Recitation Quotes

• Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.

  Natalie Merchant

  Alive

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• Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.

  Octavio Paz

  Art, Reading, Unique

  Octavio Paz (2009). “The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History”, p.28, University of Texas Press

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• Ageing destroys youth, sickness destroys health, degeneration of life destroys all excellent qualities and death destroys life. Even if you are a great runner, you cannot run away from death. you cannot stop death with your wealth, through your magic performances or recitation of mantras or even medicines. Therefore, it is wise to prepare for your death.

  Dalai Lama

  Death, Wise, Running

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• When I started reciting my own poems in public, I worried that it would seem too theatrical, but now I find recitation very natural, because it allows me to address audiences directly.

  James Arthur

  Addresses, Worried, Natural

  "Poetry As a Way of Thinking: An Interview with James Arthur". Interview with Emilia Phillips, www.32poems.com.

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• The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

  Lascelles Abercrombie

  Epic, Firsts, Meant To Be

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• A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.

  Frank Luntz

  Stories, Dry, Compelling

  "Memo exposes Bush's new green strategy". Republican Party Memo, www.theguardian.com. March 04, 2003.

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• Recitation of the Qur'an without contemplation and thought is futile.

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Contemplation

  "'Bihar al-Anwar' ('Seas of Lights')". Hadith book by Mohammad-Baqer Majlesi, Volume 92,

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• With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.

  Francine Prose

  War, Army, Night

  "Reading Like a Writer". Book by Francine Prose, 2006.

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• A heart-felt prayer is not recitation with the lips. It is a yearning from within which expresses itself in every word, every act, nay every thought of people.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Prayer, Heart, People

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• We are shut up in school and college recitation rooms for ten to fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse or a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider. Far better was the Roman rule to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dog, Horse, Stars

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.34, North Atlantic Books

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• Don't go into Ramadan having hurt anyone without seeking their forgiveness. The last thing you'd want on the day of judgment is to find that your entire Ramadan with all of its quran recitation, fasting, taraweeh prayers, laylatul qadr, etc. went completely to waste because your pride stopped you from saying “I'm sorry”. With that being said, I'm sorry if I've written, said, or done anything to offend you. Please find it in your heart to forgive and make dua that Allah grants me guidance and sincerity.

  Omar Suleiman

  Hurt, Sorry, Prayer

  FaceBook post by Omar Suleiman from Jun 14, 2015

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• Palestinian society is filled with poetry, but not experimental poetry. The Palestinian poetry that people know is not the modernist experimentations, it's certain kinds of poetry that lends itself to recitation and song and things like that.

  Elliott Colla

  Song, People, Kind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs.

  David Guterson

  Children, Memorization, Needs

  David Guterson (1992). “Family matters: why homeschooling makes sense”, Harcourt

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• But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.

  Lascelles Abercrombie

  Important, Achieve, Difficulty

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• The function of Theology? The recitation of the incomprehensible by the unspeakable to pick the pockets of the unthinking.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Pockets, Function, Theology

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• Comedy is grievances. It's a recitation of grievances - whether they're inconsequential, superficial - like "my wife shops too much", or "kids today", all those old-fashioned themes - or, if it's deeper, and somewhat more thoughtful, about social imbalance and inequities, and the folly of human behavior. It's usually a complaint.

  George Carlin

  Kids, Thoughtful, Wife

  Source: mavericksofthemind.com

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• In these night recitations we create a space between things as we felt them at the time and as we speak them now. This is the space reserved for irony, sympathy and fond amusement, the means by which we rescue ourselves from the past.

  Don DeLillo

  Mean, Past, Night

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.35, Pan Macmillan

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• We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Learning, School

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.34, North Atlantic Books

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• Do not be fooled by one who recites the Qurân. His recitation is but speech – but look to those who act according to it.

  Umar

  Looks, Speech, Fooled

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• I've translated two of Bae's novels, A Greater Music and Recitation, which are coming from Open Letter and Deep Vellum in October and January respectively. A Greater Music is a semi-autobiographical book centred on a Korean writer moving to Berlin, learning to live and even write in a foreign language.

  Deborah Smith

  Book, Moving, Writing

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.

  James A. Michener

  Jobs, Writing, Adventure

  James A. Michener (2014). “The World Is My Home: A Memoir”, p.17, Dial Press

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• There is no surer means of calling down God's blessing upon the family than the daily recitation of the Rosary.

  Pope Pius XII

  Christian, Mean, Blessing

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• A twinge at the edge of her lips and she continued, the soft, slow lilt of recitation: "Ancient walls that sing the distant hours.

  Kate Morton

  Wall, Lips, Ancient

  Kate Morton (2011). “The Distant Hours: A Novel”, p.59, Simon and Schuster

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• Have you not often met poor old women who are most faithful to the pious recitation of the Rosary? You also must do all that you can to recite it with fervour. Get right down, at the feet of Jesus: it is a good thing to make oneself small in the presence of so great a God.

  Columba Marmion

  Jesus, Feet, Catholic

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