18th Century Quotes - Page 2

• There are at least two distinct meanings of 'hot': there is the, like, normal human definition which is that 'this individual seems suitable for mating'. And then there's the weird, culturally constructed definition of 'hot' which means, 'that individual is malnourished and has probably had plastic bags inserted into her breasts'. Like, I think if you went back to the 18th century and asked a 15-year-old boy, 'Would you like to marry a woman who has had plastic bags needlessly inserted into her breasts?' that 15-year-old boy would probably be like ... 'What's plastic?'

  John Green

  Mean, Thinking, Boys

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• You need some reason why Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn in the 18th century all flocked to Vienna. What was it about Vienna? They must have known on some level that that is where they would flourish. It's what biologists call "selective migration."

  Eric Weiner

  Vienna, Needs, Levels

  "How your neighborhood coffee shop is brewing geniuses". Interview with Paul Solman, www.pbs.org. January 21, 2016.

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• Satire about any and all professionals with a special vocabulary has been a staple of fiction and popular ridicule since the 18th century.

  Paul Fry

  Vocabulary, Special, Fiction

  "Originality matters". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. September 10, 2012.

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• I think the Electoral College is an absurd 18th-century construct. But that is the law.

  David Remnick

  College, Thinking, Law

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The fact that I spend a lot of time in the 18th century doesn't mean I'm not concerned with the 21st.

  Robert Darnton

  Mean, Facts, Century

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• If I drive my car to the store, those carbon molecules that are emitted actually get into the atmosphere circulation systems and affect climate in a global basis. This is shocking, this is amazing! No one in the 18th Century would have believed that anything like this were at all possible and I don't think we have, as part of our common sense, morality, norms and values that are really responsive to those kinds of issues, to the kind of power that we now are able to exert over the future and over people who live very far from us.

  Dale Jamieson

  Thinking, People, Common Sense

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Its a very 18th-century thing to have a book broken into several volumes.

  Matthew Tobin Anderson

  Book, Broken, Century

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• Rick Perry said America's revolutionary war was fought in the 16th century. When told it was actually the 18th century, Perry apologized and said, 'I never said I was a geology major.'

  Conan O'Brien

  War, America, Revolutionary

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• We don't have a clear path forward, and that's been the case for feminism since the 18th century, when the idea of the rights of women actually began.

  Erica Jong

  Rights, Ideas, Feminism

  "Erica Jong on Feminism for the Future". Omega Institute Interview, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 13, 2014.

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• The decision for complete religious freedom and for separation of church and state in the eyes of the rest of the world was perhaps the most important decision reached in the New World. Everywhere in the western world of the 18th century, church and state were one; and everywhere the state maintained an established church and tried to force conformity to its dogma.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Religious, Eye, Decision

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• In fact, it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century. The largest, most powerful force ever set forth from Britain or any nation.

  David McCullough

  Powerful, Facts, Century

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• In the last quarter of the 20th century, Britons have been understandably obsessed with the problem of having too little power in the world. In the third quarter of the 18th century, by contrast, their forebears were perplexed by the problem of having acquired too much power too quickly over too many people.

  Linda Colley

  People, World, Littles

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• Growing up as a black kid with a white father who loves you, who affirms you, who was part of your life is fundamentally different than what black people in my family were subjected to in the 19th century or the 18th century. But unfortunately, it doesn't change the old racial order. I think we need to let the old racial order just stay where it is and not seek to improve upon it. Not try to create more racial categories, because all that does is it makes a race stick around longer.

  Benjamin Jealous

  Growing Up, Father, Love You

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. March 10, 2010.

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• If you go to old houses on Long Island you will see painted Chinese wallpaper, which was big in the 18th century. Throughout history, notable, established families have always tried to link to the 18th century.

  Catherine Martin

  Islands, Long, House

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• The Constitution has to be interpreted loosely, otherwise it becomes a straitjacket. You can't interpret it literally. You can pretend to, and go digging around in 18th Century dictionaries to figure out what 'cruel and unusual punishment' meant or what the 'right to bear arms' meant, but that is all fake really. The Constitution has to be interpreted in light of modern needs, and that's what they (the strict interpreters) end up doing in spite of all their investigations.

  Richard Posner

  Light, Punishment, Fake

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• The colors of the underwater rock [are] as pale and delicate as those in the wardrobe of an 18th-century marchioness.

  William Manchester

  Rocks, Color, Underwater

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• When Mr Ackroyd says that in the 18th century, stranglers bit off the noses of their victims, I feel that he probably knows what he is talking about. I just wish he hadn't told me.

  James Fenton

  Talking, Wish, Noses

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• The fact is that the British Museum had a complete specimen of a dodo in their collection up until the 18th century - it was actually mummified, skin and all - but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the feet and they burned the rest in a bonfire.

  Adam Savage

  Cutting, Museums, Feet

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• Looking at paintings was a huge part of finding my way into the lush world of the 18th century.

  Rebecca Miller

  World, Way, Painting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I was like, "Oh yeah, that's kind of like me. I'm always living in the past." When I was really young, I thought I was from the 18th century and I was trapped in this life, and I was so miserable and figuring how I could get back. Maybe I was just picking up on ideas of past lives, but I really did believe that I was from another era.

  Diane Birch

  Believe, Past, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I try to find a style that matches the book. In the Baroque Cycle, I got infected with the prose style of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, which is my favorite era. It's recent enough that it is easy to read - easier than Elizabethan English - but it's pre-Victorian and so doesn't have the pomposity that is often a problem with 19th-century English prose. It is earthy and direct and frequently hilarious.

  Neal Stephenson

  Book, Style, Trying

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The passion for exploration and discovery, the hunger to learn all things about all aspects of the physical world, the great and preposterous optimism that held that such truths were in fact discoverable, its dazzling sophistication and its occasional startling innocence; an age in which geographical and scientific discoveries surpassed anything previously dreamt of, and yet an age in which it was still, just barely, possible to believe in mermaids and unicorns - these remarkable traits so characterized the British 18th century

  Caroline Alexander

  Believe, Passion, Discovery

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• The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.

  Michael Tippett

  Century, Our Time, Fugue

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• An 18th century brain, in a 21st century head.

  Adam Ant

  Friendship, Brain, Century

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• Although the stories are very present in my book, and very present in my mind, what I was most interested in was the question of why it had attracted such a following in the 18th Century. It's less mysterious that it attracted a following in the Romantic period, and in the 19th Century, but the early 18th Century when the Rationalists fell in love with it...that was mysterious. What I wanted to look at was the forms of enchantment.

  Marina Warner

  Book, Mind, Enchantment

  Source: therumpus.net

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