Description Quotes - Page 6

• I feel that I'm solid at description.

  Christopher Bollen

  Feels

  Source: www.salon.com

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• There is no point in being a responsible member of society, nor is there any point in being an irresponsible member of society. Both are very defined descriptions of selfhood

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Humanity, Responsible

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• There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, World Love, Trouble

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• There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Knowledge, Special, Able

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• Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.

  Gore Vidal

  Criticism, Critics, Reports

  Gore Vidal (2002). “The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000”, p.25, Vintage

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• So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men.

  Charles Lamb

  Men, Littles, Sometimes

  Charles Lamb (1855). “Works, with a Sketch of His Life and Final Memorials”, p.368

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• Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.

  Joseph Addison

  Sight, Ideas, Giving

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.480

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• When I first collected these authorities, I was desirous that every quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration of a word; I therefore extracted from philosophers principles of science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful descriptions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Beautiful, Illustration, Firsts

  Samuel Johnson (2006). “A Dictionary of the English Language: an Anthology: an Anthology”, p.101, Penguin UK

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• Few novels truly deserve the description 'rollicking' in the way Mary Novik's Conceit does. A hearty, boiling stew of a novel, served up in rich old-fashioned story-telling. Novik lures her readers into the streets of a bawdy seventeenth-century London with a nudge and a wink and keeps them there with her infectious love of detail and character. A raunchy, hugely entertaining read that will leave you at once satiated and hungry for more.

  Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  Character, Details, Doe

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• A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.

  William James

  Horse, Cat, Science

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.51, 谷月社

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• She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity.

  Henry James

  Character, Mean, Giving

  Henry James (2016). “Portrait of a Lady”, p.31, Henry James

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• Speaking to the Heart is a great encouragement to men who want to be better husbands and fathers. It is both a practical job description of fatherhood-showing how fathers build strength in their children-and an inspiring call to family leadership. Any father who takes this book to heart and puts its wisdom into action will be known to his children as a great man.

  James Stenson

  Encouragement, Jobs, Children

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• God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification

  Michel de Montaigne

  Honesty, Men, Made

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• This word "description" may be disconcerting when used to refer to what is generally called a translation. But when one wishes to render a verbal creation (as opposed to a didactic statement) from one language to another, he is confronted with two equally unsatisfactory choices. He may, according to his talents, elaborate a similar, but never identical creation, or he may describe that creation as completely as possible in his own language.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Two, Choices, Wish

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• The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than understand and explain it.

  Alan Watts

  Learning, Ignorance, Knowledge

  Alan W Watts (2012). “Wisdom Of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety”, p.98, Random House

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• Love is something so divine, Description would but make it less; 'Tis what I feel, but can't define, 'Tis what I know but can't express

  Beilby Porteus

  Love Is, Divine, Feels

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• One measure of the greatness of a work is that the characters who play roles in the narrative feel its essential truth. As someone who is proud to have been there during much of the action David Sepkoski describes, I give his description and analysis of the history of paleobiology a five-star rating; to my mind, this actually was the way it was.

  Niles Eldredge

  Stars, Character, Greatness

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• Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood with all men and women, of whatever description, is a moving and fascinating adventure.

  Bill W.

  Moving, Adventure, Men

  Bill W. (1953). “Twelve steps and twelve traditions”, Alcoholics Anonymous World Serv inc

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• If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes -- no other marks or brands recollected.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Eye, Dark, Hair

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 2: 1859-1865: Library of America #46”, p.108, Library of America

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• I won't read a book that starts with a description of the weather. I don't read books over 300 pages, though I'll make an exception for Don Delillo.

  Elmore Leonard

  Book, Weather, Pages

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• I think persistence in the face of adversity is an essential part of a writer’s job description. If you don’t care enough about it to avoid being easily disheartened that way, you really should be doing something else.

  Lawrence Block

  Jobs, Adversity, Persistence

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• My hope is that the description of God's love in my life will give you the freedom and the courage to discover... God's love in yours.

  Henri Nouwen

  Giving, God's Love

  "Here and Now: Living in the Spirit". Book by Henri Nouwen, p. 175, 1994.

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• Look, words are like the air: they belong to everybody. Words are not the problem; it's the tone, the context, where those words are aimed, and in whose company they are uttered. Of course murderers and victims use the same words, but I never read the words utopia, or beauty, or tenderness in police descriptions. Do you know that the Argentinean dictatorship burnt The Little Prince ? And I think they were right to do so, not because I do not love The Little Prince , but because the book is so full of tenderness that it would harm any dictatorship.

  Juan Gelman

  Book, Thinking, Air

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• In a universe that defies description, all systems of belief can only be false.

  Austin Osman Spare

  Belief, Universe

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• You can often give a better description of the fight between people, the essentials of it, by means of fantastic animals, the simple, primitive, naked instincts, than by depicting a specific situation. It is not the human animal we should describe, but ourselves as human animals.

  Asger Jorn

  Mean, Fighting, Animal

  "Asger Jorn" by Arken Museum of Modern Art, (p. 76), 2002.

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