Literal Quotes - Page 9

• God's truth is literal truth. The illumined mind has more operative cells. In reclaiming the mystical, we take back our whole selves. Formerly barren mental lands spring to new life through the planting of spiritual seeds.

  Marianne Williamson

  Spiritual, Spring, Self

  Marianne Williamson (1994). “Illuminata: A Return to Prayer”, Riverhead Trade (Paperbacks)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Language is power, in ways more literal than most people think. When we speak, we exercise the power of language to transform reality. Why don't more of us realize the connection between language and power?

  Julia Penelope

  Exercise, Thinking, Reality

  28 Copy quote

• I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Attitude, Artist, Odds

  13 Copy quote

• A book consists of two layers: on top, the readable layer ... and underneath, a layer that was inaccessible. You only sense its existence in a moment of distraction from the literal reading, the way you see childhood through a child. It would take forever to tell what you see, and it would be pointless.

  Marguerite Duras

  Children, Book, Reading

  55 Copy quote

• This is a city of absolute enchantment in the literal sense of the word. It loosens all the bonds binding the traveller to his own age and sets him free to live in a past that is vital and crude but never ugly. Herat is as old as history and as moving as a great epic poem - if Afghanistan had nothing else it would have been worth coming to experience this.

  Dervla Murphy

  Moving, Epic, Past

  Dervla Murphy (1987). “Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle”, p.39, The Overlook Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Where hunger is imposed by external circumstances, the act of starvation remains literal, a tragic biological event that does not serve metaphoric or symbolic purposes. It is only in a country where one is able to choose hunger that elective starvation may come to express cultural conflict or even social protest.

  Kim Chernin

  Country, May, Able

  Kim Chernin (1982). “The obsession: reflections on the tyranny of slenderness”, HarperCollins Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You've got to get as literal as you can get to convince people sometimes that you can do something.

  Gillian Jacobs

  People, Sometimes, Convince

  4 Copy quote

• People are incredibly literal sometimes in how they view you. You have dark hair and pale skin? You must be brooding. The second you dye your hair blond and get a spray tan, people treat you as if you're a bit stupider and happier.

  Anna Paquin

  Dark, Hair, Views

  4 Copy quote

• I've always had a more spatial mind, mathematical, than literal.

  Portia Doubleday

  Mind, Spatial, Mathematical

  7 Copy quote

• I had very literal parents and I wanted to survive with metaphor and art, and there was a real sense of shame around it.

  Amanda Palmer

  Art, Real, Parent

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them.

  John Shelby Spong

  Moon, Thinking, People

  "Bishop John Shelby Spong Ahead Of His Time With Church Reforms" by David Gibson, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 13, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The walking tour guides one through the city's various landmarks, reciting bits of information the listener might find enlightening. I learned, for example, that in the late 1500s my little neighborhood square was a popular spot for burning people alive. Now lined with a row of small shops, the tradition continues, though in a figurative rather than literal sense.

  David Sedaris

  Squares, Cities, People

  David Sedaris (2000). “Me talk pretty one day”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was particularly drawn to Berlin because of its literal, concrete division. Two halves making a whole, or two entities that were altered doubles of each other? Twins that had been separated and kept in neighbouring houses and raised according to different sets of rules as a social experiment? It was irresistible as a metaphor for division in the mind, for a split personality.

  Nicholas Royle

  Two, House, Personality

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People take things too literal in the Bible and it's totally wrong.

  Benjamin Clementine

  People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was also thinking about isolation on an evolutionary scale as well, like when you think of an island like Madagascar where things are free to evolve unfettered by outside powers. That starts to reach into the underlying narrative, which is more of a literal story that I used as a construct to build songs around.

  Colin Stetson

  Song, Thinking, Islands

  Source: pitchfork.com

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.271, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men aren't really complicated. They are very simple, literal creatures. They usually mean what they say. And we spend hours trying to analyze what they've said, when really it's obvious.

  E. L. James

  Mean, Simple, Men

  6 Copy quote

• Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Games, Dignity

  4 Copy quote

• Since events are not metaphors, the literal-minded have a certain advantage in dealing with them.

  Mason Cooley

  Events, Metaphor, Advantage

  4 Copy quote

• I have always endeavoured, as my double duty of believer and sovereign dictated, to follow the precepts of the sacred Book of Islam: precepts of balance, justice and moderation. Although my religious education was very literal, in that I learnt to understand the precepts of the Koran precisely according to the text, we have seen that on several occasions throughout my life, I have felt myself to be very particularly in the hands of the Almighty.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

  Religious, Book, Hands

  "The Shah's Story". Book by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, p. 166, 1980.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Though beauty is, with the most apt similitude, I had almost said with the most literal truth, called a flower that fades and dies almost in the very moment of its maturity; yet there is, methinks, a kind of beauty which lives even to old age; a beauty that is not in the features, but, if I may be allowed the expression, shines through them. As it is not merely corporeal it is not the object of mere sense, nor is it to be discovered but by persons of true taste and refined sentiment.

  Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

  Beauty, Flower, Maturity

  4 Copy quote

• I do not know why one should not hunt two hares even in the literal sense....

  Anton Chekhov

  Determination, Hunting, Two

  "Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends: With Biographical Sketch". Book by Anton Chekhov, 1920.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people - as may be noticed of most young children - does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Children, Self, Years

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 8), 1858.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, the role of our "allies," in my view, is a scandal. 53 other countries cooperated in the kidnapping, "extraordinary rendition," of suspected terrorists to black sites where they were administered enhanced interrogation techniques, which by the way is a direct, literal translation of "verschärfte Vernehmung" right out of the Gestapo manual.

  Ray McGovern

  Country, Views, Interrogation Techniques

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think part of what we do is there is a bit of dandy influence, always, or a little sprinkle of it. Not literal Savile Row dandy, but there's a bit of sartorial dandiness in everything that we do - every collection that we do.

  Paul Weller

  Thinking, Sprinkles, Littles

  Source: www.clashmusic.com

  12 Copy quote

  Show source