Artifice Quotes - Page 3

• When a new writer defends his "style," the teacher smiles (or cringes) because real style isn't an artifice. Real style - voice - arrives on its own, as an extension of a writer's character. When style is done self-consciously and purposefully it becomes affectation, and as transparent as any affectation - an English accent on an old college chum from New Jersey, for example.

  Bill Roorbach

  Teacher, Real, Teaching

  Bill Roorbach (2000). “Writing Life Stories”, p.97, Writer's Digest Books

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• There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Loss, Skills, Ideas

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2014). “The Federalist Papers”, p.135, Courier Corporation

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• I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but . . . I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it.

  Fisher Ames

  Strong, Patriotic, Successful

  Fisher Ames, John Thornton Kirkland (1969). “Works of Fisher Ames: Memoir, by J. T. Kirkland. Letters”

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• The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Heart, Men, Weakness

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• One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Practice, Names

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• Like most portrait photographers, I aim to record the instant the subject is not thinking about being photographed, striving to get beyond the practiced facial performance, reaching for something unplanned. While trying to be as objective as possible, I acknowledge that every gesture is still an act of artifice.

  Martin Schoeller

  Thinking, Trying, Records

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• We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good.

  John Adams

  Party, Independent, Government

  John Adams' Inaugural Address, avalon.law.yale.edu. March 4, 1797.

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• Wisdom consists partly in not pretending anymore, in discarding artifice.

  Julian Barnes

  Pretending

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• God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoilt all, when she persuaded him to set himself above God's will. 'Tis you women, with your tricks and artifices, that lead men into error.

  Martin Luther

  Men, Errors, Lord

  Martin Luther, Alexander Chalmers (1857). “The Table Talk of Martin Luther”, p.300

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• We perceive no charms that are not sharpened, puffed out, and inflated by artifice. Those which glide along naturally and simply easily escape a sight so gross as ours.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sight, Human Nature, Charm

  Michel de Montaigne (1976). “The Complete Essays of Montaigne”

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• The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province ofwoman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.

  Sarah Bernhardt

  Art, Real, Essence

  Sarah Bernhardt (1924). “The Art of the Theatre”

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• [John Calvin] writes clearly, directly, without artifice, and gets straight to the practical heart of the matter.

  Oliver D. Crisp

  Writing, Heart, Matter

  Source: edwardsstudies.com

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• Don't make the mistake of believing it's enough to reproduce the realities of life.... The object of art is to give life a shape, and to do it by every conceivable artifice.

  Jean Anouilh

  Art, Mistake, Believe

  Jean Anouilh, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Kitty Black (1961). “The rehearsal: a play in three acts”

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• I still feel that variable gears are only for people over forty-five. Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailleur? We are getting soft... As for me, give me a fixed gear!

  Henri Desgrange

  Cycling, People, Giving

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• In the midst of the disguises and artifices that reign among men, it is only attention and vigilance that can save us from surprises.

  Jacques-Benigne Bossuet

  Men, Attention, Reign

  Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, Patrick Riley (1990). “Bossuet: Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture”, p.132, Cambridge University Press

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• There is no greater sign of a bad cause, than when the patrons of it are reduced to the necessity of making use of the most wicked artifices to support it.

  Joseph Addison

  Support, Wicked, Use

  Joseph Addison, Henry George Bohn, Richard Hurd (1872). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison: The Spectator. The Guardian. The Lover. The present state of the war, and the necessity of augmentation, considered. The late trial and conviction of Count Tariff. The Whig-examiner. The Freeholder”, p.421

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• Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Evil, Design, Innocent

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• The theater, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history.

  George Santayana

  Theater

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.84, Indiana University Press

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• Always run to the short way; and the short way is the natural: accordingly say and do everything in conformity with the soundest reason. For such a purpose frees a man from trouble, and warfare, and all artifice and ostentatious display.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Running, Men, Atheism

  Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2015). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius The Golden Sayings Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.22, Lulu.com

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• I've always been interested in the form itself, so I always feel like I've never been good at going ahead with the artifice and not acknowledging the self in the artistic process, and not acknowledging the absurdity of pretending that's required in fiction.

  Dave Eggers

  Self, Fiction, Artistic

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 23, 2005.

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• The tricks and artifices of advertising are available to the seller of the better product no less than to the seller of the poorer product. But only the former enjoys the advantage derived from the better quality of his product.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Quality, Advertising, Advantage

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.397, Lulu Press, Inc

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• It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Ambition, Thinking

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Rambler”, p.410

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• Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. Changing her costume style and hair color virtually every month, Madonna embodies the eternal values of beauty and pleasure. Feminism says, 'No more masks.' Madonna says we are nothing but masks. Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism.

  Camille Paglia

  Sex, Color, Impact

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• I realized early on that artifice attracted me to an image more than any other quality - I mean artifice in the sense of staging and heightened color and exaggerated lighting, not a surreal or fictive moment... I think the lighting and feeling of Cinemascope, the movies I saw as a kid, always stayed with me as a kind of glorious vision of reality.

  Laurie Simmons

  Mean, Kids, Thinking

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• You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.

  Ethan Canin

  Art, Differences, Fiction

  Source: www.identitytheory.com

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