Elegant Quotes - Page 9

• Philip Kitcher has composed the most formidable defense of the secular view of life since Dewey. Unlike almost all of contemporary atheism, Life After Faith is utterly devoid of cartoons and caricatures of religion. It is, instead, a sober and soulful book, an exemplary practice of philosophical reflection. Scrupulous in its argument, elegant in its style, humane in its spirit, it is animated by a stirring aspiration to wisdom. Even as I quarrel with it I admire it.

  Leon Wieseltier

  Book, Philosophical, Reflection

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• The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there is no evidence that its functioning is due to anything more than the 10(14) neural connections that build an elegant architecture of consciousness.

  Carl Sagan

  Brain, Connections, Machines

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 278, 1980.

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• I'm a practitioner of elegant frugality. I don't feel comfortable telling other people what to do, so I just try and lead by example.

  Amory Lovins

  People, Trying, Example

  "This much I know: Amory Lovins". Interview with Lucy Siegle, www.theguardian.com. March 23, 2008.

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• Every style seems completely appropriate to its epoch. We cannot imagine Madame de Pompadour, or the Empress Josephine, or the early Victorian lady in anything but the clothes she actually wore. Each represents completely the ideals of her time: elegant artificiality or post-Revolutionary morals, or the prudery of the rising middle class.

  James Laver

  Fashion, Class, Clothes

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• Isocrates was in the right to insinuate, in his elegant Greek expression, that what is got over the Devil's back is spent under his belly.

  Alain-Rene Lesage

  Expression, Greek, Devil

  "Gil Blas". Book by Alain-René Lesage. Book VIII, Chapter 9, 1735.

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• Naked need is the occasion for God's giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works.

  Miroslav Volf

  Giving, Naked, Needs

  Miroslav Volf (2009). “Free of Charge”, p.74, Zondervan

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• The only thing that makes sense is if the universe is beautiful and simple and elegant.

  Antony Garrett Lisi

  Beautiful, Simple, Make Sense

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• It is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution, - there is something sensible to grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.

  Lord Byron

  Real, Greek, Doubt

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• I admire David Hare as much as I admire certainly any writer ever. What I like about his writing is it is very conscientiously, in one way, an attempt to reproduce the way people actually speak, but it's not just an attempt at naturalism. It's stylised and it's heightened, to great effect. It's elegant and it's funny and that's the way to my heart, frankly.

  Bill Nighy

  Writing, Heart, People

  Interview with Sarah Crompton, www.telegraph.co.uk. June 10, 2014.

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• It's disheartening that animal people criticize societies that enlist the help of actors or organize creative acts like 'I'd rather go naked than wear fur,' to increase public awareness to our cause. These are great/courageous ideas which time has come! Liberation of animals is REVOLUTION - not elegant performance/ intellectual competition. We should do most anything to advance the animal rights cause. All the bickering may make the one step forward... TWO STEPS BACKWARD???

  Adela Popescu

  Animal, Ideas, Two

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• I stand and listen to people speaking french in the stores and in the street. It's such a pert, crisp language, elegant as ruffling taffeta.

  Belva Plain

  People, Speaking French, Language

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• Philosophers and aestheticians may offer elegant and profound definitions of art and beauty, but for the painter they are all summed up in the phrase: To create a harmony.

  Gino Severini

  Art, Profound, Phrases

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• When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspirational, Persistence, Simple

  Newsweek Interview on October 14, 2006. "Steve Jobs Legacy: His Stanford University Address & More Great Quotes" by, www.thedailybeast.com. October 07, 2011.

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• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions. [...] It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. [...] You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.

  Steve Jobs

  Hard Work, Simple, Order

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• Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

  Samuel Johnson

  Night, Giving, Style

  'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'Addison'

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• The elegant study... is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience . Every aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in brain structure and function, including many psychological disorders and, presumably, genius. The study confirms that the brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, mostly nonverbal.

  Steven Pinker

  Psychological Disorders, Brain, Genius

  "On Einstein's brain". The New York Times, June 24, 1999.

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• Berthe Morisot was a painter full of eighteenth-century delicacy and grace; in a word, the last elegant and 'feminine' artists since Fragonard.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Artist, Grace, Delicacy

  "Renoir: His Life and Work". Book by François Fosca, p. 175, 1975.

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• My Weimaraners are perfect fashion models. Their elegant, slinky forms are covered in gray - and gray, everyone knows, goes with anything.

  William Wegman

  Fashion, Perfect, Slinkies

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• My other hobby, because I just love any job with a gavel, is auctioneer. And I so often have presided over charity auctions in New York that many years ago Sotheby's sent me my own gavel. Now, the Sotheby's gavel is infinitely more elegant--it came in a little velvet bag, with "Sotheby's" inscribed in gold. It hangs in my library. I feel that everyone has occasion to use a gavel at various times everyday, they just don't think of it.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Jobs, New York, Thinking

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• The old 7 Series, the E38, was an elegant car, an evolution of the classic BMW look. But it wasn't penetrating the luxury market as we desired. It just didn't have the presence to be noticed.

  Chris Bangle

  Bmw, Luxury, Car

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• Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education.

  John Henry Newman

  Bird, Resources, Instruments

  John Henry Newman (2010). “Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education: Addressed to the Catholics of Dublin”, p.231, Cambridge University Press

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• It's about how whenever I fall in love, I have these expectations of the experience being a perfect dream, which, of course, ruins it. I imagine cradling my lover's head in my lap in a cab in the middle of the night, and drinking champagne in an elegant hotel suite. But life's rarely like that, and I usually end up walking home by myself in the rain.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Dream, Falling In Love, Drinking

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• I see it every day: People trying to create a home that somebody else tells them they should have. I don't care if it's a magazine or a bossy friend - when somebody says, 'This is what's elegant, this is what's trendy,' if it doesn't represent you, you're not going to be happy.

  Nate Berkus

  Home, Should Have, People

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• I wish I could be elegant.

  Robert Mapplethorpe

  Wish

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• You can't statistically explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have been designed because you're still left to explain the designer, who must be, if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing.

  Richard Dawkins

  Designer, Stills, Creatures

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