Quaint Quotes

• Man is a marvelous curiosity...he thinks he is the Creator's pet...he even believes the Creator loves him; has passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks he listens. Isn't it a quaint idea.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Believe, Passion

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• Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As if some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--Only this and nothing more.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Sad, Rap, Doors

  "The Raven" l. 1 (1845)

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• Seek out some retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth century would sound far-off and faint.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Dream, Sound, Half

  Jerome K. Jerome (1998). “Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel”, p.9, Oxford Paperbacks

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• An ink bottle, which now seems impossibly quaint, was still thinkable as a symbol in 1970.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Ink, Bottles, Symbols

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.58, Macmillan

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• It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy's edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create one world. Instead of one world, we have star wars, and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet's dead.

  Gore Vidal

  Stars, War, Long

  "The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations" by Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press, (p. 861), 1993.

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• We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we 'cling' to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual - we spend less money than we take in.

  Mitch Daniels

  Believe, Ignorance, Cutting

  Keynote Speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee, delivered 11 February 2011, Ronald Reagan Centennial Dinner, Washington, D.C.

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• Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Stars, Flower, Blue

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1849). “The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ; Complete in One Volume”, p.10

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• If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

  John Jay Chapman

  Party, Curiosity, Magic

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• A quaint conceit, don't you think?

  Mercedes Lackey

  Thinking, Conceit

  Mercedes Lackey (2016). “The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy”, p.626, Penguin

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• Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Midnight, Literature, Weak

  "The Raven" l. 1 (1845)

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• Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown.

  Thomas Hardy

  War, Bars, Crowns

  "The Man He Killed" l. 17 (1909)

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• Picturesque meant - he decided after careful observation of the scenerey that inspired Twoflower to use the word - that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, mean 'idiot'.

  Terry Pratchett

  Mean, Tourists, Use

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “The Colour Of Magic: (Discworld Novel 1)”, p.101, Random House

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• Daisies smell-less, yet most quaint,
  And sweet thyme true,
  Primrose, first born child of Ver,
  Merry Spring-time's harbinger.

  Francis Beaumont

  Sweet, Children, Spring

  Francis Beaumont (1887). “The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: Selected”

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• I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Selfish, Thinking, Touching

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• The grave's a fine and private place,
  But none, I think, do there embrace.

  Andrew Marvell

  Death, Thinking, Dying

  "To His Coy Mistress" l. 31 (1681)

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• A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is, to meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege I think.

  Emily Dickinson

  Book, Thinking, Dresses

  Emily Dickinson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)”, p.22, Delphi Classics

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• Still others make gardens because it is part of a full life. To live happily they must invest their hours and aspirations in the activities of another world. And they draw the interest of delight and refreshment according to the measure of their investment. These are usually quaint folk, other-worldly in their manner, but capable of comprehending the idiosyncrasies of Nature as she displays them in a tree and bush and passing season, across the skyline and in the infinite zenith. These, moreover, are the successful gardeners.

  Richardson Wright

  Life, Nature, Successful

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• To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Sheep, Ideas

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.33, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits.

  William Shakespeare

  Owl, Spirit, Wonder

  "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

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• The radio of my youth ... is now a quaint memory replaced by computer hard drives.

  Phil Donahue

  Memories, Radio, Youth

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• It's all love or sex these days. Friendship is almost as quaint and outdated a notion as chastity. Soon friends will be like the elves and the pixies - fabulous mythical creatures from a distant past.

  C. S. Lewis

  Friendship, Sex, Past

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• The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems, like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Errors, Superstitions, Lace

  National Review, January 16, 1962.

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• Here is the mistake of the cut-and-dried man of culture. He goes about with the secret of having learned to appreciate the "grandstyle." He has lived in Homer till he can recall the roll of that many-sounding sea. He has pored over the lofty and pictorial thought of Plato till he begins to pique himself upon its grandeur. His fancy has been fed on the quaint old-world genius of Herodotus, his judgment on the melancholy wisdom of Tacitus and the complacent cynicism of Gibbon--and of all this he is conscious and proud.

  Richard Holt Hutton

  Plato, Mistake, Cutting

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• From Man or Angel the great Architect Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge, His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought Rather admire. Or, if they list to try Conjecture, he his fabric of the Heavens Hath left to their disputes - perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide Hereafter, when they come to model Heaven And calculate the stars: how they will wield The mighty frame: how build, unbuild, contrive To save appearances; how gird the Sphere With Centric and Eccentric scribbled o'er, Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb.

  John Milton

  Stars, Laughter, Moving

  'Paradise Lost' (1667) bk. 8, l. 76

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• History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate. It requires forswearing condescension, cant, and nostalgia. The past isn’t quaint. Much of it, in fact, is bleak.

  Jill Lepore

  Art, Writing, Past

  Jill Lepore (2012). “The Story of America: Essays on Origins”, p.15, Princeton University Press

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