Irregularity Quotes

• Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Art, Order, Perfection

  35 Copy quote

• The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Funny Relationship, Secret Love, Being Nice

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.476, Рипол Классик

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• One can thus state, without fear of being wrong, that every truly artistic production has been conceived and executed according to the principle of irregularity.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Perfection, Principles, Artistic

  9 Copy quote

• It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Drinking, People, Care

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.60, Atlântico Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

  Joseph Addison

  Pain, Learning, Men

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.135

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Inspirational, Drinking, Recovery

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2007). “The Great Gatsby”, p.104, Broadview Press

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am convinced that we as a body must conduct a formal and legitimate debate about election irregularities.

  Stephanie Tubbs Jones

  Body, Election, Debate

  "Countdown" with Keith Oldermann, www.nbcnews.com. January 7, 2005.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don't get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Clouds, Looks, Smooth

  "A Theory of Roughness". The Edge Interview, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty.

  Aleister Crowley

  Facts, Horror, Guilty

  9 Copy quote

• To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.

  John Ruskin

  Expression, Imperfection, Vitality

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.184, University of Virginia Press

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Two, Quality, Fundamentals

  Charles Baudelaire, Keith Waldrop (2006). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.26, Wesleyan University Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.

  John Ruskin

  Life, Mistake, Errors

  John Ruskin (1867). “The Stones of Venice”, p.171

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dustcloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Science, Order, Facts

  6 Copy quote

• That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity – that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are a essential part and characteristic of beauty.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Essentials, Astonishment, Unexpected

  Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.41, Courier Corporation

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like to tell myself that truth is in the irregularity and the unexpected, and I try to look for both.

  Catherine Taylor

  Trying, Looks, Unexpected

  4 Copy quote

• No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.

  John Ruskin

  Happiness, Expression, Law

  John Ruskin (1900). “The Stones of Venice (Complete)”, p.763, Library of Alexandria

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• In all things that live there are certain irregularities, and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry.

  John Ruskin

  Beauty, Perfect, Branches

  John Ruskin (1854). “On the nature of Gothic architecture: and herein of the true functions of the workman in art. Being the greater part of the 6th chapter of the 2nd vol. of 'Stones of Venice'. [48 p.].”, p.14

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Men, Trying, Sometimes

  Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are certain irregularities which are not the subject of criminal law. But when the criminal law happens to be auxiliary to the law of morality, I do not feel any inclination to explain it away.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Law, Criminals, Morality

  5 Copy quote

• The instability of our tastes is the occasion of the irregularity of our lives.

  Stanisław I Leszczyński

  Taste, Occasions, Our Lives

  François duc de La Rochefoucauld, Stanisław I Leszczyński (King of Poland) (1851). “Moral Reflections, Sentences and Maxims of Francis, Duc de la Rochefoucauld”, p.158

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One can get a proper insight into the practice of flying only by actual flying experiments. . . . The manner in which we have to meet the irregularities of the wind, when soaring in the air, can only be learnt by being in the air itself. . . . The only way which leads us to a quick development in human flight is a systematic and energetic practice in actual flying experiments.

  Otto Lilienthal

  Air, Wind, Practice

  11 Copy quote

• We must cultivate and defend particularity, individuality, and irregularity-life. Human beings do not have a future in the collectivism of bureaucratic states or in the mass society created by capitalism. Every system, by virtue as much of its abstract nature as of its pretension to totality, is the enemy of life. As a forgotten Spanish poet, José Moreno Villa, put it with melancholy wit: "I have discovered in symmetry the root of much iniquity."

  Octavio Paz

  Life, Roots, Individuality

  Octavio Paz (1987). “1904-1912”, San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health arising from bad and insufficient food.

  Henry Walter Bates

  Book, Rivers, Ill Health

  Henry Walter Bates (1873). “The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature Under the Equator, During Eleven Years of Travel”, p.253

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• To grasp organizational life as it is, read novels (!) .... It is my fervent belief that we will never design rational processes that "overcome" such irregularities-don't bother telling that to a consultant. Hence, we should embrace the real, nonrational, nonlinear world with vigor and glee-and develop enterprise and career strategies accordingly.

  Tom Peters

  Success, Real, Creativity

  16 Copy quote

• Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words like 'knight.'

  Joshua Foer

  Knights, Language, Century

  "Utopian for Beginners" by Joshua Foer, www.newyorker.com. December 24&31, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source