Revision Quotes - Page 3

• If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Writing, Tasks, Ends

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• Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

  T. S. Eliot

  Window Panes, Tea, Vision

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Waste Land and Other Poems”, p.10, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Revision is a good impulse to have.

  Rigoberto Gonzalez

  Impulse

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The moment clients realize that revisions are not an all-you-can-eat buffet, suddenly they realize they are not hungry.

  Lester Beall

  Buffets, Clients, Graphic Design

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• God Himself has reserved no right of revision of His own laws nor is there any need for Him for any such revision.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Law, Needs

  Mahatma Gandhi (1969). “Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi”

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• What we are seeing in America is the creaky old age of an eighteenth-century settlement, deemed at the time to be the new flowering of humankind-come-of-age (the 'Enlightenment') and so deemed to be above revision. At this point the urgent need is for prayer and prophecy.

  N. T. Wright

  Prayer, America, Age

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• You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Motivational, Graduation

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• These teachings in regard to woman so faithfully reflect the provisions of the canon law that it is fair to infer that their inspiration came from the same source, written by men, translated by men, revised by men. If the Bible is to be placed in the hands of our children, read in our schools, taught in our theological seminaries, proclaimed as God's law in our temples of worship, let us by all means call a council of women in New York, and give it one more revision from the woman's standpoint.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  New York, Children, Inspiration

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• I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

  Jack Kerouac

  Art, Writing, Feelings

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• In a poem, the words happen; they just come. I let them. Otherwise, I wouldn't write. To interfere with what is happening is to distort the poem. Just a very small degree of intelligence and supervision is necessary. Very tactful. Any revision later that violates the text as it came, that begins rewriting the words, is fake.

  Louis Dudek

  Writing, Fake, Degrees

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• Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles places the loyalist experience and the aftermath of the American Revolution in an entirely new light. Alongside the Spirit of 1776, Jasanoff gives us the Spirit of 1783, dedicated to remaking the mighty British Empire, and then offers a stunning reinterpretation of the Loyalists' complicated role in that remaking. Her meticulously researched and superbly written account is historical revision at its finest, and it affirms her place as one of the very finest historians of the rising generation.

  Sean Wilentz

  Light, Giving, Historical

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• The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Religious, Cutting, Practice

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2014). “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, p.172, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. It differs, however, from most other branches of human activity in that not only are the pathways of scientific thought determined by the presuppositions of the scientists but their goals are the testing and revision of old presuppositions and the creation of new.

  Gregory Bateson

  Art, Sleep, Goal

  "Mind and Nature - a Necessary Unity". Book by Gregory Bateson, new edition, 1988.

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• Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.

  Herbert Spencer

  Revenge, Sacrifice, Men

  Herbert Spencer (1910). “Works: The study of sociology”

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• In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.

  Amor Towles

  Decision, Vision, Twenties

  Amor Towles (2011). “Rules of Civility: A Novel”, p.323, Penguin

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• After Ive sent my revised draft to my agent and editor, they suggest more improvement sand again, this revision phase can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months.

  Margaret Haddix

  Editors, Agents, Phases

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• All my pictures are a kind of revision of my original idea. This is surely very different from the way in which Japanese or Chinese artists work: their themes are pre-ordained, whereas mine are invented at will.

  Antoni Tapies

  Artist, Ideas, Chinese

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• Youth is the season of receptivity, and should be devoted to acquirement; and manhood of power--that demands an earnest application. Old age is for revision.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Age, Demand, Youth

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1871). “Summaries of Thought”

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• The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision and improvement.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, War, Men

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• Unlike other countries, it was founded on written proclamations. America is an ideal as well as a republic. Its documents are open to revisions. They're works in progress. There's an invitation to participate.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Country, America, Progress

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• And indeed there will be time for the yellow smoke that slides along the street rubbing its back upon the window-panes; there will be time , there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of toast and tea.

  T. S. Eliot

  Hands, Window Panes, Yellow

  T. S. Eliot (2012). “The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• Most poets' revisions are disastrous. They buckle and dent what was originally forged at a red-hot heat.

  Michael Longley

  Hot, Red, Heat

  Source: www.poetrymagazines.org.uk

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• The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.

  George Carlin

  Writing, Editing, Editors

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• Schools of science and physics replacing each other at a faster and faster rate. Just the nature of our world is constant revision, constant...negation of previous beliefs, and so...the whole world is a twist ending. Every week is a twist ending.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  School, Our World, Twists

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• People I know who succeed don't mind working. Those who are competent seem to like doing things well -- not stopping because they haven't accomplished what they wanted to on the first go-round. They're willing to do it twenty times, if necessary. There's an illusion that the good people can easily do something, and it's not necessarily true. They're just determined to do it right. I was impressed by hearing one of the women at Radcliffe talk about writing a poem, how many revisions a single poem sometimes has to go through -- fifty or sixty revisions to come out with a poem sixteen lines long.

  Sylvia Earle

  Writing, Long, People

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