Quaint Quotes - Page 4

• The child who defines a lie as being a "naughty word" knows perfectly well that lying consists in not speaking the truth. He is not, therefore, mistaking one thing for another, he is simply identifying them one with another by what seems to us a quaint extension of the word "lie".

  Jean Piaget

  Children, Lying, Naughty

  "The Moral Judgment of the Child". Book by Jean Piaget, transl. by Marjorie Gabain, Ch. 2: Adult Constraint and Moral Realism, 1932.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am spoken to not in words, which come to me quaint and veiled, but in signs, in conformations of face and hands, in postures of shoulders and feet, in nuances of tune and tone, in gaps and absences whose grammar has never been recorded.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Hands, Feet, Tunes

  J. M. Coetzee (2017). “In the Heart of the Country: A Novel”, p.10, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• As for comics, one has only to turn to the characteristic output of Marvel Comics, for the period from about 1961 to about 1975, to find not an expression of base and cynical impulses but of good, old-fashioned liberal humanism of a kind that may strike us today, God help us, as quaint, but which nevertheless appealed, in story after story, to ideals such as tolerance, technological optimism, and self-sacrifice for the benefit of others.

  Michael Chabon

  Sacrifice, Self, Expression

  Unpublished Letter of Complaint to The New York Review of Books,

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any opinion writer worth his salt would have rejected the quaint notion that certain eternally aggrieved identity groups have exclusive linguistic rights to words in the English language.

  Ilana Mercer

  Rights, Identity, Groups

  "Uber Alec, barking-mad Bashir, death-defying libertarians". www.wnd.com. November 29, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beware of assumptions that seem "obvious" in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.

  David Brin

  May, Next, Assumption

  David Brin (1990). “Earth”, Spectra

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't think that Women's Liberation will change much though -- not because there is anything wrong with their aims, but because it is already clear that the whole world is being shaken into a new pattern by the cataclysms we are living through: probably by the time we are through, if we do get through at all, the aims of Women's Liberation will look very small and quaint.

  Doris Lessing

  Thinking, Looks, World

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Past, Habit, Refugee

  "The Handmaid's Tale". Book by Margaret Atwood, 1985.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I realize that after decades of positive thinking the notion of realism, of things as they are, may seem a little quaint. ... When the stakes are high enough and the risks obvious, we still turn to people who can be counted on to understand those risks and prepare for worst-case scenarios. A chief of state does not want to hear a general in the field say that he 'hopes' to win tomorrow's battle or that he's 'visualizing victory'.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Positive Thinking, Winning, Reality

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.198, Metropolitan Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Relations are errors that Nature makes. / Your spouse you can put on the shelf. / But your friends, dear friends, are the quaint mistakes / You always commit yourself.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Friends, Mistake, Errors

  4 Copy quote

• Liberals have a quaint and touching faith that truth is on their side and an even quainter faith that journalists are on the side of truth.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Funny, Touching, Sides

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer”, p.53, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.

  Alain de Botton

  Moving, Eye, Reflection

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.32, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honor turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave's a fine and private place But none, I think, do there embrace.

  Moliere

  Thinking, Dust, Long

  24 Copy quote

• My words are little jars For you to take and put upon a shelf. Their shapes are quaint and beautiful, And they have many pleasant colours and lustres To recommend them. Also the scent from them fills the room With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

  Amy Lowell

  Beautiful, Flower, Scent

  Amy Lowell (2009). “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed”, p.57, ReadHowYouWant.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In my judgement, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.

  Alberto Gonzales

  Judgement, Enemy, Politics

  4 Copy quote

• The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.

  Cody Lundin

  Mainstream Society, Self, Majority

  Cody Lundin (2007). “When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes”, p.57, Gibbs Smith

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as 1 percent of us could give physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Believe, Science, Giving

  30 Copy quote

• Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.

  Cody Lundin

  Mainstream Society, Self, Years

  Cody Lundin (2007). “When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes”, p.57, Gibbs Smith

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• A CD. How quaint. We have these in museums.

  Eoin Colfer

  Technology, Museums, Cds

  Eoin Colfer (2005). “Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code - Book #3”, Miramax

  28 Copy quote

  Show source