Peculiar Quotes - Page 14

• This was an idea peculiar to Camille, Maximilien thought, that the worse things get, the better they get. No one else seems to think this way.

  Hilary Mantel

  Thinking, Ideas, Way

  Hilary Mantel (2013). “Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien”, p.48, HarperCollins UK

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• The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.

  Tom Wolfe

  Life, Loneliness, Being Alone

  "The American Mercury", p. 467, "The Anatomy of Loneliness", October 1941.

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• For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.

  E. O. Wilson

  Organization, Quality, Levels

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• It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.

  A. N. Wilson

  Sadness, People, Joy

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• I think Led Zeppelin must have worn some of the most peculiar clothing that men had ever been seen to wear without cracking a smile.

  Robert Plant

  Smile, Men, Thinking

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• There are always people who will - who will do peculiar things and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion.

  Feisal Abdul Rauf

  Thinking, Names, People

  60 Minutes, www.nytimes.com. September 30, 2001.

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• I think its rather peculiar. It's not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision. But I'd guess you'd have to ask the Obama administration why they purged all this language from their platform. There sure is a lot of mention of government, so I guess I would put the onus on them to answer why they did all these purges of God.

  Paul Ryan

  Thinking, Government, Vision

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• It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Literature, Mankind

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• Just as the blurring between childhood and adulthood has produced the kidult, so the stretching of middle into old age has fostered another peculiar chimera: septuagenarians with apoptosis sporting the depeche mode.

  Will Self

  Childhood, Age, Middle

  "You're Looking Very Well by Lewis Wolpert - review" by Will Self, www.theguardian.com. May 1, 2011.

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• Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.

  Vikram Seth

  Character, Frustration, Revision

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• Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.

  Adam Smith

  Real, Ambition, Men

  Adam Smith (1817). “The Theory of Moral Sentiments: Or, An Essay Towards an Analysis of the Principles by which Men Naturally Judge Concerning the Conduct and Character, First of Their Neighbours, and Afterwards of Themselves : to which is Added, A Dissertation on the Origin of Languages”, p.550

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• I believe there is no doctrine more dangerous to the Church today than to convey the impression that a revival is something peculiar in itself and cannot be judged by the same rules of causes and effect as other things.

  Billy Sunday

  Sports, Believe, Church Today

  Billy Sunday, William Thomas Ellis (1917). “Billy Sunday, the Man and His Message: With His Own Words which Have Won Thousands for Christ”

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• The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development in man's moral nature.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Sports, Men, Addiction

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “BUSINESS & ECONOMICS Premium Collection: 25+ Titles in One Volume: The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning in America, The Vested Interests and the Common Man, On the Nature of Capital…: The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Beginning of Ownership, The Preconceptions of Economic Science, The Industrial System and the Captains of Industry, The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx…”, p.162, e-artnow

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• We may insist as often as we like that man's intellect is powerless in comparison to his instinctual life, and we may be right in this. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about this weakness. The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it will not rest until it has gained a hearing. Finally, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds.

  Sigmund Freud

  Men, Voice, Weakness

  Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1961). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”

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• One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Powerful, War, Southern

  Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865

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• Those qualities that separate us are often ridiculed by others or criticized by teachers. Because of these judgments, we might see our strengths as disabilities and try to work around them in order to fit in. But anything that is peculiar to our makeup is precisely what we must pay the deepest attention to and lean on in our rise to mastery.

  Robert Greene

  Teacher, Makeup, Order

  Robert Greene (2012). “Mastery”, p.278, Profile Books

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• What is it in absinthe that makes it a separate cult? The effects of its abuse are totally distinct from those of other stimulants. Even in ruin and in degradation it remains a thing apart: its victims wear a ghastly aureole all their own, and in their peculiar hell yet gloat with a sinister perversion of pride that they are not as other men.

  Aleister Crowley

  Pride, Men, Abuse

  Aleister Crowley (1994). “Absinthe: The Green Goddess”, Holmes Publishing Group

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• It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.

  Jonathan Swift

  Law, Special, Care

  "Gulliver's Travels". Book by Jonathan Swift. Part IV: "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms". Chapter 5, 1726.

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• Of the properties of mathematics, as a language, the most peculiar one is that by playing formal games with an input mathematical text, one can get an output text which seemingly carries new knowledge. The basic examples are furnished by scientific or technological calculations: general laws plus initial conditions produce predictions, often only after time-consuming and computer-aided work. One can say that the input contains an implicit knowledge which is thereby made explicit.

  IU?. I. Manin

  Law, Games, Input

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• Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design. But at the same time, there's a lot of things in life where you say to yourself, well, if this is God's plan, it's very peculiar. And you have to wonder about that guy's personality, the big guy's personality.

  Stephen King

  Intelligent, Things In Life, Design

  "Stephen King On Growing Up, Believing In God And Getting Scared". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. October 31, 2014.

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• The progression of physical science is much more connected with your prosperity than is usually imagined. You owe to experimental philosophy some of the most important and peculiar of your advantages. It is not by foreign conquests chiefly that you are become great, but by a conquest of nature in your own country.

  Humphry Davy

  Country, Philosophy, Science

  Humphry Davy (1840). “The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy (etc.)”, p.358

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• In the world's history certain inventions and discoveries occurred, of peculiar value, on account of their great efficiency in facilitating all other inventions and discoveries. Of these were the art of writing and of printing - the discovery of America, and the introduction of Patent-laws. The date of the first ... is unknown; but it certainly was as much as fifteen hundred years before the Christian era; the second-printing-came in 1436, or nearly three thousand years after the first. The others followed more rapidly - the discovery of America in 1492, and the first patent laws in 1624.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Christian, Art, Writing

  "Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 3" by Abraham Lincoln, New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1953.

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• In order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary. First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words. First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of mathematical expression.

  George Polya

  Expression, Order, Two

  George Pólya (1957). “How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method”

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• Unless there exist peculiar institutions for the support of such inquirers, or unless the Government directly interfere, the contriver of a thaumatrope may derive profit from his ingenuity, whilst he who unravels the laws of light and vision, on which multitudes of phenomena depend, shall descend unrewarded to the tomb.

  Charles Babbage

  Science, Light, Government

  Charles Babbage (1830). “Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes”, p.19

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• The business of education has lay[ed] the foundations for nurseries of wise and good men, to adapt our modes of teaching to the peculiar form of our government . . . . He must be taught to love his fellow creatures in every part of the world, but he must cherish with a more intense and peculiar affection the citizens of Pennsylvania and of the United States.

  Benjamin Rush

  Education, Wise, Teaching

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