Distinction Quotes - Page 35

• People should make distinctions between the office of the presidency and the person who occupies it. You can respect the office even as you lose respect for the individual.

  David Greenberg

  People, Office, Individual

  Source: www.slate.com

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• The critical sense is so far from frequent that it is absolutely rare, and the possession of the cluster of qualities that minister to it is one of the highest distinctions... In this light one sees the critic as the real helper of the artist, a torchbearing outrider, the interpreter, the brother... Just in proportion as he is sentient and restless, just in proportion as he reacts and reciprocates and penetrates, is the critic a valuable instrument.

  Henry James

  Brother, Real, Artist

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• Why, then, does water-form the very basis of life in all life's various manifestations? Because water embraces everything is in and all through everything; because it rises above the distinctions between plants and animals and human beings; because it is a universal element shared by all; itself undetermined, yet determining; because, like the primal mother it is, it supplies the stuff of life to everything living.

  Theodor Schwenk

  Mother, Animal, Water

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• People have no clue that they’re in prison, they don’t know that there is an ego, they don’t know the distinction.

  Leonard Jacobson

  People, Ego, Clue

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• If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Book, Writing, Disgrace

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• Siphonophores do not convey the message a favorite theme of unthinking romanticism that nature is but one gigantic whole, all its parts intimately connected and interacting in some higher, ineffable harmony. Nature revels in boundaries and distinctions; we inhabit a universe of structure. But since our universe of structure has evolved historically, it must present us with fuzzy boundaries, where one kind of thing grades into another.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Messages, Fuzzy, Kind

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.95, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze.

  Quentin Crisp

  Hot, England, Haze

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, Chapter 13, 1968.

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• In Blue Crush , we meet three Hawaiian surfers who work as hotel maids, live in a grotty rental, and are raising the kid sister of one of them. Despite this near-poverty, they look great; there is nothing like a tan and a bikini to overcome class distinctions.

  Roger Ebert

  Crush, Kids, Blue

  Roger Ebert (2004). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005”, p.76, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• [Keeping kosher was] the symbol of an initiation, like the insignia of a secret brotherhood, that set her apart and gave her freedom and dignity. Every law whose yoke she accepted willingly seemed to add to her freedom: she herself had chosen . . . To enter that brotherhood. Her Judaism was no longer a stigma, a meaningless accident of birth from which she could escape . . . It had become a distinction, the essence of her self-hood, what she was, what she wanted to be, not merely what she happened to be.

  Jessie Sampter

  Women, Self, Law

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• Only idiots or snobs ever really thought less of 'genre books' of course. There are stupid books and there are smart books. There are well-written books and badly written books. There are fun books and boring books. All of these distinctions are vastly more important than the distinction between the literary and the non-literary.

  Stephen Marche

  Fun, Smart, Stupid

  "How Genre Fiction Became More Important Than Literary Fiction" by Stephen Marche, www.esquire.com. March 11, 2015.

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• the distinction between talent and genius is definite. Talent combines and uses; genius combines and creates.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Genius, Use, Talent

  Anna Brownell Jameson (1877). “A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected”, p.73

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• Theology is Anthropology... [T]he distinction which is made, or rather supposed to be made, between the theological and anthropological predicates resolves itself into an absurdity.

  Ludwig Feuerbach

  Made, Anthropology, Resolve

  Ludwig Feuerbach (1893). “The Essence of Christianity”

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• The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.

  Richard Whately

  Demand, Christianity, Characteristics

  Richard Whately (1856). “Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley”, p.14

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• All our distinctions ire accidental; beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise nor censure; yet it so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached responsibility.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Responsibility, Color, Personal Qualities

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• There are some despotic governments so filled with a feeling of insecurity that they regard the free life of culture as a threat to their existence. ... On the other extreme is the kind of popular government which is so distrustful of all forms of distinction that it sees even in the cultivated individual a menace to its existence. Such states are likely to maintain a pressure which discourages cultural endeavor, although the pressure may be exerted through social channels.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Government, Feelings, Insecurity

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• Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Country, Class, America

  W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.232, Random House

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• Now the myths represent the Gods themselves and the goodness of the Gods subject always to the distinction of the speakable and the unspeakable, the revealed and the unrevealed, that which is clear and that which is hidden: since, just as the Gods have made the goods of sense common to all, but those of intellect only to the wise, so the myths state the existence of Gods to all, but who and what they are only to those who can understand.

  Sallust

  Wise, Common, Goodness

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• Talent and worth are the only eternal grounds of distinction. To these the Almighty has affixed His everlasting patent of nobility. Knowledge and goodness,--these make degrees in heaven, and they must be the graduating scale of a true democracy.

  Catharine Sedgwick

  Heaven, Democracy, Patents

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• We must protect each other against the attacks of those self-appointed watchdogs of patriotism now abroad in the land who irresponsibly pin red labels on anyone whom they wish to destroy. ... [Academic professionals are the only person competant to differentiate between honest independents and the Communists.] This is our responsibility. It is not a pleasant task. But if it is left to outsiders, the distinction is not likely to be made and those independent critics of social institutions among us who are one of the glories of a true university could be silenced.

  Joel Henry Hildebrand

  Independent, Responsibility, Self

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• Good or evil-you cannot build your life apart from this distinction.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Evil

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• Life is my university, and I hope to graduate from it with some distinction.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Graduates, Life Is, University

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• ... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, "Be tolerant--even of evil." Logically the next step would be to say to our commonwealth's criminals, "I disagree that it's all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion." Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.

  Sarah-Patton Boyle

  Tombstone, Evil, Tolerance

  Sarah-Patton Boyle, Jennifer Lynn Ritterhouse (1962). “The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition”, p.193, University of Virginia Press

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• The Ragamuffin rabble are the unsung assembly of saved sinners who are little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerlessness before God, and who cast themselves on His mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth.  Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary.

  Brennan Manning

  Powerful, Sight, Nerd

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• Give up your relentless moralizing, the continual pinpricks which pierce the skin of your fellows. The distinction between good and evil is the sickness of the mind. Give up your morals, and the people will regain a love of their fellows.

  Laozi

  Love, Giving Up, People

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• The Church, in her wisdom, maintains the distinction between engaged and married couples -- they are not the same, today's culture and society have become rather indifferent to the delicate and serious nature of this passage.

  Pope Francis

  Nature, Couple, Church

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