Literal Quotes - Page 4

• Whenever you have dynamic interactions between 300 million people and the American economy acting in really complex ways, that introduces a degree of almost chaos theory to the system, in a literal sense.

  Nate Silver

  People, Acting, Degrees

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• It is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.

  Brian Friel

  Past, Shapes, Facts

  Brian Friel, Paul Delaney (2000). “Brian Friel in conversation”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• All religions are true but none are literal.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Hero Journey, Religion

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• The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.

  John Dunning

  Artist, Perfect, Missing

  John Dunning (2012). “The Bookman's Wake”, p.188, Simon and Schuster

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• How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: "Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe," in literal translation, "God gives but doesn't share." This meant... God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.

  Tracy Kidder

  Men, Giving, Needs

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• Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Memories, Writing, Energy

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.152, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• The fragility of love is what is most at stake here—humanity's most crucial three-word avowal is often uttered only to find itself suddenly embarrassing or orphaned or isolated or ill-timed—but strangely enough it can work better as a literal or reassuring statement than a transcendent or numinous or ecstatic one.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Love Is, Humanity, Three

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.306, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• No one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.

  Bill Bryson

  Horse, Mean, Australia

  Bill Bryson (2001). “In a Sunburned Country”, Broadway

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• What haunts me is not exactly the absence of literal space so much as a deep craving for metaphorical space: release, escape, some kind of open-ended freedom.

  Naomi Klein

  Space, Kind, Absence

  Naomi Klein (2009). “No Logo”, p.64, Macmillan

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• This - where we are now - is where a culture gets to, when it has chosen, for many years, banality over intelligence, the literal over the immaterial or complex, materialism over spirituality. This is the result of many years of disrespecting the intellectual project - of a collective acceptance of the idea that thinking and reasoning and reading deeply in difficult text and being respectful of history are somehow "wimpy" or secondary.

  George Saunders

  Reading, Acceptance, Thinking

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• God wastes nothing - not even sin. The soul that has struggled and come through is enriched by it's experiences, and Grace does not merely blot out the evil past but in the most literal sense "makes it good."

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Faith, Inspiration, Past

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• Anyway that other thing we almost did in Paris-that's probably off the table for a while.Unless you want that whole baby-I'm-on-fire-when-we kiss thing to become freakishly literal

  Cassandra Clare

  Baby, Kissing, Fire

  Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.2282, Simon and Schuster

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• People have become so literal because they're used to reality-based television.

  Julie Taymor

  Reality, People, Television

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• Americans are an "almost chosen people," which is meant to suggest that there are clear parallels, literal, theological and everything else, between the American story and the Old Testament story of Israel and then the broader story of the Christian church. It's OK to recognize the parallels. It's OK to invoke them. But, you have to keep that "almost" in front of the "chosen." You can't go all the way and say, "America is Israel, America is the Church." That's where I think patriotism shades into, what I call, the heresy of nationalism.

  Ross Douthat

  Christian, Thinking, Israel

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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• I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location. That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow.

  Elvis Costello

  Song, Writing, Location

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• We're not destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.

  Daniel Quinn

  War, World, Way

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.130, Bantam

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• We learn that many great thinkers were convinced that the Bible contained the Ancient Mysteries, but not in the literal words—that the words on the pages were codes, and that the Bible is comprised of heavy-handed and useless story covering up something much more important and interesting. I get the feeling that [Dan Brown] is trying to tell me something, but I am not biting, reader.

  Maureen Johnson

  Interesting, Feelings, Important

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• In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom - along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

  Noam Chomsky

  Rights, Illustration, Justice

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• I believe the Scriptures teach that there's a literal heaven and a literal hell, just like Jesus said. And without forgiveness of sins that, yeah, the place of punishment is called hell.

  Kirk Cameron

  Jesus, Believe, Punishment

  "Kirk Cameron, From Sitcom Star to Evangelist" by Martin Bashir, abcnews.go.com. March 17, 2006.

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• Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them.

  John Shelby Spong

  Moon, Thinking, People

  "Bishop John Shelby Spong Ahead Of His Time With Church Reforms" by David Gibson, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 13, 2013.

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• The walking tour guides one through the city's various landmarks, reciting bits of information the listener might find enlightening. I learned, for example, that in the late 1500s my little neighborhood square was a popular spot for burning people alive. Now lined with a row of small shops, the tradition continues, though in a figurative rather than literal sense.

  David Sedaris

  Squares, Cities, People

  David Sedaris (2000). “Me talk pretty one day”

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• All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.271, Delphi Classics

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• I had very literal parents and I wanted to survive with metaphor and art, and there was a real sense of shame around it.

  Amanda Palmer

  Art, Real, Parent

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I've always had a more spatial mind, mathematical, than literal.

  Portia Doubleday

  Mind, Spatial, Mathematical

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• People are incredibly literal sometimes in how they view you. You have dark hair and pale skin? You must be brooding. The second you dye your hair blond and get a spray tan, people treat you as if you're a bit stupider and happier.

  Anna Paquin

  Dark, Hair, Views

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