Vivid Quotes - Page 17

• In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed.

  David Hume

  Imagination, Spheres, Painting

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• With respect to the use of this sparkling coloured material (butterfly wings around 1955, fh) - the constituent parts of which remain indistinguishable - with the aim of producing a very vivid effect of scintillation, I realised that, for me, this responds to needs of the same order as those that formerly led me, in many drawings and paintings, to organize my lines and patches of colour so that the objects represented would meld into everything around them, so that the result would be a sort of continuous, universal soup with an intensive flavour of life.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Butterfly, Order, Wings

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• From the summer of my twelfth year I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of my boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them.

  Larry Watson

  Summer, Years, Boyhood

  Larry Watson (2010). “Montana 1948: A Novel”, p.15, Milkweed Editions

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• Every patient reacts a little differently, both biologically and psychologically. The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness.

  Jonathan Alter

  Cancer, Modern Life, Littles

  Jonathan Alter (2008). “Between the Lines: A View Inside American Politics, People, and Culture”

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• I suffer from and enjoy an incredibly vivid dream life. A lot of times there is a sort-of narrative and other times they are just funhouses of non-linear imagery and other scary stuff.

  Adam Rapp

  Dream, Scary, Suffering

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• Well, I don't ever leave out details, in that I don't come up with information or description which I don't then use. I only ever come up with what seems to me absolutely essential to make the story work. I'm not usually an overwriter. As I revise, it's usually a matter of adding in as much vivid details as seem necessary to make the story come clear without slowing down the momentum of the story.

  Kelly Link

  Essentials, Details, Momentum

  Interview with Maggie Slater, www.apex-magazine.com. Juy 2, 2013.

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• In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.

  Mikhail Lermontov

  Nature, Heart, Simple

  Mikhail Lermontov (2015). “A Hero of Our Time”, p.32, Xist Publishing

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• Memories are like fireflies darting across the surface of my mind, showing me here and there images so sharp and vivid that I catch my breath in wonder before the vignette disappears, sinking like a pebble into the quicksand of regret and recrimination.

  Susan Kay

  Regret, Memories, Firefly

  "Phantom". Book by Susan Kay, 1990.

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• Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Flower, Dark, Garden

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• I say then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. This variety of terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act of the mind, which renders realities, or what is taken for such, more present to us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination.

  David Hume

  Taken, Passion, Reality

  David Hume (1758). “Essays and Treatises on several subjects, etc. New edition”, p.311

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• In England if something goes wrong--say, if one finds a skunk in the garden--he writes to the family solicitor, who proceeds to take the proper measures; whereas in America, you telephone the fire department. Each satisfies a characteristic need; in the English, love of order and legalistic procedure; and here in America, what you like is something vivid, and red, and swift.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Writing, Garden, Order

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.164, David R. Godine Publisher

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• I had this vivid image of myself at the age of 60 looking back on my life and truly regretting the fact that I hadn't tried to be an actor

  Lupita Nyong'o

  Regret, Age, Actors

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• With gritty action and realistic science, Peter Watts brings to life a dark and vivid world.

  David Brin

  Dark, World, Action

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• When I stand at the top of the Champs-Elysées, with its chestnut trees in flower, its undulations of shining cars, its white spaciousness, I feel as if I were biting into a utopian fruit, something velvety and lustrous and rich and vivid.

  Anais Nin

  Flower, Paris, White

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• Christ's miracles were vivid manifestations to the senses that He is the Saviour of the body--and now as then the issues of life and death are in His hands--that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God's power in the ordinary.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Hands, Issues, Life And Death

  Frederick William Robertson (1861). “Sermons”, p.44

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• I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Writing, Imagination, Novelists

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1958). “Letters of Ellen Glasgow”

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• Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ignorance, Hands, Support

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.2, Routledge

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• America washes its dirty linen in public. When scandals such as this one hit, they do sully America's image in the world. But what usually also gets broadcast around the world is the vivid reality that the United States forces accountability and punishes wrongdoing, even at the highest levels.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Dirty, Reality, America

  "Pssst... Nobody Loves a Torturer". www.newsweek.com. November 13, 2005.

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• Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields, See how these names are fêted in the waving grass And by the streamers of the white cloud And whispers of the wind in the listening sky. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre. Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

  Stephen Spender

  Heart, Air, Wind

  'I think continually of those who were truly great' (1933)

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• There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive. One might be blown to bits in such a moment and still be at peace.

  Alice Walker

  Struggle, Alive, Might

  Alice Walker (2012). “Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism”, p.15, Ballantine Books

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• You should always be taking pictures, if not with a camera then with your mind. Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident.

  Isaac Marion

  Memories, Mind, Purpose

  Isaac Marion (2016). “Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

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• Did you ever look back at some moment in your past and have it suddenly grow so vivid that all the intervening years seemed brief, dreamlike, impersonal—the motions of a May afternoon surrendered to routine?

  Roger Zelazny

  Past, Years, Routine

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• Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Thinking, Talking

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• Make the short story tremendously succinct - with a very short pulse or rhythm - and the closest selection of detail - in other words summarise intensely and deeply and keep down the lateral development. It should be a little gem of bright, quick, vivid form

  Henry James

  Pulse, Details, Stories

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• The function of the Short Story is to be interesting, to convey vivid impressions, an therefore it must, to a degree, work with the evident and superficial thing

  Henry Seidel Canby

  Superficial Things, Interesting, Degrees

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