Written Quotes - Page 23

• If I could come out in this book and advocate complete revolution and the violent overthrow of the United States of America, without being thrown in jail, I would not have written The Anarchist Cookbook, and there would be no need for it.

  William Powell

  Book, America, Jail

  "The Anarchist Cookbook" by William Powell, (Introduction), 1971.

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• Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.

  Denis Diderot

  Evil, Encounters, Masters

  "Jacques the Fatalist". Book by Denis Diderot, 1796.

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• The Administration's policy on women is often hard to see because it is written in the font size of pharmaceutical ads.

  Kate Clinton

  Fonts, Administration, Size

  Kate Clinton (2012). “What the L?”, Bywater Books

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• The Place of Religion in Chicago is a clearly written account of a little-studied aspect of American landscape. Based on unique field surveys and supported by photographs, tables, and beautifully crafted maps, the book will form a lasting contribution to our understanding of an overlooked element of the American urban scene: the religious landscape of a major metropolis.

  Peter Haggett

  Religious, Book, Unique

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• While journalists cannot right every wrong, champion every cause or fix every problem, they can - through the written word - lift someone's burden for a day, make some elderly woman on a bus smile or let them know they are noticed by someone.

  Regina Brett

  Elderly, Champion, Causes

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• The history of each and every territory is written in the blood of those who died trying to fulfill the aspirations of their ambitious leaders.

  D. J. MacHale

  Blood, Leader, Trying

  D.J. MacHale (2009). “Pendragon: Quillan Games”, p.169, Simon and Schuster

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• '2001' was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Lying, Sea, Forever

  "Writer Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90" by Ravi Nessman in the "Associated Press", March 18, 2008.

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• Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon The author of Lear remains unshaken Willie Herbert or Mary Fitton What does it matter? The Sonnets were written.

  Noel Coward

  Doe, Matter, Mary

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• When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you.

  Rebecca West

  Thinking, Hands, Important

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• The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

  Harold Bloom

  Beautiful, Paragraph, Prose

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• All the plays that have ever been written, from ancient Greece to the present day, have never really been anything but thrillers... Drama's always been realistic and there's always been a detective about... Every play's an investigation brought to a successful conclusion.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Drama, Successful, Play

  Eugene Ionesco (2015). “Amedee, The New Tenant, Victims of Duty: Three Plays”, p.79, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Ten thousand things there are which we believe merely upon the authority or credit of those who have spoken or written them.

  Isaac Watts

  Believe, Credit, Authority

  Isaac Watts (1813). “The Works of the Rev. Isaac Watts D.D. in Nine Volumes”, p.417

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• There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Reading, Heart, Law

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• You've got to remember, the older you get the slower you get. I've seen a lot of players get old ... if I can have a good season in 1972 and come back with another good one, well, that's different. I might not quit. But two bad ones back to back and staying home would be written on the wall.

  Hank Aaron

  Wall, Home, Player

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• The light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van of free nations have not spent their power; because the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.

  Lord Acton

  Past, Light, Stories

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.74, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I wish my prose to be transparent—I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Writing, Wish, Want Him

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• To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Book, Past, Long

  "V.S. Naipaul in Search of Himself: A Conversation" with Mel Gussow, "The New York Times", April 24, 1994.

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• Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.

  Alain de Botton

  Optimistic, Frustration, Rage

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, 2000.

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• When you decide 'to be a writer,' you don't have the faintest idea of what the work is like. When you begin, you write spontaneously out of your limited experience of both the unwritten world and the written world. You're full of naïve exuberance. 'I am a writer!' Rather like the excitement of 'I have a lover!' But working at it nearly every day for fifty years – whether it is being the writer or being the lover – turns out to be an extremely taxing job and hardly the pleasantest of human activities.

  Philip Roth

  Jobs, Writing, Years

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• I haven't written a word of fiction since 2009. I have no desire to write fiction. I did what I did and it's done. There's more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date.

  Philip Roth

  Writing, Desire, Fiction

  "'The Novelist's Obsession Is With Language': Philip Roth on Writing, the Future of Language and the Ghost Writer". Interview with Cynthia Haven, news.stanford.edu. February 03, 2014.

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• All literature is written by the old to teach the young how to express themselves so that they in turn may write literature to teach the old how to express themselves. All literature is written by mentally precocious adolescents and by mentally precocious senescents.

  Laura Riding

  Writing, Literature, May

  "Anarchism Is Not Enough". Book by Laura Riding. Chapter: "All Literature", 1928.

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• The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When you listen to the way in which Shakespeare attacks relationships, for example, even though the words may start off sounding foreign, in actuality they are so accessible, the motivations so clear, the resonances so contemporary. When you put it in a modern context - we could well be in a place with someone like Gaddafi or Mubarak - it becomes apparent how Richard III resonates with that type of personality, with media and manipulation, alliances and petty jealousies.

  Kevin Spacey

  Motivation, Media, Play

  Speech at the Old Vic, Summer 2011.

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• Galileo wrote that 'the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics; without its help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it.'

  Steven Pinker

  Book, Helping, Impossible

  Steven Pinker (2003). “How the Mind Works”, p.325, Penguin UK

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• I have always considered The Merry Wives one of the worst plays, if not altogether the worst, that Shakespeare has left us. The wit for the most part is dreary or foolish; the tone is coarse and farcical; and the characters want the fine distinctive touches he so well knew how to give. If some luckless wight had written such a comedy in our time, I should like to see what the critics would say to it?

  George Henry Lewes

  Character, Play, Giving

  John Forster, George Henry Lewes (1896). “Dramatic Essays”

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• It's true that I wouldn't have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation. It's also this Jewish thing of naming and remembering people, and I think there is a sense of keeping that side of life going.

  Nigella Lawson

  Mother, Book, Thinking

  "England's It Girl". Gourmet, April 2001.

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