Discourse Quotes - Page 13

• This progressive effacement of human relationships is not without certain problems for the novel. How, in point of fact, would one handle the narration of those unbridled passions, stretching over many years, and at times making their effect felt on several generations? We’re a long way from Wuthering Heights, to say the least. The novel form is not conceived for depicting indifference or nothingness; a flatter, more terse, and dreary discourse would need to be invented.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Passion, Years, Long

  8 Copy quote

• The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Ideas, Mind

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling “traditions”; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician’s discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as “identities” that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.

  Susan Sontag

  Lying, Reality, America

  Susan Sontag, Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (2003). “Susan Sontag: Ansprachen aus Anlass der Verleihung”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• While self-interest arising from the enjoyment of meat eating is obviously one reason for its entrenchment, and inertia another, a process of language usage engulfs discussions about meat by constructing the discourse in such a way that these issues need never be addressed. Language distances us from the reality of meat eating, thus reinforcing the symbolic meaning of meat eating, a symbolic meaning that is intrinsically patriarchal and male-oriented. Meat becomes a symbol for what is not seen but is always there--patriarchal control of animals and of language.

  Carol J. Adams

  Distance, Reality, Animal

  7 Copy quote

• This is a gathering of Lovers.
  In this gathering
  there is no high, no low,
  no smart, no ignorant,
  no special assembly,
  no grand discourse,
  no proper schooling required.
  There is no master,
  no disciple.
  This gathering is more like a drunken party,
  full of tricksters, fools,
  mad men and mad women.
  This is a gathering of Lovers.

  Rumi

  Life, Smart, Party

  "Hush Don't Say Anything to God". Book by Rumi, translated by Shahram Shiva, 1999.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The need for civility in society has never been more important. The foundation of kindness and civility begins in our homes. It is not surprising that our public discourse has declined in equal measure with the breakdown of the family. The family is the foundation for love and for maintaining spirituality. The family promotes an atmosphere where religious observance can flourish. There is indeed beauty all around when there's love at home.

  Quentin L. Cook

  Religious, Kindness, Home

  55 Copy quote

• A critical discourse that had respect for the mystery of art would look to the sense of life which finds expression in paradox, metaphor, tautology, and syntax.

  Denis Donoghue

  Art, Expression, Syntax

  5 Copy quote

• The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process.

  Walter Cronkite

  Meaningful, Political, Campaigns

  94 Copy quote

• Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement.

  Jacques Ellul

  Prayer, Moments, Form

  48 Copy quote

• Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned and well placed, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Voice, Pieces, Rehearsal

  Benjamin Franklin (1818). “The Works of Dr. Benjamin Franklin: [Autobiography”, p.114

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth.

  Elie Wiesel

  Philosophy, Logic, Process

  Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi (2002). “Elie Wiesel: Conversations”, p.87, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Jesuits were good educators, exceptional teachers. In an era and in a society where freedom of speech was not held in high regard, of course, that the discourse be focused on what they were teaching, but we were able to go beyond this framework without incurring too great a risk.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Teacher, Teaching, Risk

  Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1995). “Memoirs”, McClelland & Stewart Limited

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences from social ostracism to vocational defenestration upon those who refuse to be silenced.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Attitude, Winning, Trying

  "Charles Krauthammer: Thought police on patrol". www.washingtonpost.com. April 10, 2014.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice

  Izaak Walton

  Mean, Men, Practice

  1653 The Compleat Angler, pt.1, ch.1.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just as a moral distinction is drawn between "those at risk" and "those posing a risk", health education routinely draws a distinction between the harm caused by external causes out of the individual's control and that caused by oneself. Lifestyle risk discourse overturns the notion that health hazards in postindustrial society are out of the individual's control. On the contrary, the dominant theme of lifestyle risk discourse is the responsibility of the individual to avoid health risks for the sake of his or her own health as well as the greater good of society.

  Deborah Lupton

  Responsibility, Health Education, Risk

  7 Copy quote

• It's very fashionable to talk about human trafficking, in this fantastic A-C hall. It's very nice for discussion, discourse, making films and everything. But it is not nice to bring them to our homes. It's not nice to give them employment in our factories, our companies. It's not nice for our children to study with their children. There it ends. That's my biggest challenge.

  Sunitha Krishnan

  Children, Motivation, Nice

  "The fight against sex slavery". TED Talk, www.ted.com. November 2009.

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome

  Ben Jonson

  Speech, Harsh, My Own

  Ben Jonson, William Gifford (1816). “The Works of Ben Jonson...: With Notes Critical and Explanatory, and a Biographical Memoir”, p.363

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment

  Henry David Thoreau

  Disappointment, Silence, Dull

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Illustrated "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"”, p.392, Princeton University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art in progress. MAK has occupied a unique and valuable space as international host for discourse between the arts and architecture.

  Thom Mayne

  Art, Unique, Space

  7 Copy quote

• The level of discourse reaching a mailbox simply cannot be limited to that which would be suitable for a sandbox.

  John Paul Stevens

  Would Be, Levels, Mailboxes

  "Obama on Mass Shootings; Paul Campaign's Struggles; What House Members Want; Thurgood Marshall's Fight" by Carl M. Cannon, www.realclearpolitics.com. October 2, 2015.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the absence of any written analogue to speech, the sensible, natural environment remains the primary visual counterpart of spoken utterance, the palpable site, or matrix wherein meaning occurs and proliferates. In the absence of writing, we find ourselves situated in the field of discourse as we are embedded in the natural landscape; indeed, the two matrices are not separable. We can no more stabilize the language and render its meanings determinate than we can freeze all motion and metamorphosis within the land.

  David Abram

  Writing, Land, Two

  4 Copy quote

• For the Amahuaca, the Koyukon, the Apache, and the diverse Aboriginal peoples of Australia - as for numerous other indigenous peoples - the coherence of human language is inseparable from the coherence of the surrounding ecology, from the expressive vitality of the more-than-human terrain. It is the animate earth that speaks; human speech is but a part of that vaster discourse.

  David Abram

  Expression, Australia, Vitality

  David Abram (2012). “The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World”, p.179, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off; who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Educational, Mean, Men

  4 Copy quote

• I heard many discourses which were good for the soul, but I could not discover in the case of any one of the teachers that his life was worthy of his words.

  Saint Basil

  Teacher, Soul, Cases

  26 Copy quote

• The Journal of Discourses ranks as one of the standard works of the Church, and every right-minded Saint will certainly welcome with joy every Number as it comes forth from the press as an additional reflector of 'the light that shines from Zion's hill.

  George Q. Cannon

  Numbers, Light, Zion

  12 Copy quote