Formality Quotes - Page 2

If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words.

Henry Theodore Tuckerman

Art, Sculpture, Literature

Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1850). “The optimist”, p.77

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One of the biggest problems of mathematics is to explain to everyone else what it is all about. The technical trappings of the subject, its symbolism and formality, its baffling terminology, its apparent delight in lengthy calculations: these tend to obscure its real nature. A musician would be horrified if his art were to be summed up as "a lot of tadpoles drawn on a row of lines"; but that"s all that the untrained eye can see in a page of sheet music... In the same way, the symbolism of mathematics is merely its coded form, not its substance.

Ian Stewart

Art, Real, Eye

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In Russian administration, minuteness does not exclude disorder. Much trouble is taken to attain unimportant ends, and those employed believe they can never do enough to show their zeal. The result is...that having passed through one formality does not secure the stranger from another.

Marquis de Custine

Taken, Believe, Administration

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Marriage is like a formality for me.

David Copperfield

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When your mother asks, 'Do you want a piece of advice?' it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.

Erma Bombeck

Inspirational, Mothers Day, Mom

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House-training, I must tell you, is a formality that can elude young dachshunds for some time; this is particularly true in climates that affront their sensibilities with outrageous meteorological insults. Rain, for example, or a startling gust of wind.

Mary Doria Russell

Rain, Wind, House

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The etiquette of intimacy is very different from the etiquette of formality, but manners are not just something to show off to the outside world. If you offend the head waiter, you can always go to another restaurant. If you offend the person you live with, it's very cumbersome to switch to a different family.

Judith Martin

Family, Different, World

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I should not like to preach to a congregation who all believed as I believe. I would as lief preach to a basket of eggs in their smooth compactness and oval formality.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Believe, Eggs, Oval

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Ritual is a terribly important, binding cement in a society. If we abandon formality and rituals, we're actually weakening the relationships that exist between people that bind.

Alexander McCall Smith

People, Important, Abandon

Source: www.abc.net.au

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There is scarcely a town or school in Russia from which boys have not run away to the war. Hundreds of girls have gone off in boys' clothes and tried to pass themselves off as boys and enlist as volunteers, and several have got through, since the medical examination is only a negligible formality required in one place, forgotten in another.

Stephen Graham

Girl, Running, War

Stephen Graham (1915). “Russia in 1916”

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Why should Canada, wild and unsettled as it is, impress us as an older country than the States, unless because her institutions are old? All things appeared to contend there, as I have implied, with a certain rust of antiquity, such as forms on old armor and iron guns,--the rust of conventions and formalities. It is said that the metallic roofs of Montreal and Quebec keep sound and bright for forty years in some cases. But if the rust was not on the tinned roofs and spires, it was on the inhabitants and their institutions.

Henry David Thoreau

Country, Gun, Years

Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature – 6 Book Collection (Illustrated): Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada & Canoeing in the Wilderness - North American Highlands Series”, p.961, e-artnow

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... in general, the Anglo-Irish do not make good dancers; they are too spritely and conscious; they are incapable of one kind of trance or of being seemingly impersonal. And, for the formal, pure dance they lack the formality: about their stylishness (for they have stylishness) there is something impromptu, slightly disorderly.

Elizabeth Bowen

Dance, Kind, Conscious

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No man is in love when he marries. He may have loved before; I have even heard he has sometimes loved after: but at the time never. There is something in the formalities of the matrimonial preparations that drive away all the little cupidons.

Fanny Burney

Men, Preparation, May

'Camilla' (1796) bk. 6, ch. 10

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Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs [in the song 'The Vatican Rag'], I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.

Tom Lehrer

Religious, People, Catholic

"The Music Show" with Andrew Ford, www.abc.net.au. July 8, 2006.

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Period films to me are very often alienating to the audience. There's very often a formality. A staunchy quality to them that comes from the misenscene. It also comes from the performances of the actors, because they're acting Victorian which really means that they're just acting the way they've seen previous actors act Victorian.

Christopher Nolan

Mean, Acting, Quality

Source: www.movieweb.com

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I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is, and also the most demanding....Basketball comes close, but it's a team sport and lacks tennis's primal mano a mano intensity. Boxing might come close- at least at the lighter weight divisions- but the actual physical damage the fighters inflict on each other makes it too concretely brutal to be really beautiful- a level of abstraction and formality (i.e., play) is necessary for a sport to possess true metaphysical beauty (in my opinion).

David Foster Wallace

Basketball, Beautiful, Sports

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Mind how you pray. Make real business of it. Let it never be a dead formality...plead the promise in a truthful, business-like way...Ask for what you want, because the Lord has promised it. Believe that you have the blessing, and go forth to your work in full assurance of it. Go from your knees singing, because the promise is fulfilled: thus will your prayer be answered...the strength [not length] of your prayer...wins...God; and the strength of prayer lies in your faith in the promise which you pleaded before the Lord.

Charles Spurgeon

Prayer, Lying, Real

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Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that theres a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.

Suzanne Vega

Writing, Voice, Details

"Solo: Women Singer-songwriters in Their Own Words". Book by Marc Woodworth, 1998.

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A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized. Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that. That's why I write the way I do.

Suzanne Vega

Song, Smart, Writing

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The act of nutrition is not a purely physiological event... The family meal is a formality that cultivates in us... a capacity for sharing, generosity, thoughtfulness, a talent for civilized conversation.

Francine du Plessix Gray

Generosity, Events, Meals

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I cling to my anger with every ounce of humanity left in my ruined body, but it's no use. It slips away, like a wave from shore. I am pondering this sad fact when I realize the blackness of sleep is circling my head. It's been there awhile, biding it's time and growing closer with each revolution. I give up on rage, which at this point has become a formality, and make a mental note to get angry again in the morning. Then I let myself drift, because there's really no fighting it.

Sara Gruen

Morning, Giving Up, Sleep

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Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation.

Lynne Truss

Drawing, Roots, Attention

"Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, www.today.com. November 6, 2003.

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I'd like to shower and change clothes," she said. "Would you mind waiting for me a half hour?" The question seemed to amuse him. "Not at all," he said with exaggerated formality. "Please take all the time you need." Michael watched her walk away. Did he mind waiting a half hour for her? Not at all. He'd been waiting years for her.

Judith McNaught

Years, Clothes, Waiting

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...there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.

Robin McKinley

Missing Him, Too Much, Lasts

Robin Mckinley (2010). “Pegasus”, p.235, Penguin

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It was not certain what significance the ceremony held... but the formality was no less sacred for it being unintelligible

Mervyn Peake

Sacred, Certain, Ceremony

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.236, The Overlook Press

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