Peculiar Quotes - Page 11

• I am the Earl of Ravensmoor. And you are? (Sparhawk) Totally freaking out. (Taryn) Tis a most peculiar name, milady. Are you by chance Welsh? (Sparhawk)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Names, Chance, Welsh

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• Ramses had always been fond of Helen, in his peculiar fashion, but if he had looked at me as he was looking at her, I would have sent for a constable.

  Barbara Mertz

  Fashion, Helen, Ifs

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• Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you're looking for. If you're picking raspberries, you see only what's red, and if you're looking for bones you see only the white. No matter where you go, the only thing you see is bones.

  Tove Jansson

  White, Gathering, Red

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• While the Clave disapproves of trespassers, oddly they take an even darker view of beheading and skinning people. They're peculiar that way.

  Cassandra Clare

  Views, People, Way

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

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• Great works of art can be produced in barbarous societies - in fact the very narrowness of primitive society gives their ornamental art a peculiar concentration and vitality. At some time in the ninth century one could have looked down the Seine and seen the prow of a Viking ship coming up the river. Looked at today in the British Museum, it is a powerful work of art; but to the mother of a family trying to settle down in her little hut, it would have seemed less agreeable - as menacing to her civilisation as the periscope of a nuclear submarine.

  Kenneth Clark

  Mother, Art, Powerful

  "Civilisation" by Kenneth Clark, (Ch. 1), 1969.

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• It is very difficult to be a hero without an audience, although, in a sense, we are each the hero of a peculiar, half-ruined film called our life.

  Sebastian Barry

  Hero, Half, Film

  Sebastian Barry (2008). “The Secret Scripture”, p.184, Faber & Faber

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• I find the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The royal family lives in palaces heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, guards, all designed to ensure the family absolute privacy. And every newspaper in London carried headlines announcing PRINCESS ANNE HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED. I mean you're a young girl reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub knows the precise state of your ovaries.

  Helene Hanff

  Girl, Princess, Eye

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• There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.

  A. S. Byatt

  Book, Glasses, Ideas

  A S Byatt (2009). “The Children's Book”, p.119, Random House

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• You are afraid to die?' Yes, everyone is.' But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars when they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structures.

  Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  Girl, Summer, Butterfly

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• It is almost impossible to write fiction about the Mormons, for the reason that Mormon institutions and Mormon society are so peculiar that they call for constant explanation.

  Wallace Stegner

  Writing, Fiction, Impossible

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• I once jokingly told someone that every book is like a relationship. They're four or five years long - that's not so bad. They're serious. They demand a lot of attention. But I remember thinking that I wanted to have one with someone who's not so crazy and peculiar and demanding.

  A.M. Homes

  Crazy, Book, Thinking

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• Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.

  Alfred Adler

  Fate, Long, Suffering

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• What is peculiar to modern societies is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret.

  Michel Foucault

  Sex, Secret, Shadow

  Michel Foucault (2012). “The History of Sexuality: An Introduction”, p.35, Vintage

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• . . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It’s a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we feel superior to those who have the sense to live elsewhere.

  Richard Paul Evans

  War, Character, Winter

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• All my life I have studies the peculiar powers of music. It has a force of its own that few would deny.

  Katherine Neville

  Study, Force, Deny

  Katherine Neville (2015). “The Eight”, p.134, Open Road Media

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• Peculiar or not, it is my idea of pleasure. Why, why else do you lead this life you don't enjoy it? Don't talk of duty to me; you men always have some high-sounding excuse for indulging yourselves. You go gallivanting over the earth, climbing mountains, looking for the sources of the Nile; and expect women to sit dully at home embroidering. I embroider very badly. I think I would excavate rather well.

  Barbara Mertz

  Home, Men, Thinking

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• Resist the temptation to think what afflicts you is peculiar to you. Have faith that what is in your consciousness can be communicated to the consciousness of all. And is, in many cases, already there.

  Alice Walker

  Thinking, Temptation, Have Faith

  Alice Walker (1990). “The Temple of My Familiar”

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• Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed.

  P. T. Barnum

  Men, Genius, Succeed

  P. T. Barnum (1999). “Art of Money Getting”, p.29, Applewood Books

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• Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward semblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Heart, Character, Fate

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2013). “The Scarlet Letter (Annotated And Illustrated Edition)”, p.178, Jazzybee Verlag

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• As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across premieval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Cousin, Uncles, Aunt

  The Inimitable Jeeves (1923) ch. 16

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• Dream is personalized myth, myth is depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problem and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, Way, Problem

  "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell, New World Library, (Ch. 1), 1949.

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• Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
  Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
  Man, but for that no action could attend,
  And, but for this, were active to no end:
  Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
  To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
  Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void,
  Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.

  Alexander Pope

  Spring, Men, Self

  Alexander Pope (2012). “Essay on Man and Other Poems”, p.55, Courier Corporation

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• Heaven gave to woman the peculiar grace
  To spin, to weep, and cully human race.

  Alexander Pope

  Women, Race, Heaven

  Alexander Pope (1853). “The poetical works of Alexander Pope”

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• The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.

  Walter Bagehot

  Hurt, Men, Essence

  Walter Bagehot (2007). “Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market”, p.160, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Always bear in mind that boys are naturally wiser than you. Regard them as intellectual beings, who have access to certain sources of knowledge of which you are deprived, and seek to derive all the benefit you can from their peculiar attainments and experience.

  John Farrar

  Boys, Intellectual, Mind

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