Degrees Quotes - Page 19

• The playing field is more sacred than the stock exchange, more blessed than Capital Hill or the vaults of Fort Knox. The diamond and the gridiron -- and, to a lesser degree, the court, the rink, the track, and the ring -- embody the American dream of Eden.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Dream, Blessed, Eden

  Lewis H. Lapham (1989). “Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion”

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• The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to rappings from outside, and tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority; rightly, perhaps, since of course these ordinary matters make up the greater part of human experience.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Rap, Imagination, Feelings

  H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2016). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1681, eBookIt.com

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• The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.

  Valerie Solanas

  Insecure, Men, Individuality

  Valerie Solanas (1971). “SCUM manifesto”

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• There are three degrees of comparison: stupido, stupidissimo, and tenore.

  Pietro Mascagni

  Ignorance, Three, Comparison

  "Musicdotes". Book by Scott Beach, p. 94, 1977.

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• A trustee has a responsibility to guard the assets of others with a higher degree of care than he does his own.

  John Ashcroft

  Responsibility, Doe, Care

  "Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice". Book by John Ashcroft, 2006.

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• Though there is a benevolence due to all mankind, none can question but a superior degree of it is to be paid to a father, a wife, or child. In the same manner, though our love should reach to the whole species, a greater proportion of it should exert itself towards that community in which Providence has placed us. This is our proper sphere of action, the province allotted us for the exercise of our civil virtues, and in which alone we have opportunities of expressing our goodwill to mankind.

  Joseph Addison

  Children, Father, Exercise

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.187

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• The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Democracy, Rewards, Conformity

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Epigrams by Ambrose Bierce”, p.10, e-artnow

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• An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth a fact that is recognized by the law of libel .

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Law, Facts

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.2657, Delphi Classics

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• God indeed tempteth no man; but yet we ask, in this petition, that he would keep and preserve us, lest the devil, the world, and our own flesh delude and draw us away from the true faith, and throw us into superstition, distrust, despair, and other grievous sins and wickedness; and that, if we should be tempted therewith even to the highest degree, we still may conquer, and at last triumph over them.

  Martin Luther

  Men, Despair, Devil

  Martin Luther (2017). “Martin Luther's Table Talk”, p.72, Gideon House Books

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• You "have a date," you "go out with a date," you "groan because there isn't a decent date in town." A situation defined as containing a girl - or boy - of the right social background, the right degree of popularity, a little higher than your own.

  Margaret Mead

  Girl, Boys, Men

  "Male and Female". Study by Margaret Mead, 1949.

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• There is little mysticism without an element of transcendence, and conversely, there is no transcendence without a certain degree of egocentrism. It may be that the genesis of these experiences is to be sought in the unique situation of the very young child in relation to adults. The theory of the filial origin of the religious sense seems to us singularly convincing in this connection.

  Jean Piaget

  Religious, Children, Unique

  Jean Piaget (1997). “The Moral Judgement of the Child”, p.94, Simon and Schuster

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• No adversity is in kind or degree peculiar to us; but if we survey the conditions of other men (of our brethren everywhere, of our neighbours all about us), and compare our case with theirs, we shall find that we have many consorts and associates in adversity, most as ill, many far worse bestead than ourselves; whence it must be a great fondness and perverseness to be displeased that we are not exempted from, but exposed to bear a share in the common troubles and burdens of mankind.

  Isaac Barrow

  Adversity, Men, Peculiar

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• Doth not this Æthereal Medium in passing out of Water, Glass, Crystal, and other compact and dense Bodies into empty Spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the Rays of Light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve Lines? And doth not the gradual condensation of this Medium extend to some distance from the Bodies, and thereby cause the Inflexions of the Rays of Light, which pass by the edges of dense Bodies, at some distance from the Bodies?

  Isaac Newton

  Distance, Mean, Space

  Sir Isaac Newton (1730). “Opticks:: Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light”, p.324

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• Not only does a journey transport us over enormous distances, it also causes us to move a few degrees up or down in the social scale. It displaces us physically and also for better or for worse takes us out of our class context, so that the colour and flavour of certain places cannot be dissociated from the always unexpected social level on which we find ourselves in experiencing them.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Distance, Moving, Journey

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.87, Penguin

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• The general misunderstanding of a work of art is often due to the fact that the key to its spiritual content and technical means is missed. Unless the observer is trained to a certain degree in the artistic idiom, he is apt to search for things which have little to do with the aesthetic content of a picture. He is likely to look for pure representational values when the emphasis is really upon music-like relationships.

  Hans Hofmann

  Spiritual, Art, Mean

  "Search for the Real: And Other Essays". Book by Hans Hofmann. "Painting and Culture", p. 56, 1948.

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• Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Art, Blow, Curiosity

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1842). “The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.142

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• Anti-intellectualism ... has been present in some form and degree in most societies; in one it takes the form of the administering of hemlock, in another of town-and-gown riots, in another of censorship and regimentation, in still another of Congressional investigations.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Hemlock, Gowns, Towns

  Richard Hofstadter (2012). “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”, p.20, Vintage

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• Daily life is a comprimised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.

  E. O. Wilson

  Self, Class, Identity

  "On Human Nature". Book by E. O. Wilson, 1978.

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• No one in this earthly prison of the body has sufficient strength of his own to press forward with a due degree of watchfulness, and the great majority [of Christians] are kept down with such great weakness that they stagger and halt and even creep on the ground, and so make very slight advances.

  John Calvin

  Christian, Body, Weakness

  John Calvin, Henry Van Andel (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.22, Baker Books

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• Although technology is proceeding at a dizzying pace, I believe that the human mind will always have control of itself. And since the human mind has a degree of infinity and imagination unlikely to be matched by a machine for a very, very long time, I don't think that we will become the machines of the machines.

  Alan Lightman

  Believe, Thinking, Technology

  Alan Lightman (2005). “A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit”, p.115, Vintage

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• I certainly wouldn't compare the rewards of watching one's children grow and mature with that of money piling up at the box office. Both are pleasant, but to varying degrees. As the old saying goes, you can't take an audience home with you. You can't depend on the loyalty of fans, who, after all is said and done, are just faceless people one seldom sees. And few stars have their fans forever. But a child is forever. That bond and relationship is timeless and doesn't depend on your looks, age or popularity at the moment.

  Julie Andrews

  Loyalty, Stars, Children

  Saturday Evening Post, February 1980.

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• A man convicted of murder is twenty times more likely than a woman convicted of murder to receive the death penalty. Since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty, 120 men and only 1 woman have actually been executed. The woman, from North Carolina, said she preferred to be executed. In North Carolina, a man who commits second-degree murder receives a sentence on average of 12.6 years longer than a woman who commits second-degree murder.

  Warren Farrell

  Men, Average, Years

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

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• [The doctrine of air] I was led into in consequence of inhabiting a house adjoining to a public brewery, where I at first amused myself with making experiments on the fixed air [carbon dioxide] which I found ready made in the process of fermentation . When I removed from that house I was under the necessity of making the fixed air for myself; and one experiment leading to another, as I have distinctly and faithfully noted in my various publications on the subject, I by degrees contrived a convenient apparatus for the purpose, but of the cheapest kind.

  Joseph Priestley

  Air, House, Firsts

  "Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley". Book by John Towill Rutt., 1831.

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• I have AIDS. I am surprised that I do. I have not been exposed since1977, which is to say that my experience, myadventures in homosexuality took place largely in the1960s and '70s, and back then I relied on time and abstinence to indicate my degree of freedom from infectionand to protect others and myself.

  Harold Brodkey

  Abstinence, Homosexuality, Aids

  1996 This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death.

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• Harvey was not content merely to gather knowledge; he digested and arranged it under the guidance of the faculties which compare and reason. ... Harvey appears to have possessed, in a remarkable degree, the power of persuading and conciliating those with whom he came in contact. In the whole course of his long life we hear nothing either of personal enemies or personal enmities ... one of the great men whom God, in virtue of his eternal laws, bids to appear on earth from time to time to enlighten, and to ennoble mankind.

  William Harvey

  Men, Law, Long

  "The Works of William Harvey, M.D". Book by Robert Willis, "The Life of Harvey", 1847.

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