Originals Quotes - Page 29

• When you talk yourself, you think how witty, how original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only - What a crib from Rochefoucauld!

  Ouida

  Witty, Thinking, Doe

  Ouida (1870). “Puck: His Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships, and Philosophies”, p.131

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• The duration of a couple's passion is in proportion to the woman's original resistance or to the obstacles that social hazards have placed in the way of her happiness.

  Honore de Balzac

  Couple, Passion, Hazards

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• Hemingway, damn his soul, makes everything he writes terrifically exciting (and incidentally makes all us second-raters seem positively adolescent) by the seemingly simple expedient of the iceberg principle - three-fourths of the substance under the surface. He comes closer that way to retaining the magic of the original, unexpressed idea or emotion, which is always more stirring than any words. But just try and do it!

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

  Writing, Simple, Ideas

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• The first-rate mind is always curious, compassionate, original, and pessimistic.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Mind, Firsts, Pessimistic

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.85, BookBaby

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• Never refer to your wedding night as the original amateur hour.

  Phyllis Diller

  Night, Hours, Our Wedding

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• In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience.

  June Jordan

  Thinking, America, Issues

  June Jordan (1986). “On call: political essays”

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• The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.

  William Hazlitt

  Critics, Composition

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1498, Delphi Classics

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• To mis-quote is the very foundation of original style. The success of most writers is almost entirely due to continuous and courageous abuse of familiar misquotation.

  Natalie Clifford Barney

  Abuse, Style, Foundation

  Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.8, New Victoria Publishers

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• Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,--I mean good-nature,--are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.

  John Dryden

  Good Life, Mean, Use

  John Dryden (1868). “The Poetical Works of John Dryden: With Life and Critical Dissertation”, p.185

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• Predigested food' should be inscribed over every hall of learning as a warning to all who do not wish to lose their own personalities and their original sense of judgment.

  Emma Goldman

  Education, Personality, Wish

  Emma Goldman (1968). “Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature”

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• Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to us as they ought to be.

  Edmund Burke

  Teaching, Men, Ideas

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.2071, Delphi Classics

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• The practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiry—what am I?—is needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Nature, Practice, Doubt

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.14, Shambhala Publications

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• Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.

  Margaret Fuller

  Growth, Might, Soil

  Margaret Fuller, Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1874). “Woman in the 19th century, and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition, and duties of woman”, p.47

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• I wonder how many parents realize that by the so-called education they are giving their children, they are only driving them into the commonplace, and depriving them of any chance of doing anything beautiful or original.

  Isadora Duncan

  Beautiful, Children, Giving

  Isadora Duncan (1927). “My life”

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• Nature, who permits no two leaves to be exactly alike, has given a still greater diversity to human minds. Imitation, then, is a double murder; for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence.

  Madame de Stael

  Two, Diversity, Mind

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• His [Marx's] most explosive and indeed most original contribution to the cause of revolution was that he interpreted the compelling needs of mass poverty in political terms as an uprising, not for the sake of bread or wealth, but for the sake of freedom as well.

  Hannah Arendt

  Uprising, Political, Needs

  Hannah Arendt (2000). “The Portable Hannah Arendt”, Penguin Group USA

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• As to sex, the original pleasure, I cannot recommend too highly the advantages of androgyny.

  Jan Morris

  Sex, Pleasure, Gender

  Jan Morris (1989). “Pleasures of a tangled life”, Vintage

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• This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase In God We Trust onto the currency, in direct violation of the First Amendment.

  Gore Vidal

  Giving Up, Sky, Religion

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• The only way a work of art can become great is for one to acknowledge that it doesn't belong to anybody. The greatness is in constantly giving back, coming to an acknowledgment of the source. Look back to the source of any individual, any process, any set of materials. If the individual personality can relinquish its insistence on concepts like this is mine, I did it, this is original, nobody else has done it, it goes straight for greatness or the essential spirit.

  Paul Caponigro

  Art, Greatness, Giving

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• I don't want to restrict the life of a play to a particular production. The original actors might leave after the first six months, and I want the play to last 30 or 40 years. You write for the character, not the actor on the stage.

  Neil Simon

  Character, Writing, Years

  Interview with Charles Flowers, bookpage.com. October 1999.

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• I wonder if Bettie Page original gay cult had something to do with the ironies inherent in her image, as well as her innate fabulousness as an image.

  Mary Harron

  Gay, Pages, Irony

  Source: susiebright.blogs.com

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• Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being.

  Ramana Maharshi

  Giving, Causes, Surrender

  Sri Ramana Maharshi (1991). “Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi”, p.102, Penguin UK

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• When mental sickness increases until it reaches the danger point, do not exhaust yourself by efforts to trace back to original causes. Better accept them as inevitable and save your strength to fight against the effects.

  George Sand

  Fighting, Effort, Causes

  George Sand (1977). “The Intimate Journal of George Sand”, Chicago Review Press

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• I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Believe, Punishment

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• [To Oleg Cassini:] Just make sure no one has exactly the same dress I do ... I want all of mine to be original & no fat little woman hopping around in the same dress.

  Jackie Kennedy

  Dresses, Want, Littles

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