Essays Quotes - Page 4

• The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make to them; a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will - Montaigne, Essays

  Barbara Taylor Bradford

  Life, Lying, Men

  FaceBook post by Barbara Taylor Bradford from Sep 20, 2013

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• I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

  George Eliot

  Writing, Poet, Pardon

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch”, p.108, Booklassic

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• Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, “Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless — discuss.

  J. K. Rowling

  Writing, Eagles, Burning

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, p.9, Pottermore

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• Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays

  E. B. White

  Writing, Self, Stamina

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• I've determined the ideal job for me is one where I can write clever essays about my life and my employer will give me enough money not only to live a comfortable existence, but also to buy many, many new pairs of shoes.

  Jen Lancaster

  Jobs, Clever, Writing

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• The last time I was asked that, I said "A Year Without Spoons." Normally you get asked the same questions over and over, so it feels boring to say the same thing. But then I was like, I don't even know another essay I like. They're all good.

  Chelsea Martin

  Boring, Last Time

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• We may... have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth... The developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from primitive beginnings-a process whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. But nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution toward anything.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Nature, Science, Understanding

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• ...We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it's just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be.

  Maya Angelou

  Motivational, Determination, Believe

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• We should scarcely be excused in concluding this essay without calling the reader's attention to the beneficent and wise laws established by the author of nature to provide for the various exigencies of the sublunary creation, and to make the several parts dependent upon each other, so as to form one well-regulated system or whole.

  John Dalton

  Wise, Rain, Law

  John Dalton (1834). “Meteorological Observations and Essays: Mit Tabellen”, p.137

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• The part of my education that has had the deepest influence wasn't any particular essay or even a specific class, it was how I was able to apply everything I learned in the library to certain situations in my life. . . The library takes me away from my everyday life and allows me to see other places and learn to understand other people unlike myself.

  Gloria Estefan

  Class, People, Everyday

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• Some years ago John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in an essay on his efforts at writing a history of economics: 'As one approaches the present, one is filled with a sense of hopelessness; in a year and possibly even a month, there is now more economic comment in the supposedly serious literature than survives from the whole of the thousand years commonly denominated as the Middle Ages ... anyone who claims to be familiar with it all is a confessing liar.' I believe that all physicists would subscribe to the same sentiments regarding their own professional literature. I do at any rate.

  Abraham Pais

  Liars, Believe, Writing

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• When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.

  David Foster Wallace

  Writing, Trying, Juggernaut

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• Drama school is fundamentally practical. I didn't write any essays, so I came out with a BA honors degree in acting.

  Emilia Clarke

  Drama, Writing, School

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• Eugene Wigner wrote a famous essay on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences. He meant physics, of course. There is only one thing which is more unreasonable than the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics, and this is the unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology.

  Israel Gelfand

  Effectiveness, Physics, Biology

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• Michael Jackson is an extremely productive ethnographer, a serious reader of phenomenological and existential philosophy, and a remarkable writer at a level that one rarely sees in anthropology. Lifeworlds, unsurprisingly, is no exception. The several essays included here fit into an impressive whole that set out a compelling case for a type of ethnography of which Jackson is one of the masters. The writing is strong and the critical reflections impressive. This book defines an approach to anthropology that is resonant enough to challenge the leading models of our time.

  Arthur Kleinman

  Strong, Philosophy, Book

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• The absence of romance from my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.

  Thucydides

  Winning, Past, Romance

  History of the Peloponnesian War bk. 1, ch. 1

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• I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time

  Thucydides

  Winning, Moments, Applause

  History of the Peloponnesian War bk. 1, ch. 1

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• In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Two, Choices, Humanity

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• Media reporters have pointed out that the paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 22nd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Mistake, Media, Editors

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• Wifehood and motherhood... are a bigger handicap than the average male genius would... essay to carry to success.

  Marie Pitt

  Women, Motherhood, Average

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• Writing a long essay is probably the most complex constructive act that most human beings areever expected to perform.

  Carl Bereiter

  Education, Reading, Writing

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• Gunn would be an important figure-rewarding, delightful, accomplished, enduring-in the history of English-language poetry even were his life not as fascinating as it now seems; he would be an important figure in the history of gay writing and in the history of transatlantic literary relations even were his poetry not so good as it is. With his life as it was and his works as they are, he's an obvious candidate for a volume of retrospective and critical essays, and this one is first-rate.

  Stephen Burt

  Writing, Gay, Important

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• All the best essays are epistemological journeys from ignorance or curiosity to knowledge.

  Geoff Dyer

  Ignorance, Journey, Curiosity

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• An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.

  Amy Hempel

  Ideas, Stories, Might

  "A Long Time Coming". Interview with Rob Hart, chuckpalahniuk.net. August 27, 2008.

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• Boulez, who is everything I don't want art to be... Boulez, who once said in an essay that he is not interested in how a piece sounds, only how it is made.

  Morton Feldman

  Art, Sound, Pieces

  Morton Feldman (2006). “Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964-1987”

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