Distillation Quotes

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Florence Nightingale

Nursing, Science, Thinking

Ray Strachey, Florence Nightingale (1930). “Struggle: the stirring story of woman's advance in England”

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The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.

Carson McCullers

Philosophy, Color, Medicine

Carson McCullers (2015). “Reflections in a Golden Eye”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Civilization begins with distillation

William Faulkner

Hipster, Civilization, Alcohol

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I have wished to see chemistry applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider, to fermentation and distillation generally, to the making of bread, butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs, &c.

Thomas Jefferson

Science, Eggs, Cheese

Thomas Jefferson (1855). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.73

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A single photograph is a mere fragment of an experience and, simultaneously, the distillation of the entire body of one's experience.

Shomei Tomatsu

Body, Photograph, Fragments

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Most of life on Earth has a deep past, much deeper than ours. And we have benefited from the distillation of all preceding history, call it evolutionary history if you will.

Sylvia Earle

Past, Earth, Deeper

"Big Thinkers on Evolution". "NOVA" Interview, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

Rita Dove

Powerful, Reading Poetry, Language

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The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous.

Kay Redfield Jamison

Beautiful, Believe, Chinese

Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.10, Pan Macmillan

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To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

Don DeLillo

Editing, Self, Voice

1982 Owen Brademas. The Names, ch.5.

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There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.

Edward Lucas

Sleep, Insomnia, Naps

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This is an age of intellectual sauces, of essence, of distillation. We have conclusions without deductions, abridgments of history and abridgments of science without leading facts. We have animals for literature, Cabinet Encyclopaedias, Family Libraries, Diffusion Societies, and heaven knows what else! What is all this for? Not to add knowledge to the learned, but to tell points to the ignorant, without giving them the trouble to acquire the links. Oh! it is sad work. And the result will be injurious to all classes.

Benjamin Haydon

Animal, Essence, Class

Benjamin Robert Haydon, Frederick Wordsworth Haydon (1876). “Correspondence and Table-talk: With a Memoir”, p.450

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Out of the silver heat mirage he ran. The sky burned, and under him the paving was a black mirror reflecting sun-fire. Sweat sprayed his skin with each foot strike so that he ran in a hot mist of his own creation. With each slap on the softened asphalt, his soles absorbed heat that rose through his arches and ankles and the stems of his shins. It was a carnival of pain, but he loved each stride because running distilled him to his essence and the heat hastened this distillation.

James Tabor

Running, Pain, Fire

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And to use something as elegant as a tree? Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, makes complex sugars and foods, changes colors with the seasons, and self-replicates. and then why don't we knock that down and write on it?

William McDonough

Nature, Food, Writing

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Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.

Diane Ackerman

Past, Poetry, Telescopes

Diane Ackerman (1999). “Deep Play”, Random House Incorporated

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Nothing else matters much...not wealth, nor learning, nor even health...without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Life, Encouraging, Spiritual

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A book cover is a distillation. It is a haiku of the story.

Chip Kidd

Inspirational, Motivational, Book

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There's something of a painting of a woman that represents all women - and by extension, all of humanity - that I just find very exciting. It's a nice distillation, I think, of what it means to be alive.

Will Cotton

Nice, Mean, Thinking

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History: A distillation of rumor.

Thomas Carlyle

History, Rumor

Thomas Carlyle (1857). “The French Revolution: a History: In Three Parts: I. the Bastille; II. the Constitution; III. the Guillotine : in Two Volumes”, p.200

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The solo is a nuanced distillation of sorrow.

Jennifer Dunning

Sorrow, Solo

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The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding.

Edward Steichen

Photography, Art, Ideas

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Fairy tales and mythology have always been an exaggerated distillation of the real world. Think of them as blueprints for how to deal with a multitude of situations that can arise in a person's life. The beauty of them is that their analogies resonate so deeply and they also entertain while they teach.

Charles de Lint

Real, Thinking, Analogies

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Because it all derived from Superman. I mean, I love all the characters, but Superman is just this perfect human pop-culture distillation of a really basic idea. He's a good guy. He loves us. He will not stop in defending us. How beautiful is that? He's like a sci-fi Jesus. He'll never let you down. And only in fiction can that guy actually exist, because real guys will always let you down one way or another. We actually made up an idea that beautiful. That's just cool to me. We made a little paper universe where all of the above is true.

Grant Morrison

Beautiful, Jesus, Real

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With impeccable timing and a fine instinct for the telling detail, Francesca Abbate evokes the plenitudes and the deprivations of human habitation, the nurturing richness of landscape, and the soul-wound wrought by casual defacement. Abbate has a superb capacity for distillation and a mastery of poetic line, and her diction is remarkably flexible, accommodating both the demotic and the lyrical. Her poems are as consistent in quality as they are varied in pacing, surface, and tone. A fine first book.

Linda Gregerson

Book, Soul, Quality

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We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).

Sam Harris

Father, Teaching, Night

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You're meant to be playing the distillation of evil, which can be anything.

Ralph Fiennes

Evil, Meant To Be

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