Peculiar Quotes - Page 32

• Hudibras has defined nonsense, as Cowley does wit, by negatives. Nonsense, he says, is that which is neither true nor false. These two great properties of nonsense, which are always essential to it, give it such a peculiar advantage over all other writings, that it is incapable of being either answered or contradicted.

  Joseph Addison

  Writing, Two, Giving

  Joseph Addison (1853). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.624

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am about to discuss the disease called 'sacred'. It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred that other diseases, but has a natural cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men's inexperience, and to their wonder at its peculiar character.

  Hippocrates

  Character, Men, Inexperience

  Hippocrates (1967). “Hippocrates”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am - a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions - can be so happy as he can be in the United States.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Men, Vanity

  "On Being An American". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1922.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The deep pain that is felt
  at the death of every friendly soul
  arises from the feeling that there is
  in every individual something
  which is inexpressible,
  peculiar to him alone,
  and is, therefore,
  absolutely and irretrievably lost.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Sad, Death, Pain

  Arthur Schopenhauer, E. F. J. Payne (1974). “Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays”, p.585, Oxford University Press

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• If God allows us to remain Methodist, Baptist, or Episcopalian, it may be on account of the unconverted, that they may be without excuse; that every type of man may be confronted with a corresponding type of doctrine and of method. Surely there are means adapted to your state, and ministries fitted to your peculiar temperament.

  George Horace Lorimer

  Mean, Men, May

  4 Copy quote

• Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God.

  George MacDonald

  God, Men, Individual

  George MacDonald (1867). “Unspoken Sermons”, p.110

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• The peculiar striations that define someone's personality are too numerous to know, no matter how close the observer. A person we think we know can suddenly become someone else when previously hidden strands of his character are called to the fore by circumstance.

  Elliot Perlman

  Character, Thinking, Personality

  46 Copy quote

• The peculiarity of sculpture is that it creates a three-dimensional object in space. Painting may strive to give on a two-dimensional plane, the illusion of space, but it is space itself as a perceived quantity that becomes the peculiar concern of the sculptor. We may say that for the painter space is a luxury; for the sculptor it is a necessity.

  Herbert Read

  Two, Luxury, Space

  7 Copy quote

• The deserving are not always blest. That peculiar attribute known as personality is as potent a factor as genius.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Personality, Genius, Attributes

  6 Copy quote

• The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Men, Special, Wealth

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena”, p.69, Cornell University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way I could.

  John James Audubon

  Song, Bird, Listening

  John James Audubon (1899). “Audubon and His Journals”

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• I will make a prophecy that may now sound peculiar. In fifty years Lincoln's name will be inscribed close to Washington's on this Republic's roll of honor.

  Carl Schurz

  Names, Years, Honor

  Carl Schurz, Frederic Bancroft (1913). “Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz”, Putnam Juvenile

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Very great personages are not likely to form very just estimates either of others or of themselves; their knowledge of themselves is obscured by the flattery of others; their knowledge of others is equally clouded by circumstances peculiar to themselves. For in the presence of the great, the modest are sure to suffer from too much diffidence, and the confident from too much display.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Character, Suffering, Too Much

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.75

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happy Ending I did with Paul Winfield. There was a play- within- the- play and I was his mother - which is a peculiar bit of casting, to say the least.

  Brett Somers

  Mother, Play, Casting

  "Somers in the City". Interview with Michael Portantiere, www.theatermania.com. July 3, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Several sorts of memory exist in us; body and mind each possesses one peculiar to itself. Nostalgia, for instance, is a malady of the physical memory.

  Honore de Balzac

  Memories, Mind, Body

  6 Copy quote

• Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.

  Arthur Golden

  Grief, Grieving, One Day

  Arthur Golden (2008). “Memoirs Of A Geisha”, p.255, Random House

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• By and large, women have a faith and a morality peculiar to themselves; they believe in the reality of everything that serves their interest and their passions.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Believe, Passion

  5 Copy quote

• If Christ be a fraud, he was among the most peculiar yet brilliant of frauds in saying that only he was the way, the truth, and the life. This is the importance of grace - some people think that simply being nice and not harming others is morality; others think that following rules and tithing are morality. But without Christ, all moral beliefs ultimately boil down to the one sin which perpetually rails against the concept of grace: man's lawful, religious, and futile attempt at establishing his own righteousness.

  Criss Jami

  Religious, Nice, Men

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.15, Criss Jami

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This writer, who is horribly perspicacious and vigorous, demonstrates the certainty of a great European war, and regards it with the peculiar satisfaction excited by such things in a certain order of mind. His phrases about "dire calamity" and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the "inevitable." Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.

  George Gissing

  War, Writing, Mean

  "The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft". Book by George Gissing. Summer, § VII, p. 89, 1903.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.

  Lydia M. Child

  Fashion, Flower, Being Different

  11 Copy quote

• Imagine discovering a continent so vast that it may have no end to its dimensions. Imagine a new world with more resources than all our future greed might exhaust, more opportunities than there will ever be entrepreneurs enough to exploit, and a peculiar kind of real estate that expands with development. Imagine a place where trespassers leave no footprints, where goods can be stolen infinite number of times and yet remain in the possession of their original owners, where business you never heard of can own the history of your personal affairs.

  John Perry Barlow

  Real, Opportunity, Numbers

  "Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World". Book by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, March 2006.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is wonderful how shy even liberal ministers generally are about trusting people with the plain truth concerning their religion. They want to veil it in a supernatural haze. They are very reluctant to part with the old idea that God has given to Jews and Christians a peculiar monopoly of truth. It is a selfish view of God's government of the world, and it is time that we knew enough to outgrow it.

  Lydia M. Child

  Christian, Selfish, Government

  7 Copy quote

• Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organisation.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Philosophy, Real, Philosophical

  "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences". Book by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1816.

  89 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is this peculiar blind spot in the culture of academic medicine around whether withholding trial results is research misconduct. People who work in any industry can reinforce each others' ideas about what is okay.

  Ben Goldacre

  Ideas, Blind Spots, Medicine

  10 Copy quote

• The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be.

  Edwin Land

  Essence, People, Democracy

  "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science". Edwin Land's address at the ninth annual Arthur Dehon Little Memorial Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, groups.csail.mit.edu. May 22, 1957.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source