Formal Quotes - Page 19

• When I used to do abstract paintings at school, like everyone else, the tutor said these would make great curtains. I would always neglect the formal stuff that was going on by using colour, because colour kind of came naturally to me.

  Damien Hirst

  School, Abstract Painting, Stuff

  "Damien Hirst interview for The Blue Paintings at the Wallace Collection". Interview with John Hoyland, www.telegraph.co.uk. October 13, 2009.

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• Piano was - well, all musical instruments were taught in this very rigid, formal, classical method when I was young.

  Hugh Laurie

  Piano, Musical, Taught

  "Hugh Laurie Puts Blues In The House". Interview with Rachel Martin, www.npr.org. August 18, 2013.

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• After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey's prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality.

  John Henrik Clarke

  Reality, United States, World

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• Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Jobs, Children, College

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• No one ever taught me, and I never had formal classes in pattern making, so I was like, Okay, I'll just drape, and I'll sew as I pin it.

  Alexander Wang

  Class, Patterns, Taught

  "Alexander Wang: Fashion's Boy Wonder" by Anamaria Wilson, www.harpersbazaar.com. August 11, 2011.

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• What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep, when I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.

  Marquis de Sade

  Would Be, Causes, Chaos

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• It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling.

  Murray Rothbard

  Limits, Absurd, Term

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• It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Play, Theoretical Physics

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.102, Princeton University Press

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• To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Success, Creativity, Independent

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1945). “Hegel's Philosophy of right”

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• Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

  Doris Lessing

  Giving, Way, Emotion

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• I've never created a riot before. I did cause a brawl at the last formal. A large number of young women there actually arrived with the expectation of seducing me into matrimony, and a couple of their mothers came to blows. It was hilari—I mean, dreadful. Simply dreadful.

  Ilona Andrews

  Mother, Couple, Mean

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• The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

  W. H. Auden

  Stars, Heart, Men

  Letter from Iceland (1937, by Auden and MacNeice) "Letter to William Coldstream, Esq."

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• It appeared clear to me - partly because of the lies that filled my history textbooks - that the intent of formal education was to inculcate obedience to a social order that did not deserve my loyalty. Defiance seemed the only dignified response to the adult world.

  Timothy B. Tyson

  Loyalty, Lying, Order

  Timothy B. Tyson (2007). “Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story”, p.275, Broadway Books

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• But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.

  Edith Wharton

  Doors, Drawing, House

  Edith Wharton (2016). “Early Short Stories: American Literature”, p.143, VM eBooks

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• What is it about wearing a tuxedo or that little black dress, that makes us feel confident, beautiful, splendid, even invincible? We put on formal wear and suddenly we become extraordinary. On the days when you feel low and invisible, why not try this on for size: imagine you are wearing a fantastic tailored tuxedo or a stunning formal gown. And then proceed with your day.

  Vera Nazarian

  Beautiful, Black, Trying

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• There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now... What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.

  Douglas Adams

  Sorry, Mean, Light

  "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Book 1)". Book by Douglas Adams (Chapter 3), October 12, 1979.

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• But the name Magnus Bane made him think of a towering sort of figure, with huge shoulders and formal purple warlock’s robes, calling down fire and lightning. Not Magnus himself, who was more of a cross between a panther and a demented elf.

  Cassandra Clare

  Thinking, Names, Purple

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• [Friendship] is a relationship that has no formal shape, there are no rules or obligations or bonds as in marriage or the family, it is held together by neither law nor property nor blood, there is no glue in it but mutual liking. It is therefore rare.

  Wallace Stegner

  Blood, Law, Together

  Wallace Stegner (2007). “Crossing to Safety”, p.96, Modern Library

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• I would love a sandwich,' said Tybalt, with enough gravity to make it sound like a formal proclamation. Resolved: that we will have ham and cheese sandwiches.

  Mira Grant

  Cheese Sandwiches, Ham, Sound

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• He wouldn't write a letter because he couldn't without beginning it 'Dear Sylvia' and ending it 'Yours sincerely' or 'truly' or 'affectionately.' He's that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he's so formal he can't do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can't use half of them.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Writing, Use, Half

  Ford Madox Ford (2012). “Parade's End”, p.34, Vintage

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• one must verge on the unknown, write toward the truth hitherto unrecognizable of one’s own sincerity, including the avoidable beauty of doom, shame, and embarrassment, that very area of personal self-recognition,(detailed individual is universal remember) which formal conventions, internalized, keep us from discovering in ourselves and others

  Allen Ginsberg

  Writing, Self, Recognition

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• We live in a culture that has institutionalized the oppression of animals on at least two levels: in formal structures such as slaughterhouses, meat markets, zoos, laboratories, and circuses, and through our language. That we refer to meat eating rather than to corpse eating is a central example of how our language transmits the dominant culture's approval of this activity.

  Carol J. Adams

  Zoos, Animal, Meat Eating

  Carol J. Adams (2015). “The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory”, p.82, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Can such stiff and formal moldings as words capture the spirit-essence of love?

  Pearl S. Buck

  Essence, Spirit, Capture

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• Getting yelled at by a furious woman should be treated as a semiformal occasion.

  Jeff Lindsay

  Should, Furious, Occasions

  "Darkly Dreaming Dexter".

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• The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.

  George Washington

  Country, Revenge, Party

  United States. President, George Washington, United States (1825). “The speeches, addresses and messages, of the several presidents of the United States, at the openings of Congress and at their respective inaugurations: Also, the Declaration of independence, the Constitution of the United States, and Washington's farewell address to his fellow-citizens”, p.104

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