Distinction Quotes - Page 34

Much is missed if we have eyes only for the bright colors. Nature should be viewed without distinction... She makes no choice herself; everything that happens has equal significance. Nothing can be dispensed with. This is a common mistake that many people make: They think that half of nature can be destroyed - the uncomfortable half - while still retaining the acceptable and the pleasing side.

Eliot Porter

Photography, Mistake, Eye

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Of course, we can distinguish between males and females; we can also, if we choose, distinguish between different age categories; but any more advanced distinction comes close to pedantry, probably a result of boredom. A creature that is bored elaborates distinctions and hierarchies. According to Hutchinson and Rawlins, the development of systems of hierarchical dominance within animal societies does not correspond to any practical necessity, nor to any selective advantage; it simply constitutes a means of combating the crushing boredom of life in the heart of nature.

Michel Houellebecq

Crush, Heart, Mean

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There is a distinction between failing and being a failure. Few things are learned in life without failing at least once. Did you learn to roller skate without falling a few times? Did you learn to ride a bike without losing your balance? Chances are you didn't. You may have wanted to do those things so intensely that you quickly put unsuccessful attempts behind you and kept trying. Soon you acquired the skill to do the thing you wanted. Even though in the process of learning you may have failed many times, you were not a failure. "Failing" simply became an open door to try again.

John Templeton

Failure, Fall, Doors

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No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.

Benjamin Disraeli

Numbers, Government, Long

Benjamin Disraeli (1870). “Collected Edition of the Novels and Tales”, p.65

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American labor rights activist, on activities of the National Farm Workers Association Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may.

Frederick Douglass

Men, Rights, Law

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We mustn't be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

George Bernard Shaw

Class, Society, Politics

George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.1315, e-artnow

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Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice, but who make a display of none in public and about whom no one can affirm they have a single one. There is something supple and secret about them. Besides, their perversity gives spice to their most innocent occupations, such as taking a walk in the garden at night.

Marcel Proust

Witty, Sweet, Night

Marcel Proust (1957). “Pleasures and days: and other writings”

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To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess.

William Blake

Merit, Idiot, Generalization

"Annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds" (ca. 1798 - 1809)

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Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a distinction produces rivalry.

Samuel Johnson

Men, Rivalry, Disposition

Samuel Johnson (2010). “Journey to the Hebrides: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland & The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.38, Canongate Books

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More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie.

Corrie Ten Boom

Prayer, Rest Of Life, Vanishing

Corrie ten Boom, Elizabeth Sherrill, John Sherrill (2006). “The Hiding Place”, p.209, Chosen Books

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Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses... it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.

Mary Wortley Montagu

Horse, Animal, Men

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1803). “The works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: including her correspondence, poems, and essays”, p.201

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The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.

Raymond Chandler

Art, Glasses, Hollywood

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It is a high distinction for a homely woman to be loved for her character rather than for beauty.

Plutarch

Women, Character, Homely

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The distinction that Jews have themselves always made between Jews of German origin and Jews of East European origin is as stringent as that between Boston Brahmin and Boston lace-curtain Irish, though much finer.

Diana Trilling

Boston, East, Lace

Diana Trilling (1981). “Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor”, Harcourt

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For so great is the difference between just and unjust, that it is visible even in the lifeless image of it. For what order will be left in the world, if these opposites be confounded together? Such a distinction as this, therefore, between virtuous and vicious actions, has not only been engraven by the Lord in the heart of every man, but has also been frequently confirmed by his providential dispensations.

John Calvin

Heart, Men, Action

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Work and play can be the same. When you are following your energy and doing what you want to do all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves. Work is no longer what you have to do, and play what you want to do. When you are doing what you love, you may work harder and produce more than ever before, because you are having fun.

Shakti Gawain

Fun, Work, Love You

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Vulgarity finds its antidote; old crudities become softened with time. Distinctions, both those that are useful and those that are burdensome, flourish and die, reflourish and die again.

Robert Burchfield

Antidote, Vulgarity, Dies

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Well, I think there's a distinction between sexing-up the intelligence and sexing-up the presentation of the intelligence.

John Major

Thinking, Wells, Presentation

"Former PM John Major: 'British don't turn tail' from terror". Interview with Wolf Blitzer, www.cnn.com. September 10, 2003.

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I'm always very careful to make the distinction between music criticism and music journalism. A lot of people don't. But criticism doesn't require reporting. You can write criticism at home in your underwear. On the other hand, journalism takes legwork - you have to get out there and see things and talk to people.

Michael Azerrad

Home, Writing, Hands

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Sometimes I have to pause to make the distinction between Ben the teenager and Ben the businessman.

Ben Casnocha

Teenager, Sometimes, Businessman

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I feel like people are funny, and women are people, so I'm sick of the distinction.

Kate Flannery

People, Sick, Feels

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Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin's 'Courant,' it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America's last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive.

Eric Alterman

Believe, America, Imagination

"Out of Print " by Eric Alterman, www.newyorker.com. March 31, 2008.

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But though cognition is not an element of mental action, nor even in any real sense of the word an aspect of it, the distinction of cognition and conation has if properly defined a definite value.

Samuel Alexander

Real, Elements, Cognition

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One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective.... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero.

Carolyn Wheat

Hero, Writing, Hands

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Most of us consist of two separated parts, trying desperately to bring themselves together into an integrated soma, where the distinctions between mind and body, feelings and intellect, would be obliterated.

Carl Rogers

Two, Feelings, Mind

Carl Ransom Rogers (1995). “A Way of Being”, p.252, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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