Summary Quotes

• Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Ego, Faults, Misery

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.185, Cambridge University Press

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence is his capacity for making a summary.

  Lytton Strachey

  Men, Tests, Capacity

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.703, Delphi Classics

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Data are just summaries of thousands of stories - tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.

  Dan Heath

  Meaningful, Data, Stories

  47 Copy quote

• It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Nice, People, Political

  United States v. Rabinowitz (dissenting opinion) (1950)

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• In summary, all great work is the fruit of patience and perseverance, combined with tenacious concentration on a subject over a period of months or years.

  Santiago Ramon y Cajal

  Patience, Perseverance, Work

  Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Neely Swanson, Larry W. Swanson (2004). “Advice for a Young Investigator”, p.64, MIT Press

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses,--to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination.

  Jonathan Swift

  Glasses, Light, Imagination

  6 Copy quote

• The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.

  Louis E. Boone

  Life, Sad, Fear

  53 Copy quote

• When I'm talking to somebody, I'll put a piece of paper on the table and I'll write what I call a conversation summary - notes about the conversation on the piece of paper. At the end of the conversation, I'll take a picture on my phone and give the other person the original piece of paper.

  Edward Boyden

  Writing, Phones, Talking

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good prose almost always requires both showing and telling, scenes and summary, the two basic components of creative prose.

  Laurie Alberts

  Writing, Two, Creative

  Laurie Alberts (2010). “Showing & Telling: Learn How to Show & When to Tell for Powerful & Balanced Writing”, p.1, F+W Media, Inc.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Would Be, Old Testament, Ifs

  11 Copy quote

• We continue to receive reports that the morale of some elements is being damaged, .. They are being affected by the impunity with which NATO aircraft can operate over Kosovo and Serbia, the accuracy and the growing knowledge.. of deployed locations. In summary, NATO has eroded the capability of Milosevic's war machine and it is being further reduced as each day goes by.

  John Day

  War, Growing Knowledge, Elements

  4 Copy quote

• Numerical quantities focus on expected values, graphical summaries on unexpected values.

  John Tukey

  Focus, Statistics, Unexpected

  48 Copy quote

• I've read your summary." "And?" "It's not incompetent." Be still, my heart, so I don't faint from such faint phrase. "Did you expect it to be written in crayon?

  Ilona Andrews

  Heart, Phrases, Crayon

  4 Copy quote

• To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

  Douglas Adams

  People, Political, Problem

  Douglas Adams (2010). “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.349, Del Rey

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.(Howell Raines's Pulitzer Prize winning article "Grady's Gift")-Sockett admired this quote and used it in her summary.

  Kathryn Stockett

  Winning, Two, White

  Kathryn Stockett (2011). “The Help”, p.688, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.

  Will Durant

  Civilization, History, Ruins

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1968). “The Lessons of History”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!

  Alan King

  Holiday

  13 Copy quote

• The Lord's Prayer "is truly the summary of the whole gospel." "Since the Lord...after handling over the practice of prayer, said elsewhere, 'Ask and you will receive,' and since everyone has petitions which are peculiar to his circumstances, the regular and appropriate prayer (the Lord's Prayer) is said first, as the foundation of further desires.

  Tertullian

  Inspirational, Prayer, Practice

  31 Copy quote

• I just love to act. I like to get away, totally play a different character, someone you can get really involved in knowing. I've gotten really involved in some characters and written down little summaries of where they live and what their families are like.

  Amanda Peterson

  Character, Play, Knowing

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wanted to do a summary of my life and career. There’s been so many different looks, and so many types of songs that have become iconic, so it was just kind of fun to look back on everything

  Shania Twain

  Song, Fun, Careers

  7 Copy quote

• I have always directed my attempts at the figurative representation of objects by way of summary and not very descriptive brushstrokes, diverging greatly from the real objective measurements of things, and this has led many people to talk about childish drawing.. ..this position of seeing them (the objects) without looking at them too much, without focussing more attention on them than any ordinary man would in normal everyday life..

  Jean Dubuffet

  Real, Men, Drawing

  "Prospectus et tous écrits suivants". Book by Jean Dubuffet, Vol. II, p. 105, 1967.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author.

  Henning Mankell

  Sorry, Writing, Feelings

  FaceBook post by Henning Mankell from Mar 03, 2012

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts is therefore slow and tedious, whilst that of examples is summary and effectual.

  Seneca the Younger

  Eye, Men, Example

  4 Copy quote

• In the years since then, those four freedoms - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear - have stood as a summary of our aspirations for the American Republic and for the world.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Education, Years, Freedom Of Speech

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1970). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969”, p.171, Best Books on

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to understand but is obviously calk, someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquility, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to re-enter and be riven. ... I admire the authority of being on one's knees in front of the event.

  Harold Brodkey

  Liars, Writing, Thinking

  7 Copy quote