delsol

  Even a woman who has the soul of a pirate, at least pirate morals, even a woman who prefer loneliness to the bickerings and constraints of heterosexual marriage, even such a woman who is a freak in our society needs a home... The only characteristic freaks share is our knowledge that we don't fit in.

  Kathy Acker

  Home, Pirate, Soul

  "Don Quixote: A Novel". Book by Kathy Acker, 1986.

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• The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.

  Mark Twain

  Pride, Hands, Ideas

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.831, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Religions, creeds and forms are only a characteristic outward sign of the spiritual impulsion and religion itself is the intensive action by which it tries to find its inward force. Its expansive movement comes in the thought which it throws out on life, the ideals which open up new horizons and which the intellect accepts and life labours to assimilate.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Spiritual, Trying, New Horizons

  Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (Pondicherry, India), Aurobindo Ghose (1996). “Bulletin”

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• Our characteristic response to the mutilated statue, the bronze dug up from the earth, is revealing. It is not that we prefer time-worn bas-reliefs, or rusted statuettes as such, nor is it the vestiges of death that grip us in them, but those of life. Mutilation is the scar left by the struggle with Time, and a reminder of it - Time which is as much a part of ancient works of art as the material they are made of, and thrusts up through the fissures, from a dark underworld, where all is at once chaos and determinism.

  Andre Malraux

  Art, Struggle, Dark

  "The Voices of Silence". Book by Andre Malraux, Doubleday, Part IV, Chapter VII, 1953.

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• The question so often asked of modern painting, "What is it?", contains more than the dull skepticism of the man who is not going to have the wool pulled over his eyes. It speaks of a fundamental placement in relation to the work, that of a voyager in the world coming upon a strange object. The reader reconstitutes the work by his active participation, by approaching the object, tapping it, shaking it, holding it to his ear to hear the roaring within. It is characteristic of the object that it does not declare itself all at once, in a rush of pleasant naïveté.

  Donald Barthelme

  Eye, Men, Vets

  "After Joyce (1964)". "Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme". Book by Donald Barthelme, p. 4, 1997.

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• Ernest Bevin had many of the strongest characteristics of the English race. His manliness, his common sense, his rough simplicity, sturdiness and kind heart, easy geniality and generosity, all are qualities which we who live in the southern part of this famous island regard with admiration.

  Ernest Bevin

  Heart, Islands, Race

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• Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. ...Innovation is bad form.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Class, Innovation, Form

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.124, Courier Corporation

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• Man is the "ethical animal" ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality. His capacity for ethical judgment like freedom, reason and the other unique characteristics of the human being is based upon his consciousness of himself.

  Rollo May

  Unique, Men, Animal

  Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.130, W. W. Norton & Company

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• However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.

  Rollo May

  Fighting, Covered Up, May

  "Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence". Book by Rollo May, Ch. 11 : The Humanity of the Rebel, 1972.

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• The capacity for the accomplishment of religious virtuosos the "intellectual sacrifice" is the decisive characteristic of the positively religious man. That this is so is shown by the fact that in spite of (or rather in consequence) of theology (which unveils it) the tension between the value-spheres of "science" and the sphere of "the holy" is unbridgeable.

  Max Weber

  Religious, Sacrifice, Men

  Max Weber (2009). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.154, Routledge

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• I don't think that modesty is the outstanding characteristic of contemporary politics, do you?

  Edward Heath

  Thinking, Modesty, Outstanding

  Edward Heath's comment in the House of Commons, December 1988.

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• This characteristic of Dasein's being this "that it is" is veiled in its "whence" and "whither.

  Martin Heidegger

  Existentialism

  "Martin Heidegger". Book by Martin Heidegger (p. 87), 1978.

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• Consider paint a film of light reflecting/absorbing material, and a colored paint a material which gives a particular, characteristic transmission of light via differential absorption and reflection. Call this reflected quality 'luminance' and measure it in millilamberts. This measure is as real and present as height, breadth, depth; and I find the phenomenon equally sumptuous and convincing. . . . Painted light, not color, not form, not perspective, or line, not image, or words, or equations, is painting. I make paintings which do not represent light, they are light.

  Jo Baer

  Real, Reflection, Light

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• Hypocrisy is the characteristic feature of the dying bourgeois epoch.

  Joseph Goebbels

  Hypocrisy, Dying, Epoch

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• There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors.

  Chester A. Arthur

  Order, Self, Habit

  First annual message, 1881.

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• As for comics, one has only to turn to the characteristic output of Marvel Comics, for the period from about 1961 to about 1975, to find not an expression of base and cynical impulses but of good, old-fashioned liberal humanism of a kind that may strike us today, God help us, as quaint, but which nevertheless appealed, in story after story, to ideals such as tolerance, technological optimism, and self-sacrifice for the benefit of others.

  Michael Chabon

  Sacrifice, Self, Expression

  Unpublished Letter of Complaint to The New York Review of Books,

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• What initially attracted me to The Seventh Seal was that it had values and characteristics which I was familiar with in other art forms, most notably, the European novel and certain forms on English drama, and indeed, in relation to my rather academic interest in history -- not "history" in the normal sense, but history as a form of entertainment . It might be a very unfashionable view but I believe that history is an amazing bank or reserve area of plots, characterisations, extraordinary events, etc.

  Peter Greenaway

  Art, Drama, Believe

  Interview in Art and Design, no. 49,

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• If you cannot see that divinity includes male and female characteristics and at the same time transcends them, you have bad consequences. Rome and Cardinal O'Connor base the exclusion of women priests on the idea that God is the Father and Jesus is His Son, there were only male disciples, etc. They are defending a patriarchal Church with a patriarchal God. We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God.

  Hans Kung

  Jesus, Father, Fighting

  Newsweek interview, July 08, 1991.

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• The peculiar characteristic of classical music is that it is really better than it sounds.

  Edgar Wilson Nye

  Sound, Peculiar, Classical Music

  Edgar Wilson Nye's stand-up line, 1888.

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• Since you are "in the market," you need to set standards of what you are seeking in a partner and in a relationship. Dating is not simply a prelude to a committed relationship or marriage. Dating is an opportunity to evaluate whether the person you are dating is a good candidate for you. You need to pay attention to your partner's positive and negative characteristics. Ask yourself whether you could live with this person for the rest of your life.

  David Price

  Opportunity, Dating, Pay

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• Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.

  Jerry Pournelle

  Warrior, Cities, People

  Reply to reader email on "The View from Chaos Manor" - personal blog, www.jerrypournelle.com. February 21, 2001.

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• I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood.

  Alasdair MacIntyre

  Facts, Moral, Judgment

  Alasdair MacIntyre (1981). “After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory”, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd

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• Good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language.

  Betty Boothroyd

  Language, Moderation, Temper

  1995 In The Independent, 9 Feb.

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• Of Captain Elliot, already so well known to the government, it would be almost superfluous to speak; in this action, he evinced his characteristic bravery and judgment; and, since the close of the action, has given me the most able and essential assistance.

  Oliver Hazard Perry

  Government, Bravery, Essentials

  Oliver Hazard Perry, Citizen of Massachusetts (1834). “A review of a pamphlet purporting to be Documents in relation to the differences which subsisted between the late Commodore Oliver H. Perry, and Captain Jesse D. Elliott”, p.24

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• Not every painter has a gift for painting, in fact, many painters are disappointed when they meet with difficulties in art. Painting done under pressure by artists without the necessary talent can only give rise to formlessness, as painting is a profession that requires peace of mind. The painter must always seek the essence of things, always represent the essential characteristics and emotions of the person he is painting.

  Titian

  Art, Essence, Giving

  "The Quotable Artist". Book by Peggy Hadden, p. 71, 2002.

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