Description Quotes - Page 25

• Thus the theory of description matters most.
  It is the theory of the word for those
  For whom the word is the making of the world,
  The buzzing world and lisping firmament.

  Wallace Stevens

  World, Matter, Firmament

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.345, Vintage

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• Even in the midst of love-making, writers are working on the description.

  Mason Cooley

  Love Making, Midst

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• The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.

  Bertrand Russell

  Principles, Analysis, Fundamentals

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.75, Bertrand Russell

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• Western traditions of education have emphasized knowledge analysis, description and debate. They all have a part to play, but today there is a whole vast aspect of doing that has just been left out. Operacy is what keeps society going.

  Edward de Bono

  Education, Play, Analysis

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• Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.

  Paul Tillich

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Expression

  Paul Tillich (1958). “Dynamics of faith”

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• The modern version of Buridan's ass [a figurative description of a man of indecision] has a Ph.D., but no time to grow up as he is undecided between making a Leonardo da Vinci in the test tube or planting a Coca Cola sign on Mars.

  Erwin Chargaff

  Growing Up, Men, Mars

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• When you consider how many millions of workdays begin with hangovers great and small, it is mildly ­surprising to find how few real descriptions of the experience our literature can boast.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Real, Hangover, Literature

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• The description and explanation is the best part of music reviewing. There is such a thing, and you know it too, as a gift for judgment. If you have it, you can say anything you like. If you haven't got it, you don't know you haven't got it.

  Virgil Thomson

  Say Anything, Judgment, Explanation

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• I have talked to more people who are in politics who have said to me, "[House of Cards] is closer than you can imagine. It's the most accurate description of how politics actually works that we've ever seen." I mean, West Wing - beautiful, wonderful idea of how democracy should work. But I've had more people in politics say they think House of Cards is closer. I - don't know whether to take that as a compliment or a sad state of affairs.

  Kevin Spacey

  Beautiful, Mean, Thinking

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• Overt intelligent performances are not clues to the workings of minds; they are those workings. Boswell described Johnson's mind when he described how he wrote, talked, ate, fidgeted and fumed. His description was, of course, incomplete, since there were notoriously some thoughts which Johnson kept carefully to himself and there must have been many dreams, daydreams and silent babblings which only Johnson could have recorded and only a James Joyce would wish him to have recorded.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Dream, Thinking, Thoughtful

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• Bohr’s standpoint, that a space-time description is impossible, I reject a limine. Physics does not consist only of atomic research, science does not consist only of physics, and life does not consist only of science. The aim of atomic research is to fit our empirical knowledge concerning it into our other thinking. All of this other thinking, so far as it concerns the outer world, is active in space and time. If it cannot be fitted into space and time, then it fails in its whole aim and one does not know what purpose it really serves.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Life, Failure, Knowledge

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• Not until Freud's writings became popular did descriptions of infants center on relationships with their mothers. The idea that children have feelings of any lasting importance for their development is a very recent invention (or insight if you wish).

  Sandra Scarr

  Mother, Children, Writing

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• To call a posit a posit is not to patronize it. A posit can be unavoidable except at the cost of other no less artificial expedients. Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Real, Cost, Building

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia Smith Churchland, Dagfinn Follesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.20, MIT Press

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• . . . a dirty exterior is a great enemy to beauty of all descriptions.

  Mary Martha Sherwood

  Dirty, Enemy, Exterior

  Mary Martha Sherwood (1844). “The History of John Marten: A Sequel to The Life of Henry Milner”, p.180

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• When I was younger, I was always described as happy-go-lucky. Then I drank and I partied - did all that stuff that might tell you maybe there was a little bit of untruth in that [description]. Now, the surprising thing is that when I say stuff, I actually mean it. I don't have to do the work of trying to formulate my point of view. It just is. And it's surprising how much I love life. I just really have a good time.

  Michael J. Fox

  Love Life, Mean, Views

  Interview with Rosemary Ellis, www.goodhousekeeping.com. February 18, 2009.

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• Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story.

  Stephen King

  Stories, Reader, Participants

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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• Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Simple, Men, Style

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.517, Simon and Schuster

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• Matter-of-fact descriptions make the improbable seem real.

  Mason Cooley

  Real, Matter, Facts

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• The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Philosophy, Plain Language, Understanding

  "Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science". Book by Werner Heisenberg, 1958.

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• Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Travel, Doe

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.365, Рипол Классик

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• There's nothing "wrong" with anything. "Wrong" is a relative term, indicating the opposite of that which you call "right." Yet, what is "right"? Can you be truly objective in these matters? Or are "right" and "wrong" simply descriptions overlaid on events and circumstances by you, out of your decision about them?

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Inspirational, Religious, Opposites

  Neale Donald Walsch (2005). “The Complete Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue”, p.144, Penguin

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• Architecture, either practically considered or viewed as an art of taste, is a subject so important and comprehensive in itself, that volumes would be requisite to do it justice. Buildings of every description, from the humble cottage to the lofty temple, are objects of such constant recurrence in every habitable part of the globe, and are so strikingly indicative of the intelligence, character, and taste of the inhabitants, that they possess in themselves a great peculiar interest for the mind.

  Andrew Jackson Downing

  Art, Humble, Character

  Andrew Jackson Downing, Henry Winthrop Sargent (1859). “A treatise on the theory and practice of landscape gardening, adapted to North America: with a view to the improvement of country residences”, p.318

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• Freudian psychoanalytical theory is a mythology that answers pretty well to Levi-Strauss's descriptions. It brings some kind of order into incoherence; it, too, hangs together, makes sense, leaves no loose ends, and is never (but never) at a loss for explanation. In a state of bewilderment it may therefore bring comfort and relief.... give its subject a new and deeper understanding of his own condition and of the nature of his relationship to his fellow men. A mythical structure will be built up around him which makes sense and is believable-in, regardless of whether or not it is true.

  Peter Medawar

  Relationship, Nature, Loss

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• A well-read fool is the most pestilent of blockheads; his learning is a flail which he knows not how to handle, and with which he breaks his neighbor's shins as well as his own. Keep a fellow of this description at arm's length, as you value the integrity of your bones.

  Stanisław I Leszczyński

  Integrity, Arms, Fool

  François duc de La Rochefoucauld, Stanisław I Leszczyński (King of Poland) (1851). “Moral Reflections, Sentences and Maxims of Francis, Duc de la Rochefoucauld”, p.181

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• The only object of theoretical physics is to calculate results that can be compared with experiment... it is quite unnecessary that any satisfactory description of the whole course of the phenomena should be given.

  Paul Dirac

  Theoretical Physics, Unnecessary, Mechanic

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