Rarity Quotes

• Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration.

  Apuleius

  Winning, Admiration, Contempt

  "On the God of Socrates". Ch. 4,

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

  Walter Bagehot

  Inspirational, Progress, Poison

  Walter Bagehot (1873). “Physics and Politics: Or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "natural Selection" and "inheritance" to Political Society”, p.74

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as a trade secret of Paleontology. Evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Data, Tree, Secret

  69 Copy quote

• Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.

  Hannah Arendt

  Love, Peace, Powerful

  Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.242, University of Chicago Press

  77 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marry for Love, an Heroick Action, which makes a mighty noise in the World, partly because of its rarity, and partly in regard of its extravagancy.

  Mary Astell

  World, Noise, Action

  Mary Astell, Patricia Springborg (1996). “Astell: Political Writings”, p.41, Cambridge University Press

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rare is the union of beauty and purity.

  Juvenal

  Beauty, Beautiful, Rome

  "Satires". Book by Juvenal, X, line 297, 1890.

  107 Copy quote

  Show source

• Genius, like gold and precious stones,
  is chiefly prized because of its rarity.

  Mark Twain

  Precious Stones, Gold, Genius

  Mark Twain, “Genius”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Danger and anger are everywhere. Love is the rarity, the gem buried in the core of the mine, the outpost of God.

  Tanith Lee

  Love Is, Danger, Buried

  Tanith Lee (2005). “Metallic Love”, p.124, Spectra

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Friends are those rare people who ask how we are, and then wait to hear the answer.

  Ed Cunningham

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  198 Copy quote

• I think my mistakes were kind of common - leaning on cliches and adjectives in the place of clear, vivid writing. But at least I knew how to spell, which seems to be a rarity these days.

  Dick Schaap

  Mistake, Writing, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• A self made man is a rarity and hated by the parasites that floated to fame thought their parents, relatives and contacts.

  Al Goldstein

  Men, Self, Parent

  47 Copy quote

• Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men, but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the most scarce.

  Plutarch

  Wisdom, Men, Politics

  Plutarch (2015). “Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans: Top Biography”, p.504, 谷月社

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Photography, when used as a representational art, is not a mere copy of nature. This is proved by the rarity of the 'good' photograph.

  Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

  Photography, Art, Used

  18 Copy quote

• The wisdom of providence is as much revealed in the rarity of genius, as in the circumstance that not everyone is deaf or blind.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Genius, Blind, Deaf

  4 Copy quote

• I think beauty has a lot to do with class. A bit of mystery. Rarity.

  Debby Ryan

  Thinking, Class, Mystery

  13 Copy quote

• Report followeth not all goodness, except difficulty and rarity be joined thereto.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Goodness, Difficulty, Reports

  Michel de Montaigne (1903*). “Essays of Montaigne”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beauty has no relation to price, rarity, or age.

  John Cotton

  Beauty, Age, Relation

  63 Copy quote

• While a forgery illegally exploits the elitist taste for rarity, a kitsch object insists on its anti elitist availability. The deceptive character of kitsch does not lie in whatever it may have in common with actual forgery but in its claim to supply its consumers with essentially the same kinds and qualities of beauty as those embodied in unique or rare and inaccessible originals.

  Matei Calinescu

  Lying, Character, Unique

  4 Copy quote

• Men ruled the roost and women played a subservient role [in the 1960s]. Working wives were a rarity, because their place was in the home, bringing up the kids. The women who did work were treated as second-class citizens because it was a male-dominated society. That was a fact of life then. But it wouldn't be tolerated today, and that's quite right in my book... people look back on those days through a thick veil of nostalgia, but life was hard if you were anything other than a rich, powerful, white male.

  Jon Hamm

  Powerful, Book, Kids

  "'I am just a lucky nerd': Jon Hamm on why he can't believe he got the part of Mad Men's Don Draper" By David Wigg, www.dailymail.co.uk. February 4, 2011.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart.

  Peter Medawar

  Science, Past, Discovery

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.49, Oxford University Press, USA

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If refined sense, and exalted sense, be not so useful as common sense, their rarity, their novelty, and the nobleness of their objects, make some compensation, and render them the admiration of mankind.

  David Hume

  Common Sense, Novelty, Admiration

  David Hume, J. B. Schneewind (1983). “An Enquiry Concerning The Principles of Morals”, p.56, Hackett Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I consider how little of a rarity children are -- that every street and blind alley swarms with them -- that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance -- that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains -- how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. -- I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.

  Charles Lamb

  Children, Pride, People

  Charles Lamb (1869). “The Essays of Elia and Eliana”, p.133

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Virtuosi have been long remarked to have little conscience in their favorite pursuits. A man will steal a rarity who would cut off his hand rather than take the money it is worth. Yet, in fact, the crime is the same.

  Horace

  Cutting, Men, Hands

  7 Copy quote

• I only like luxury fashion. You have to decide where you stand. I like well-made, authentic clothes, well-crafted tailoring. I also like the dream and fantasy of luxury, the exception and rarity of it. I have no interest at all in fast retail. It is ambiguous.

  Hedi Slimane

  Dream, Fashion, Luxury

  24 Copy quote

• Short of climbing aboard a time capsule and peeling back eight and one-half decades, James Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the closest any of us will get to walking the decks of the doomed ocean liner. Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic , you experience it from the launch to the sinking, then on a journey two and one-half miles below the surface, into the cold, watery grave where Cameron has shot never-before seen documentary footage specifically for this movie.

  James Berardinelli

  Ocean, Epic, Journey

  7 Copy quote