Figures Quotes - Page 36

• I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.

  Thomas Browne

  Beauty, Elephants, Bears

  Sir Thomas Browne, James Thomas Fields (1862). “Religio Medici: A Letter to a Friend, Christian Morals, Urn-burial, and Other Papers”, p.35

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• The anxiety we have for the figure we cut, for our personage, is constantly cropping out. We are showing off and are often more concerned with making a display than with living. Whoever feels observed observes himself.

  Andre Gide

  Cutting, Vanity, Anxiety

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• Men there have been who have done the essayist's part so well as to have earned an immortality in the doing; but we have had not many of them, and they make but a poor figure on our shelves. It is a pity that things should be thus with us, for a good essayist is the pleasantest companion imaginable.

  William Ernest Henley

  Men, Done, Pity

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “Views and reviews”

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• Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky line, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand: and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools.

  James Joyce

  Moon, Land, Sky

  James Joyce (2005). “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, p.200, Collector's Library

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• The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. When a ruling class measures its fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man's carnal truth is handled as something artificial.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Numbers, Land

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• He is the purest figure in history. About George Washington

  William E. Gladstone

  History

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• I will stand on, and continue to use, the figures I have used, because I believe they are correct. Now, I'm not going to deny that you don't now and then slip up on something; no one bats a thousand.

  Ronald Reagan

  Believe, Bats, Use

  Washington Post On Bandwagon, Reagan Seeks to Stiffen Credibility Grip 20 April 1980 (A8)

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• The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Struggle, Choices, Political

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• I enjoy writing about people falling in love, probably because I think the first time you fall in love is the first time that you have to figure out how you're going to orient your life. What are you going to value? What's going to be most important to you? And I think that's really interesting to write about.

  John Green

  Falling In Love, Writing, Love Is

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• I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Mind, Dying, This Life

  Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. November 18, 2006.

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• Every artist is in everything he creates, and indeed if the truth is told, every person is in his life, in his work, whatever his work may be, and this is visible in his face, figure, stance, movement, and totality.

  William Saroyan

  Artist, Movement, May

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• It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress of man is so much to be desired. The leg is the best part of the figure and the best leg is the man s. Man should no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid.

  Alice Meynell

  Fashion, Strong, Stupid

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• My advice to anyone is to figure out what you're good at - what it is that you love doing the most in life - and figure out a way to make a living from it.

  Jeannette Walls

  Advice, Way

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• Read good books. Read bad books - and figure out why you don't like them. Then don't do it when you write. If you are a science fiction or fantasy writer, going to conventions and attending panels is very useful.

  Patricia Briggs

  Book, Writing, Fiction

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• Figure out what it is in life you don't do well, and then don't do it.

  Douglas Coupland

  Wells, Profession, Interesting Man

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• What need had the businessman to scribble or philosophize when he dominated the imagination of his time and the frantic materialism that was his principle of existence had become the haunting central figure in contemporary life?

  Alfred Kazin

  Imagination, Principles, Needs

  Alfred Kazin (2013). “On Native Grounds: An Interpretation Of Modern American Prose Literature”, p.52, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Art, we are told, is a criterion of one's taste. How humiliating, should our taste turn out to be bad. Rather as though we were caught stark naked with a poor figure.

  Ilka Chase

  Art, Naked, Taste

  Ilka Chase (1948). “Free Admission”

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• I don't drink or do any drugs. I never have and I never will. I don't need them. I'm a black woman from the land of the free, home of the brave, and I figure I don't need another illusion.

  Bertice Berry

  Home, Land, Addiction

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• The turn of the century was the age of the banker, so much so that the leading bankers of the day had become legendary figures in the public imagination-vast, overshadowing behemoths whose colossal power seemed to reach everywhere.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Imagination, Age, Bankers

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• I wish we could go back to the time when the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they directly affected their public responsibilities.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Responsibility, Wish, Relevant

  "Meet the Press" with David Gregory, www.nbcnews.com. November 11, 2012.

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• We've got to figure out a way that we give a private sphere for our public leaders. We're not gonna get the best people in public life if we don't do that.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  People, Giving, Leader

  "Meet the Press" with David Gregory, www.nbcnews.com. Noveber 11, 2012.

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• His [Gen. Douglas MacArthurs] twenty-two medals-thirteen of them for heroism-probably exceeded those of any other figure in American history. He seemed to seek death on battlefields.

  William Manchester

  Courage, Two, Twenties

  William Manchester (1983). “American Caesar”, Laurel

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• I don't need the news. If they have a war, I figure someone will tell me.

  Bum Phillips

  War, Media, Needs

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• I taught myself how to play guitar - pretty badly, but I knew enough about music to start to figure it out.

  Minnie Driver

  Guitar, Play, Taught

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• Every child is created uniquely by God. God puts a certain formula in the heart of every child. And it is the parents' challenge to figure out the combination. We need to spend time studying, looking, listening, and observing.

  David Jeremiah

  Children, Heart, Parent

  Dr. David Jeremiah (2013). “The Joy of Encouragement: Unlock the Power of Building Others Up”, p.122, Multnomah

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