Incidents Quotes - Page 4

• Cultivate an ever-continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents.

  John Singer Sargent

  Groups, Posture, Notes

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• I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect-in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition-I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Struggle, Soul, Together

  Edgar Allan Poe (2012). “18 Best Stories by Edgar Allan Poe”, p.27, Dell

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• I can't point to a single person or incident that changed my life, but the recognition that there is a certain world order, has been consequential. It has empowered me to do things my way. I found an inner truth by which I abide.

  Shari Arison

  Order, World, Way

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• The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.

  Samuel Johnson

  Greatness, Men, Details

  Samuel Johnson (1840). “The Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson...”, p.260

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• It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.

  Frank O'Hara

  Intangible Quality, Events, Details

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.500, Univ of California Press

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• When I fell in love with hip-hop, there was a terminology at the time called "battling." All that was just battling with other artists, but after Tupac and those incidents when it spilled into the street and turned into a negative situation, battling turned into a beef. A whole new dynamic.

  Curtis Jackson

  Artist, Hip Hop, Negative

  "No Small Change". Interview with George Wayne, www.vanityfair.com. February 14, 2013.

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• She tapped on the window with her embossed hairbrush. They were too far off to hear. The drone of the trees was in their ears; the chirp of birds; other incidents of garden life, inaudible, invisible to her in the bedroom, absorbed them. Isolated on a green island, hedged about with snowdrops, laid with a counterpane of puckered silk, the innocent island floated under her window. Only George lagged behind.

  Virginia Woolf

  Garden, Islands, Bird

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.933, Wordsworth Editions

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• Incident at Vichy, one of my favorite Arthur Miller plays, is a play in which you look at all of the different perspectives of this moral question. And it isn't so easy to decide which position is correct.

  David Bezmozgis

  Play, Perspective, Different

  The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. September 23, 2014.

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• One good test of whether an economy is humanistic or not is the plausibility of earning the ability to drop out of it for a while without incident or insult.

  Jaron Lanier

  Tests, Earning, Insult

  Jaron Lanier (2013). “Who Owns the Future?”, p.365, Simon and Schuster

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• The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Disappointment, Grief

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous”, p.165

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• I was extremely timid and to be made to feel that I was not wanted, although in a place where I had every right to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every time any one of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my heart sank, and I was anew tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as much as the incident itself.

  Henry Ossawa Tanner

  Pain, Heart, Mind

  Dewey F. Mosby, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Darrel Sewell, Rae Alexander-Minter, Philadelphia Museum of Art (1991). “Henry Ossawa Tanner”

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• In the tale proper--where there is no space for development of character or for great profusion and variety of incident--mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Character, Space, Development

  Edgar Allan Poe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated)”, p.2103, Delphi Classics

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• Time in China has no immediacy as in America. Here I find the swift passage of our few earthly years accepted as naturally as the fall of flower and leaf. ... I hear and speak a language in which grammar has no tense. Both scholars and illiterates, in ordinary daily speech, tell an event of centuries ago as casually as an incident of the hour. Only as my knowledge has accumulated have I been able to know whether something related happened just then or in some past dynasty.

  Nora Waln

  Time, Flower, Fall

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• People who have escaped from poverty are like old soldiers. In later years they recount the little, amusing incidents that happened infrequently, and conveniently forget the long, unrelieved stretches of misery and boredom.

  Elsa Maxwell

  Years, Long, People

  Elsa Maxwell (1954). “R.S.V.P.: Elsa Maxwell's Own Story”

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• No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Nerves, Red, Rooms

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.20, Penguin

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• It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind; and what incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things, that trifles light as air shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immovable within it, that Euclid's demonstrations, could they be brought to batter it in breach, should not all have power to overthrow it!

  Laurence Sterne

  Men, Light, Air

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• Many Southern writers must have learned the art of storytelling from listening to oral tales. I did. It gave me the knowledge that the simplest incident can make a story.

  Erskine Caldwell

  Art, Southern, Listening

  Erskine Caldwell (1988). “Conversations with Erskine Caldwell”, p.181, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• It is incident to physicians, I am afraid, beyond all other men, to mistake subsequence for consequence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Mistake, Men, Physicians

  1734 Review of Dr Lucas's Essay on Waters, 25 Nov.

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• I have never seen a film being as influenced by the incidents during its making as Highway. The adventures of our north Indian road journey has many stories to tell.

  Imtiaz Ali

  Adventure, Journey, Stories

  "Highway Diaries: Songs of the Kashmir valley echo in ‘Highway’" by Stacey Yount, bollyspice.com. December 9, 2013.

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• The referee was only five or seven yards away from that incident.

  Peter Drury

  Football, Yards, Seven

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• It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Drama, Adventure, Character

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• Under our present enormous accumulation of books, I do affirm that a most miserable distraction of choice must be very generally incident to the times; that the symptoms of it are in fact very prevalent, and that one of the chief symptoms is an enormous 'gluttonism' for books.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Book, Choices, Facts

  Thomas De Quincey (1856). “Letters to a Young Man: And Other Papers”, p.40

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• What first caught my eye about Rihanna was an interview she did with Diane Sawyer after the Chris Brown incident, where she was very articulate, very poised, obviously a smart girl who talked about a very traumatic experience.

  Peter Berg

  Girl, Smart, Eye

  "Why Did You Cast A Massive Music Superstar In What Amounts To A Run-And-Gun Supporting Role?" by Tambay A. Obenson, www.indiewire.com. May 17, 2012.

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• For a startling period of my life, I reported the Troubles in Ireland for the BBC. I lived in Dublin and was called out to all sorts of incidents that, if taken together, add up to a war - bombings, assassinations, riots, shootings, robberies, jailbreaks, kidnappings, and sieges.

  Frank Delaney

  War, Taken, Together

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• As a result of the incident and subsequent media coverage, I have been forced to leave my home, my school, my employer, my family and ultimately, my entire life.

  George Zimmerman

  Home, School, Media

  "Zimmerman speaks, raises funds on new website". www.cnn.com. April 10, 2012.

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