Epithet Quotes - Page 3

• The love of liberty was the ruling passion of these Germans; the enjoyment of it, their best treasure; the word that expressed that enjoyment the most pleasing to their ear. They deserved, they assumed, they maintained the honourable epithet of Franks or Freemen; which concealed, though it did not extinguish, the peculiar names of the several states of the confederacy.

  Edward Gibbon

  Passion, Names, History

  Edward Gibbon (1835). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.102

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's easy to attack an artist as misogynist, but that's really such a facile epithet. And if an artist is constantly worrying about how others will judge a work, it can end up being a block to investigating certain areas of human nature or certain truths about sexuality.

  Lisa Yuskavage

  Block, Artist, Worry

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. We don't need to fall all over ourselves with adjectives and epithets. Let's play him more.

  Jacques Barzun

  Fall, Reading, Artist

  Interview with John C. Tibbetts, December 4, 1986.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure ... There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Race, Judging, Employment

  Jeremy Bentham (1839). “The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Now First Collected: Under the Superintendence of His Executor, John Bowring ...”, p.254

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The infernal flag-waving after 9/11 nearly drove liberals out of their gourds. For the left, 'flag-waving' is an epithet.

  Ann Coulter

  Gourds, Flags, Flag Waving

  Ann Coulter (2003). “Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right”, p.5, Crown Forum

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...a vocal minority of scientists so mistrusts the models and the complex fragmentary data, that some claim that global warming is a hoax. They have made public statements accusing other scientists of deliberate fraud in aid of their research funding. Both sides are now hurling personal epithets at each other, a very bad development in Earth sciences.

  Joanne Simpson

  Data, Research, Development

  6 Copy quote

• Here in the United States, when the term "fascist" gets used, it`s either talking about other countries, ancient history or it`s used as a sort of insult, right, a sort of generic right wing epithet that people use to criticize politicians who are at most on the edge of mainstream American political thought.

  Rachel Maddow

  Country, Talking, Wings

  6 Copy quote

• Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Lonely, Book, Men

  "An Autobiographical Novel". Book by Kenneth Rexroth. Introduction, www.bopsecrets.org. 1991.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A composition which dazzles at first sight by gaudy epithets, or brilliant turns or expression, or glittering trains of imagery, may fade gradually from the mind, leaving no enduring impression; but words which flow fresh and warm from a full heart, and which are instinct with the life and breath of human feeling, pass into household memories, and partake of the immortality of the affections from which they spring.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Memories, Spring, Heart

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Essays and Reviews”, p.40

  10 Copy quote

  Show source