Peculiar Quotes - Page 11

• A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nation's love of detail and organization.

  Kingsley Amis

  Wine, Organization, Details

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• We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

  Herman Melville

  Israel, People, Democracy

  Herman Melville (1850). “White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war”, p.151

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• And as for other men, who worked in tank-rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,-sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out into the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard! This contributed to the passing of the Pure Food Act of 1906.

  Upton Sinclair

  Science, Men, Law

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• There is a peculiar pathos in the extinction of a nation.

  Homer Hulbert

  Extinction, Pathos, Nations

  Homer Bezaleel Hulbert (1906). “The Passing of Korea”

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• Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen, people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

  Thomas Jefferson

  People, Earth, Virtue

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.182, Penguin

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• If they are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights.

  James Madison

  Independent, Rights, Justice

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• If it were possible to transfer the methods of physical or of biological science directly to the study of man, the transfer would long ago have been made ... We have failed not for lack of hypotheses which equate man with the rest of the universe, but for lack of a hypothesis (short of animism) which provides for the peculiar divergence of man ... Let me now state my belief that the peculiar factor in man which forbids our explaining his actions upon the ordinary plane of biology is a highly specialized and unstable biological complex, and that this factor is none other than language.

  Leonard Bloomfield

  Men, Long Ago, Ordinary

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• There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

  George Eliot

  Love, Names, Weakness

  George Eliot (1871). “Felix Holt, the Radical”, p.91

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• [T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Law, Giving, Doctrine

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Quentin P. Taylor, John Jay (1998). “The essential Federalist: a new reading of the Federalist papers”, Madison House Pub

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• The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Law, Two, People

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Quentin P. Taylor, John Jay (1998). “The Essential Federalist: A New Reading of the Federalist Papers”, p.145, Rowman & Littlefield

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• There is a fantasy in Redmond that Microsoft products are innovative, but this is based entirely on a peculiar confusion of the words "innovative" and "successful." Microsoft products are successful - they make a lot of money - but that doesn't make them innovative, or even particularly good.

  Robert X. Cringely

  Successful, Confusion, Microsoft

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• In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

  James Madison

  Religious, Communication, Men

  "Advice to My Country".

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• Anyone involved with songwriting will testify to the fact that each song, no matter how pure or from the heart, has its own story, its own peculiar way of getting written.

  C. Sigman

  Song, Writing, Heart

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• In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm.

  Isaac Rosenfeld

  Family, Children, Giving

  Isaac Rosenfeld (1962). “An age of enormity: life and writing in the forties and fifties”

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• Mo Yan is a writer who, defiantly in the face of those who wish his work were less cartoonish and more straightforward in its political meanings, continues to sing his own peculiar and alluring song.

  Dwight Garner

  Song, Political, Wish

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• Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.

  John Dryden

  Order, Grace, Dignity

  John Dryden (1990). “The Works of John Dryden, Volume XX: Prose 1691-1698 De Arte Graphica and Shorter Works”, p.132, Univ of California Press

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• The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.

  Chinua Achebe

  Different, Use, World

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• A peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward, eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.

  Manny Farber

  Art, Moss, Path

  Manny Farber (2009). “Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies”, p.135, Da Capo Press

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• A form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies its peculiar charm. Intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys - if not the greatest one - of human existence. It is not everyone who can write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can, everyone must be intellectually productive, and so can share in this select delight. I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity the man who has remained ignorant of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.

  Siegbert Tarrasch

  Lying, Writing, Men

  Siegbert Tarrasch (2012). “The Game of Chess”, p.11, Courier Corporation

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• Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies its peculiar charm. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.

  Siegbert Tarrasch

  Lying, Men, Like Love

  The Game of Chess ch. 9 (1931)

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• I had toward the poetic art a peculiar relation which was only practical after I had cherished in my mind for a long time a subject which possessed me, a model which inspired me, a predecessor who attracted me, until at length, after I had molded it

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Long, Mind

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• If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to perform that service are imperious.

  Nathan Hale

  Country, Demand, Claims

  "Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America's First Spy". Book by M. William Phelps, 2015.

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• Discipline brings us effort, sacrifice and suffering. Later it brings us something of an inestimable value: something of which those who live only for pleasure, profit or amusement will always be deprived. This peculiar indefinable joy which one must have felt oneself to understand is the sign with which life marks its moment of triumph.

  Alexis Carrel

  Sacrifice, Discipline, Joy

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• When thus the heart is in a vein Of tender thought, the simplest strain Can touch it with peculiar power.

  Charles Lamb

  Heart, Power, Veins

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• Of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

  Remy de Gourmont

  Drinking, Aberration, Chastity

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