Parentheses Quotes

• If we consider eternity, into that time never entered; eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been.

  John Donne

  Time, Long, Eternity

  John Donne, John E. Booty (1990). “John Donne: Selections from Divine Poems, Sermons, Devotions, and Prayers”, p.7, Paulist Press

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• I privately say to you, old friend... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).

  J. D. Salinger

  Old Friends, Blooming, Bouquets

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• I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Important, Letters, Letter Writing

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2002). “The Letters of D. H. Lawrence”, p.44, Cambridge University Press

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• What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.

  John Irving

  Love, Wind, People

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• We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.

  Deepak Chopra

  Love, Caring, Joy

  Deepak Chopra (2010). “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams”, p.76, Amber-Allen Publishing

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• The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Art, Secret, Literature

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• We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Journey, Dancing

  FaceBook post by Paulo Coelho from Apr 20, 2017

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• Disease often tells its secrets in a casual parenthesis.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Secret, Disease, Casual

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• The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

  Thomas Browne

  World, Eternity

  Sir Thomas Browne (1844). “Religio Medici [and] Its Sequel Christian Morals”, p.194

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• Perfume is like a parenthesis, a moment of freedom, peace, love and sensuality in between the disturbances of modern living.

  Sonia Rykiel

  Moments, Modern, Perfume

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• A cigarette is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis. The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.

  John Berger

  Breathing Space, Arches, Cigarette

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• There's something about a parenthesis in fiction that puts one off, saying, "It's me, moi, jumping in now."

  John L'Heureux

  Jumping, Fiction, Crafts

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• A play is a parenthesis that contains all the material you think has to be contained for the action of the play. Where do you end that? Where the characters seem to come to a pause... where they seem to want to stop - rather like, I would think, the construction of a piece of music.

  Edward Albee

  Character, Thinking, Play

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.64, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a far better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry --the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says we are for eachother: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

  e. e. cummings

  Spring, Flower, Fate

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• The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak.

  Jodi Picoult

  Rip, Rain, Fall

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “My Sister's Keeper - Movie Tie-In: A Novel”, p.200, Simon and Schuster

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• Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell.

  Charles Dickens

  Punctuation, Pipers, Deals

  Charles Dickens (2016). “Bleak House (Diversion Classics)”, p.185, Diversion Books

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• If you can't hear me, it's because I'm in parentheses.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Humor, Computer

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• Think not thy time short in this world, since the world itself is not long. The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition, for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it and may be after it.

  Thomas Browne

  Time, Thinking, Long

  Sir Thomas Browne (1844). “Religio Medici [and] Its Sequel Christian Morals”, p.194

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• life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

  e. e. cummings

  Inspirational, Thinking, Life And Death

  e. e. cummings (2014). “100 Selected Poems”, p.28, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.

  E. M. Forster

  Dog, Flower, Gun

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• A dash is a mark of separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than parentheses.

  William Strunk, Jr.

  Stronger, Separation, Formal

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• Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses.

  George Eliot

  Glasses, Magnifying, Magnifying Glass

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.56, Penguin

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• What I want back is what I was Before the bed, before the knife, Before the brooch-pin and the salve Fixed me in this parenthesis; Horses fluent in the wind, A place, a time gone out of mind.

  Sylvia Plath

  Horse, Wind, Knives

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “The Colossus”, p.10, Faber & Faber

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• I have a similar affection for the parenthesis (but I always take most of my parentheses out, so as not to call undue attention to the glaring fact that I cannot think in complete sentences, that I think only in short fragments or long, run-on thought relays that the literati call stream of consciousness but I still like to think of as disdain for the finality of the period).

  Sarah Vowell

  Running, Thinking, Long

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• Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee - an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic 'fights' against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

  George Will

  Country, Real, Fighting

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