Eloquent Quotes - Page 8

• As you know, shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming.

  Trevanian

  Spiritual, Art, Real

  Trevanian (2005). “Shibumi: A Novel”, p.77, Broadway Books

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• Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person's mind.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Tea, Mind, Enough

  Banana Yoshimoto (2011). “The Lake”, p.88, Melville House

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• Sometimes, to be silent is to be most eloquent.

  Charlton Heston

  Wisdom, Sometimes, Silent

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• Ten Little Indians once again shows [Alexie] to be not just one of the West’s best, but one of the most brilliantly literate American writers, even funnier than Louise Erdrich, even more primal than Jim Harrison, and even more eloquent than Annie Proulx.

  Ron Franscell

  Littles, West, Annie

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• When our wagon gets stuck in the mud, God is much more likely to assist the man who gets out to push than the man who merely raises his voice in prayer—no matter how eloquent the oration.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Prayer, Men, Voice

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• Perhaps the most eloquent of the hard virtues is courage, the disposition to encounter adversity head-on and strive to overcome it.

  Ted Malloch

  Adversity, Overcoming, Encounters

  "Doing Virtuous Business: The Remarkable Success of Spiritual Enterprise". Book by Ted Malloch, 2011.

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• The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Silence, Individuality, Speech

  Henry David Thoreau, John C. Broderick, Robert Sattelmeyer (1981). “Journal”, p.114, Princeton University Press

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• Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Taken, Decision, Virtue

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2001). “Name-Dropping: From FDR On”, p.186, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih, is an eloquent and restrained portrait of one man's exile. It is a rare narrative in that it charts a life divided between England and Sudan. Without a doubt it is one of the finest Arabic novels of the 20th century, and Denys Johnson-Davies' translationdoes the original justice.

  Hisham Matar

  Men, Justice, Doubt

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• I have received your letter of the 6th, with the eloquent discourse delivered at the consecration of the Jewish Synagogue. Having ever regarded the freedom of religious opinions and worship as equally belonging to every sect, and the secure enjoyment of it as the best human provision for bringing all either into the same way of thinking, or into that mutual charity which is the only substitute, I observe with pleasure the view you give of the spirit in which your sect partake of the blessings offered by our Government and laws.

  James Madison

  Religious, Thinking, Blessing

  James Madison (1867). “1816-1828”, p.97

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• It is easy to defend the innocent; but who is eloquent enough to defend the guilty?

  Publilius Syrus

  Guilt, Innocent, Easy

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• The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Art, Passion, Men

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 572-73, Maxims. No. 9, 1922.

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• I grew up in an eclectic house where people were listening to all types of different music. I also think being educated, eloquent and knowing how to talk for yourself in the industry makes you go a long way.

  Tinie Tempah

  Thinking, Knowing, People

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• I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and the root of the problem. He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems we face as a race.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Deep Affection, Race, Views

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• No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Men, America

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.301, Simon and Schuster

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• Is there a more pitiable spectacle than that of a wife contending with others for that charm in her husband's sight which no philters and no prayers can renew when once it has fled forever?
  Women are so unwise. Love is like a bird's song beautiful and eloquent when heard in forest freedom, harsh and worthless in repetition when sung from behind prison bars.
  You cannot secure love by vigilance, by environment, by captivity. What use is it to keep the person of a man beside you if his soul be truant from you?

  Ouida

  Beautiful, Song, Prayer

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• To ferment your own food is to lodge a small but eloquent protest - on behalf of the senses and the microbes - against the homogenization of flavors and food experiences now rolling like a great, undifferentiated lawn across the globe.

  Michael Pollan

  Rolling, Flavor, Lawns

  Michael Pollan (2013). “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation”, p.254, Penguin

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• I am feeling easy now, and you will well understand that after undergoing pain this ease is opening paradise. Invalids must be excused for being eloquent about themselves.

  George Eliot

  Pain, Feelings, Paradise

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6988, Delphi Classics

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• I'm speaking of the pursuit of excellence in all things. All things! Presence of mind and devotion to craft. A great artist has these. A great chef. A great master of tea. There's powerful kung fu in a well-built house or an eloquent letter, but the limit of your imagination is bones breaking and bullets flying.

  Scott Lynch

  Powerful, Artist, Presence Of Mind

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• For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.

  Alfred Nobel

  Writing, Biographies, Impossible

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• But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Death, Stars, Writing

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• Did you come of age in those sweet summers of the early nineteen-sixties, when the airwaves were full of rock and roll's doo-wop promise of joy and the nation was full of J.F.K.'s eloquent promise of a New Frontier? I did. Life seemed to be laid out before us like a banquet; everything was for the taking, especially hearts.

  John Lahr

  Summer, Sweet, Heart

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• ... silence (can) be the most eloquent form of lying.

  Pat Conroy

  Lying, Silence, Form

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• Writing is eternal, For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent, And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe. As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin, So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul: The plastic hand hath its witness in a statue, and exactitude of vision in a picture, And so, the mind, that was among us, in its writings is embalmed.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Heart, Eye

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• After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans ... There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les Anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them.

  John Ralston Saul

  Illustration, People, Insulting

  "Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1997.

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