Laconic Quotes

• You can get far in North America with laconic grunts. "Huh," "hun," and "hi!" in their various modulations, together with "sure," "guess so," "that so?" and "nuts!" will meet almost any contingency.

  Ian Fleming

  Nuts, America, Together

  Ian Fleming (2012). “For Your Eyes Only”, Vintage Digital

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• As I search the archives of my memory I seem to discern six types or methods [of judicial writing] which divide themselves from one another with measurable distinctness. There is the type magisterial or imperative; the type laconic or sententious; the type conversational or homely; the type refined or artificial, smelling of the lamp, verging at times upon preciosity or euphuism; the demonstrative or persuasive; and finally the type tonsorial or agglutinative, so called from the shears and the pastepot which are its implements and emblem.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Memories, Writing, Past

  "Law and Literature and Other Essays and Addresses". Book by Benjamin N. Cardozo, 1931.

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• John Baldessari, the 79-year-old conceptualist, has spent more than four decades making laconic, ironic conceptual art-about-art, both good and bad.

  Jerry Saltz

  Art, Years, Ironic

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• The writing in mathematics text is not only laconic to a fault; it is cold, monotonous, dry, dull, and even ungrammatical... The books are not only printed by machines; they are written by machines.

  Morris Kline

  Book, Writing, Faults

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• The connoisseur might be defined as a laconic art historian, and the art historian as a loquacious connoisseur.

  Erwin Panofsky

  Art, Might, Historian

  Erwin Panofsky (1955). “Meaning in the visual arts: papers in and on art history”

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• Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet."

  John Allen Paulos

  Mathematics, States, Mathematician

  John Allen Paulos (2007). “Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up”, p.8, Macmillan

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• Wishes run over in loquacious impotence, will presses on with laconic energy.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Running, Wish, Energy

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• I love the laconic. Clearly, I am not of their number.

  Renata Adler

  Numbers

  Renata Adler (2013). “Speedboat”, p.64, New York Review of Books

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• Wonderful," Garan grumbled when he'd gone. "We'll grow a reputation for our kindness to lawbreakers.

  Kristin Cashore

  Kindness, Gone, Reputation

  Kristin Cashore (2009). “Fire”, p.143, Penguin

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• Robert Frost says in a piece of homely doggerel that he has hoped wisdom could be not only Attic but Laconic, Boeotian even - "at least not systematic"; but how systematically Frostian the worst of his later poems are! His good poems are the best refutation of, the most damning comment on, his bad: his Complete Poems have the air of being able to educate any faithful reader into tearing out a third of the pages, reading a third, and practically wearing out the rest.

  Randall Jarrell

  Reading, Air, Faithful

  "No Other Book: Selected Essays". Book by Randall Jarrell. Chapter: "To the Laodiceans", p. 21, 1999.

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• To Garan's credit, the treatment of Dellian prisoners did change after that. One particularly laconic man, after a session in which Fire learned positively nothing, thanked her for it specifically. "Best dungeons I ever been in," he said, chewing on a toothpick. "Wonderful," Garan grumbled when he had gone. "We'll grow a reputation for our kindness to lawbreakers.

  Kristin Cashore

  Kindness, Men, Fire

  Kristin Cashore (2009). “Fire”, p.143, Penguin

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• Those of you who have spent time with Australians know that we are not given to overstatement. By nature we are laconic speakers and by conviction we are realistic thinkers.

  Julia Gillard

  Realistic, Conviction, Given

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• That city is well fortified which has a wall of men instead of brick.

  Lycurgus of Sparta

  Wall, Men, Cities

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• On hearing the news [of being awarded a Nobel Prize], a friend who knows me only too well, sent me this laconic message: 'Blood, toil, sweat and tears always were a good mixture'.

  Max Perutz

  Blood, Sweat, Tears

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• Historians, only things of weight,
  Results of persons, or affairs of State,
  Briefly, with truth and clearness should relate;
  Laconic shortness memory feeds.

  James R. Heath

  Memories, Weight, Affair

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• I love the English language just like I love all American things. But I confess that I don't feel confident using complex sentences or big words, hence my famous minimally expressive style - all the "gees" and laconic answers to interviewers. Most of all, I have developed listening as an art form.

  Andy Warhol

  Art, Style, Listening

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• People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they've woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences, leaving people hanging for minutes. I have no control over it. I'll be talking, and will be interested in what I'm saying, but then someone-I'm convinced this what happens-someone-and I wish I knew who, because I would have words for this person-for a short time, borrows my head. Like a battery is borrowed from a calculator to power a remote control, someone, always, is borrowing my head.

  Dave Eggers

  Phones, Talking, Control Someone

  Dave Eggers (2011). “You Shall Know Our Velocity”, p.23, Penguin UK

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• The story of the Zen Master whose only response was always "Is that so?" shows the good that comes through inner nonresistance to events, that is to say, being at one with what happens. The story of the man whose comment was invariably a laconic "Maybe" illustrates the wisdom of nonjudgment, and the story of the ring points to the fact of impermanence which, when recognized, leads to nonattachment. Nonresistance, nonjudgement, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Men, Facts

  Eckhart Tolle (2009). “A New Earth: Create a Better Life”, p.160, Penguin UK

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• Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Judgement, Enlightenment, Three

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.140, Penguin

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• I think there is a kind of laconic Australian leg-pulling sense of humor that is certainly in some of my stories, or is an element in some of my books, and that's probably a direct result of where I've grown up. But other than that I don't draw particularly on the Australian landscape or the Australian biology and so on. So I don't think there's anything you could point to and say is particularly Australian.

  Garth Nix

  Book, Thinking, Landscape

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack.

  Ferdinand Foch

  Military, Giving, Battle

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• Fantasy fans are incredibly loyal and passionate. Other people don't want to be seen as passionate about things, they want to be cool and laconic. The great thing about fantasy fans is they'll really get behind a show.

  John Bradley-West

  People, Want, Fans

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• The proponents of Steinitz' theory - Tarrasch and his supporters - tried to express Steinitz' teaching in the form of laconic rules, and as often happens in such cases, they went too far. The laconic tended to become dogmatic, and chess began to lose its freshness, originality and charm.

  Alexander Kotov

  Teaching, Chess, Originality

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• In my early teens, I read every bound volume of the magazine Punch. Every writer of any distinction in the English language, and I mean including America and England, at some time wrote for Punch. Jerome K. Jerome, who wrote Three Men In A Boat, I loved. I was very impressed when I read a piece by Mark Twain in Punch, and realized that despite the fact that they were on different continents, Jerome K. Jerome and Mark Twain had the same kind of laconic, laid-back, "The human race is damn stupid, but quite interesting" attitude. They were almost talking with the same voice.

  Terry Pratchett

  Attitude, Stupid, Mean

  "Terry Pratchett on his latest novel, his medical diagnosis, and more". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2012.

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• I must have read every issue of 'Punch' published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour - that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like 'Three Men in a Boat.'

  Terry Pratchett

  Men, Thinking, Voice

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