Omission Quotes - Page 4

• You always end up with too much, so it's good to be part of the conversation about not just what you can omit, but how you are going to do the grammar of the omission, how you make things continue to work when there's something missing. It's your last chance to rewrite.

  Tom Stoppard

  Missing, Too Much, Lasts

  Source: deadline.com

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• I do believe in [Robert] Bresson's method of creation through omission, not through addition.

  Abbas Kiarostami

  Believe, Creation, Method

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. April 28, 2005.

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• I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for... protection against standing armies

  Thomas Jefferson

  Army, Rights, Bills

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• Some consider the puzzles that are created by their omissions as spicy challenges, without which their texts would be boring; others shun clarity lest their work is considered trivial.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Challenges, Would Be, Clarity

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• In fact, most of the changes found in early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another.

  Bart D. Ehrman

  Christian, Mistake, Simple

  Bart D. Ehrman (2008). “Whose Word is It?: The Story Behind who Changed the New Testament and why”, p.55, A&C Black

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• I will now add what I do not like. First, the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Army, Rights, Law

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.337, Penguin

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• When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in other respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Hate, Men, Evil

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• My father is a liar and so am I.
  But I’m going to stop. I have to stop.
  I will tell you my story and I will tell it straight. No lies, no omissions.
  That’s my promise.
  This time I truly mean it.

  Justine Larbalestier

  Liars, Lying, Father

  Justine Larbalestier (2010). “How to Ditch Your Fairy”, p.313, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• The (Laetrile) efficacy tests...clinically in humans..(by) the US NCI...were obviously conducted so that a negative result could be formulated. The limited number and types of human cancer cases selected...the omission of necessary additional measures ('e.g dietary'), the far too short observation periods, and the undefined chemical properties of the (Laetrile)... all contributed to devaluation of...conclusions.

  Hans Alfred Nieper

  Cancer, Dark, Numbers

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• Self-conceit is a weighty quality, and will sometimes bring down the scale when there is nothing else in it. It magnifies a fault beyond proportion, and swells every omission into an outrage.

  Jeremy Collier

  Self, Quality, Faults

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• The whole motley confusion of acts, omissions, regrets and hopes which is the life of each one of us finds in death, not meaning or explanation, but an end.

  Octavio Paz

  Regret, Life And Death, Confusion

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.54, Grove Press

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• The omission of an expected conjunction is called an asyndeton. Caesar is supposed to have said about Gaul: I came, I saw, I conquered. Lincoln concluded the Gettysburg Address, That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.Caesar seems to have omitted his conjunction to speed things up; he is emphasizing how quickly the conquest of a place follows from its being sighted by a great and ambitious general. Lincoln's omission is more subtle

  Arthur Quinn

  Government, People, Ambitious

  Arthur Quinn (2012). “Figures of Speech: 60 Ways To Turn A Phrase”, p.7, Routledge

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• I... recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Space, Self

  Joseph Addison (1804). “The works of ... Joseph Addison, collected by mr. Tickell”, p.271

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• The chess world is obligated to organize a match between the champion of the world and the winner of this Carlsbad tournament - indeed, this is a moral obligation. If the world of chess should remain deaf to its obligation, on the other hand, it would amount to an absolutely unforgivable omission, carrying with it a heavy burden of guilt.

  Aron Nimzowitsch

  Hands, Champion, Guilt

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• Market values are fixed only in part by balance sheets and income statements; much more by the hopes and fears of humanity; by greed, ambition, acts of God, invention, financial stress and strain, weather, discovery, fashion and numberless other causes impossible to be listed without omission.

  Gerald M. Loeb

  Fashion, Business, Stress

  Gerald M. Loeb (2007). “Battle for Investment Survival”, p.2, John Wiley & Sons

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• Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends... ...when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.

  Isabel Paterson

  Past, Direct Action, Long

  Isabel Paterson (1993). “God of the Machine”, p.235, Transaction Publishers

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• The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.

  Marya Mannes

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Space

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• The art of drawing is the art of omission.

  Max Liebermann

  Art, Drawing

  Quoted in Paul Klee On Modern Art (1979). Liebman, David 1946- US jazz saxophonist, highly regarded as a performer and teacher.

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• The minimum could be defined as the perfection that an artefact achieves when it is no longer possible to improve it by subtraction. This is the quality that an object has when every component, every detail, and every junction has been reduced or condensed to the essentials. it is the result of the omission of the inessentials.

  John Pawson

  Perfection, Simplicity, Quality

  "Less really is more" by Luke Jennings, www.theguardian.com. November 25, 2006.

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• I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Moon, Men, Wife

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• Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Carpe Diem, Government, Ice

  1936 Renomination acceptance speech, Philadelphia, 27 Jun.

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• Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.

  Isabel Paterson

  School, Long, People

  Isabel Paterson (1993). “God of the Machine”, p.235, Transaction Publishers

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