Irrepressible Quotes - Page 2

• I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

  Pierre Bourdieu

  Art, Struggle, Understanding

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• The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities.

  Mark Twain

  Baby, Ideas, House

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2171, GENERAL PRESS

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• Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child's shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings.... Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing.

  Victor Hugo

  Children, Heart, Years

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• I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle.

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Struggle, Writing

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

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• Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone.

  Annie Dillard

  Mother, Father, Crowds

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• What has not been clear is that the potential of this emergency-born technology has always accrued to human's prewar individual initiatives taken in a humble but irrepressible progression
  of assumptions, measurements, deductions, and codifications of pure science.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Taken, Humble, Technology

  R. Buckminster Fuller (1973). “Earth, Inc.”, p.20, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever. One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Communication, Memorable

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It is to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement

  Jacques Derrida

  Desire, Archives, Return

  Jacques Derrida (1998). “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”, p.100, University of Chicago Press

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• I heard so many stories from Gaomi's peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today, Gaomi's peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings, but I think they are a little puzzled by this.

  Mo Yan

  Writing, Thinking, Stories

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• It has always been cited as an irrepressible symptom of America's vitality that her people, in fair times and foul, believe in themselves and their institutions.

  Alistair Cooke

  Believe, America, People

  Alistair Cooke (2014). “America Observed: From the 1940s to the 1980s”, p.183, Open Road Media

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• At last, after almost fifty years in the hopper, the most famous unpublished novel in America is in print. Who Shot the Water Buffalo? is a splendid story of comradeship in a time and place of constant peril, but it's Babbs's irrepressible exuberance and vast, affectionate good humor that make the story go. I love this novel.

  Ed McClanahan

  Years, America, Water

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• I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies.

  Walter Mosley

  Father, Asking Why, Views

  Walter Mosley (2003). “What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace”, p.12, Black Classic Press

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• Because I'm moved in writing to be irrepressible. Writing to you seems like some holy cause, cause there's not enough female irrepressibility written down. I've fused my silence and repression with the entire female gender's silence and repression. I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world.

  Chris Kraus

  Writing, Thinking, Talking

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• The critic's hankering to be law-giver rather than servant of literature is irrepressible.

  Storm Jameson

  Law, Literature, Giver

  Storm Jameson (2011). “Parthian Words”, p.78, A&C Black

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• The irrepressible spirit that made his playing seem like good conversation is the Rubinstein legacy for pianists, if they can pick up their heads from the keyboard long enough to claim it.

  Donal Henahan

  Art, Long, Legacy

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• What would you call America's most priceless asset? Surely not its limitless natural resources, not its matchless national wealth, not its unequalled store of gold, not its giant factories, not its surpassing railroads, not its unprecedented volume of cheap power. Is not its most priceless asset the character of its people, their indomitable self-confidence, their transcendent vision, their sleepless initiative and, perhaps above all, their inherent, irrepressible optimism?

  B. C. Forbes

  Character, Self Confidence, America

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• It is the omnipresent rush of water which give the Este Gardens their peculiar character. From the Anio, drawn up the hillside at incalculable cost and labour, a thousand rills gush downward, terrace by terrace, channeling the stone rails of the balusters, leaping from step to step, dripping into mossy conches, flashing in spray from the horns of sea-gods and the jaws of mythical monsters, or forcing themselves in irrepressible overflow down the ivy-matted banks.

  Edith Wharton

  Rain, Character, Garden

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