Peculiar Quotes - Page 18

• A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Book, Writing, Men

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

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• Chance throws peculiar conditions in everyone's way. If we apply intelligence, patience and special vision, we are rewarded with new creative breakthroughs.

  Walter Bradford Cannon

  Science, Intelligent, Creative

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• Love is just a peculiar, fleeting affair that isn't very important, but in marriage there is always hostility between two different tribes of human beings. There are two opposing forces, who fight each other until one of them wins, and you and I, my poor old Alain, have been knocked out too easily.

  Irene Nemirovsky

  Breakup, Fighting, Winning

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• Chance... in the accommodation peculiar to sensorimotor intelligence, plays the same role as in scientific discovery. It is only useful to the genius and its revelations remain meaningless to the unskilled.

  Jean Piaget

  Science, Intelligent, Discovery

  Jean Piaget (2013). “Origin of Intelligence in the Child: Selected Works”, p.303, Routledge

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• No engineer can go upon a new work and not find something peculiar, that will demand his careful reflection, and the deliberate consideration of any advice that he may receive; and nothing so fully reveals his incapacity as a pretentious assumption of knowledge, claiming to understand everything.

  John B. Jervis

  Hard Work, Knowledge, Science

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• Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?

  Maxine Hong Kingston

  Mother, Justice, Diversity

  Maxine Hong Kingston, Paul Skenazy, Tera Martin (1998). “Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston”, p.11, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point. To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain edifices in the air.

  Jonathan Swift

  Air, Age, May

  Jonathan Swift (2004). “A Modest Proposal and Other Prose”, p.61, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• The first time I ever felt the necessity or inevitableness of verse, was in the desire to reproduce the peculiar quality of feeling which is induced by the flat spaces and wide horizons of the virgin prairie of western Canada.

  T. E. Hulme

  Space, Feelings, Desire

  T. E. Hulme, Patrick McGuinness (2003). “Selected Writings”, p.64, Psychology Press

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• The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages.

  Washington Irving

  Money, Land, Dollars

  1855 Wolfert's Roost,'The Creole Village'.

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• The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.

  Alexander Smith

  Artist, Greatness, Individuality

  Alexander Smith (1914). “Dreamthorp”

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• That indescribable expression peculiar to people who hope they have not been asleep, but know they have.

  Helen Hunt Jackson

  Expression, People, Indescribable

  Helen Hunt Jackson (2010). “Ramona”, p.160, Modern Library

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• Who's counting? It was, of course, the minority who were counting. It always is. Most of the women I know today would dearly like to use their fingers and toes for some activity more enthralling than counting. They have been counting for so long. But the peculiar problem of the new math is that every time we stop adding, somebody starts subtracting. At the very least (the advanced students will understand this) the rate of increase slows. ... The minority members of any group or profession have two answers: They can keep score or they can lose.

  Ellen Goodman

  Math, Two, Long

  Ellen Goodman (1990). “Making Sense”, Penguin Group USA

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• I was seduced by secrets, which are to true love as artificial sweetener is to sugar, calorie-free but in the long run carcinogenic, not the real thing, and only a peculiar aftertaste in the mouth to tell you so, to warn you.

  Fay Weldon

  Running, Real, Long

  Fay Weldon (1993). “Life Force”

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• Music is a language, and it's like a dictionary that has a lot of words, but if you limited yourself to a couple of definitions you would be illiterate. If one limits oneself to a peculiar definition like 'new music,' 'avant-garde,' or something like that, I think it's like cutting out half the dictionary.

  Archie Shepp

  Couple, Cutting, Thinking

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• ... I suppose that the party or sect which is to do any work in the world must breathe its own peculiar atmosphere, speak its own little patois, and see but one side of the question on which it fights.

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  Party, Fighting, Atmosphere

  Rebecca Harding Davis (1904). “Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography”, p.99, Vanderbilt University Press

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• Up to the days of Indiana's early statehood, probably as late as 1825, there stood, in what is now the beautiful little city of Vincennes on the Wabash, the decaying remnant of an old and curiously gnarled cherry tree, known as the Roussillion tree, le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillion, as the French inhabitants called it, which as long as it lived bore fruit remarkable for richness of flavor and peculiar dark ruby depth of color.

  Maurice Thompson

  Beautiful, Book, Dark

  Maurice Thompson (2008). “Alice of Old Vincennes (Volume 1 of 2 ) (EasyRead Super Large 24pt Edition)”, p.1, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.

  John Ruskin

  Beautiful, Way, Habit

  John Ruskin, Louisa Caroline Tuthill (1860). “The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals and Religion: Selected from the Works of John Ruskin...”, p.254

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• It is generally allowed, that no man ever found the happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited his desire, and invigorated his pursuit; nor has any man found the evils of life so formidable in reality, as they were described to him by his own imagination; every species of distress brings with it some peculiar supports, some unforeseen means of resisting, or powers of enduring.

  Samuel Johnson

  Mean, Reality, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1848). “The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.28

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• Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.

  Samuel Smiles

  Religious, Soul, May

  Samuel Smiles (1881). “Duty, with Illustrations of Courage, Patience, and Endurance”

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• Paris in the early morning has a cheerful, bustling aspect, a promise of delicious things to come, a positive smell of coffee and croissants, quite peculiar to itself. The people welcome a new day as if they were certain of liking it, the shopkeepers pull up their blinds serene in the expectation of good trade, the workers go happily to their work, the people who have sat up all night in night-clubs go happily to their rest, the orchestra of motor-car horns, of clanking trams, of whistling policemen tunes up for the daily symphony, and everywhere is joy.

  Nancy Mitford

  Morning, Coffee, Night

  Nancy Mitford (1963). “The Nancy Mitford Omnibus”

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• If one were forced to select a single word to exemplify Bishop's peculiar charm and power, it might well be 'No.'

  Brad Leithauser

  Bishops, Might, Select

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• Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms.
  [Ger., Die Gaben
  Kommen von oben herab, in ihren eignen Gestalten.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Form, Providence, Dies

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• Were not the eye made to receive the rays of the sun, it could not behold the sun; if the peculiar power of God lay not in us, how could the godlike charm us?

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Appreciation, Eye, Rays

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• It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered, before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide, and, apparently, an impervious boundary of forests, severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict.

  James F. Cooper

  War, Struggle, Book

  "The Last of the Mohicans". Book by James F. Cooper, 1826.

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• I sometimes wonder ... if the land is not destroying the people who inhabit it as the people who inhabit it are destroying the land. A magic continent, a Peculiar Treasure, stuffed with riches, millions in it are starving in the midst of plenty.

  Edna Ferber

  Land, People, Magic

  Edna Ferber (1939). “A Peculiar Treasure”

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