Impression Quotes - Page 10

• People get a bad impression of it [the English climate] by continually trying to treat it as if it was a bank clerk, who ought to be on time on Tuesday next, instead of philosophically seeing it as a painter, who may do anything so long as you don't try to predict what.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Weather, Long, People

  The Observer, August 07, 1966.

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• The furnace of affliction refines us from earthly drossiness, and softens us for the impression of God's own stamp.

  Pierre Bayle

  Affliction, Stamps, Furnaces

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• A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.

  Joseph Addison

  Reading, Writing, Men

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1832). “The British Essayists: Containing the Spectator, with Notes and General Index, and the Tatler and Guardian, with Notes and General Index”

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• Cold soup is a very tricky thing and it is a rare hostess who can carry it off. More often than not the dinner guest is left with the impression that had he only come a little earlier he could have gotten it while it was still hot.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Food, Dinner Guests, Hot

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.125, Vintage

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• The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration.

  Leigh Hunt

  Running, Laughter, Drama

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• I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.

  Anne Tyler

  Real, Book, Thinking

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• There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.

  Agnes Repplier

  Book, Heart, Men

  Agnes Repplier (1894). “In the Dozy Hours, and Other Papers”

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• The gospel of cheerfulness, I had almost said the gospel of amusement, is preached by people who lack experience to people who lack vitality. There is a vague impression that the world would be a good world if it were only happy, that it would be happy if it were amused, and that it would be amused if plenty of artificial recreation - that recreation for which we are now told every community stands responsible - were provided for its entertainment.

  Agnes Repplier

  Happiness, People, Community

  Agnes Repplier (1916). “Counter-currents”

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• It was stated, . . . that the value of architecture depended on two distinct characters:--the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation.

  John Ruskin

  Character, Two, Bears

  John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.94

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• There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will: a word--a look, which at one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at.

  Laurence Sterne

  Heart, Wind, Ill Will

  Laurence Sterne (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Laurence Sterne (Illustrated)”, p.532, Delphi Classics

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• As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may wore properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame.

  Laurence Sterne

  Leaving, Genius, Letters

  Laurence Sterne (1783). “The Works of Laurence Sterne”, p.101

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• Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his vanity, and drives him to a doting upon his own person.

  Jeremy Collier

  Men, Vanity, Imagination

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• [On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.

  Madame de Stael

  Men, Wind Blowing, Ears

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• During the day, our souls gather their ... impressions of us, how our lives feel. ... Our spirits collect these impressions, keep them together, like wisps of smoke in a bag. Then, when we're asleep, our brains open up these bags of smoke ... and take a look.

  Marsha Norman

  Soul, Brain, Together

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• Vermonters are not only charmless of manner, on the whole; they are also, as far as I can judge, utterly without pretence, and give the salutary impression that they don't care ten cents whether you are amused, affronted, intrigued, or bored stiff by them. Hardly anybody asked me how I liked Vermont. Not a soul said 'Have a nice day!

  Jan Morris

  Nice, Giving, Judging

  Jan Morris (1993). “Locations”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Fine blunderers in ethics we are, so generally conveying to children the basic impression that pleasantness must be wrong, and right doing unpleasant!

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Children, Ethics, Morality

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935). “The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography”, p.20, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• Television's compelling power is its immediacy . .. this immediacy feeds the politics of emotions, gut reactions and impressions rather than the politics of logic, facts and reason; it emphasizes personality rather than issues.

  Hedrick Smith

  Issues, Personality, Television

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• Noble acts and momentous events happen in the same way and produce the same impression as the ordinary facts.

  Roberto Rossellini

  Events, Ordinary, Noble

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• When will talkers refrain from evil speaking? When listeners refrain from evil hearing. At present there are many so credulous of evil, they will receive suspicions and impressions against persons whom they don't know, from a person whom they do know--an authority good for nothing.

  Augustus William Hare

  Evil, Hearing, Authority

  Julius Charles Hare, Augustus William Hare (1861). “Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers: From the Fifth London Ed”, p.185

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• When once experience taught me that I could work when I chose, and within a quarter of an hour of my determining to do so, I was relieved, in a great measure, from those embarrassments and depressions which I see afflicting many an author who waits for a mood instead of summoning it, and is the sport, instead of the master, of his own impressions and ideas.

  Harriet Martineau

  Sports, Ideas, Waiting

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.157, Broadview Press

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• Anythin' wrong leaves a kind of impression on the eye; brain trots along afterwards with the warnin'.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Eye, Brain, Kind

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2012). “Lord Peter Views the Body”, p.179, Open Road Media

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• I have the impression that when we talk so confidently of liberty, we are unaware of the awful ... servitude of poverty when means are so small that there is literally no choice at all.

  Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth

  Mean, Choices, Liberty

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• The young are so much more vulnerable than the old - the stuff is still warm and malleable, it takes impressions.

  Storm Jameson

  Stuff, Youth, Vulnerable

  Storm Jameson (1933). “No time like the present”

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• Grief is only the memory of widowed affection. The more intense the delight in the presence of the object, the more poignant must be the impression of the absence.

  James Martineau

  Memories, Grief, Delight

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• Between the villages of Aubiere and Romagnat in the ancient Province of Auvergne there is an old road that comes suddenly over the top of a high hill. To stand south of this ridge looking up at the highway flowing over the skyline is to receive one of those irrefutable impressions from landscape which requires more than a philosopher to explain. In this case it is undoubtedly, for some reason, one of exalted expectation.

  Hervey Allen

  Book, Expectations, Skylines

  Hervey Allen (1933). “Anthony Adverse”

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