Peculiar Quotes - Page 14

• Human paleontology shares a peculiar trait with such disparate subjects as theology and extraterrestrial biology: it contains more practitioners than objects for study.

  David Pilbeam

  Paleontology, Study, Biology

  4 Copy quote

• Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication, and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results; their broad universality; their practical infallibility.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Stress, Math, Perfect

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1931). “Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gypsy was the name my brother gave a pet turtle he had. I always thought it was so peculiar.

  Joel Hodgson

  Brother, Turtles, Names

  7 Copy quote

• While this may seem peculiar, the combo of work and distraction leads to levels of innovation not often generated by structured, focused thinking alone.

  Robert Genn

  Thinking, Innovation, Levels

  6 Copy quote

• We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

  Alain de Botton

  Letting Go, Struggle, Secular Society

  "Katie Antoniou interviews Alain de Botton on his new book 'Religion for Atheists'". Interview with Katie Antoniou, www.run-riot.com. January 24, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Painting seems like some kind of peculiar miracle that I need to have again and again.

  Philip Guston

  Miracle, Needs, Painting

  Kim Sichel, Philip Guston (1994). “Philip Guston, 1975-1980: Private and Public Battles”, University of Washington Press

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• You don't have to be peculiar to find God.

  Evelyn Underhill

  7 Copy quote

• None of that is necessary. It's not as if we're in a situation where it is us or them.There's something peculiar about talking about the moral status of animals, when we are killing and eating them for no reason whatsoever.

  Gary L. Francione

  Animal, Talking, Vegan

  6 Copy quote

• Eternal life is not a peculiar feeling inside! It is not your ultimate destination, to which you will go when you are dead. If you are born again, eternal life is that quality of life that you possess right now.

  W. Ian Thomas

  Feelings, Quality, Life Is

  W. Ian Thomas (1988). “The Saving Life of Christ and the Mystery of Godliness”, p.140, Harper Collins

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• 'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

  Carl Sagan

  Truth, Book, Opportunity

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.550, Ballantine Books

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I conceive of the film as a modern art form particularly interesting to the sense of sight. Painting has its own peculiar problems and specific sensations, and so has the film. But there are also problems in which the dividing line is obliterated, or where the two infringe upon each other. More especially, the cinema can fulfill certain promises made by the ancient arts, in the realization of which painting and film become close neighbors and work together.

  Hans Richter

  Art, Sight, Two

  10 Copy quote

• Other relaxations are peculiar to certain times, places and stages of life, but the study of letters is the nourishment of our youth, and the joy of our old age. They throw an additional splendor on prosperity, and are the resource and consolation of adversity; they delight at home, and are no embarrassment abroad; in short, they are company to us at night, our fellow travelers on a journey, and attendants in our rural recesses.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Life, Home, Adversity

  13 Copy quote

• The peculiar interest of magic squares and all lusus numerorum in general lies in the fact that they possess the charm of mystery. They appear to betray some hidden intelligence which by a preconceived plan produces the impression of intentional design, a phenomenon which finds its close analogue in nature.

  Paul Carus

  Lying, Squares, Design

  8 Copy quote

• Although as a rule the absurd culminates, and it seems impossible for the voice of the individual ever to penetrate through the chorus of foolers and fooled, still there is left to the genuine works of all times a quite peculiar, silent, slow, and powerful influence; and as if by a miracle, we see them rise at last out of the turmoil like a balloon that floats up out of the thick atmosphere of this globe into purer regions. Having once arrived there, it remains at rest, and no one can any longer draw it down again.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Powerful, Voice, Miracle

  5 Copy quote

• Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, Shot forth peculiar graces.

  John Milton

  Beauty, Grace, Waking

  John Milton (1853). “The Poetical Works of John Milton..Illustrated with Engravings from Drawings by J.M.W. Turner”, p.116

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the peculiar beauty of this method, gentlemen, and one which endears it to the really scientific mind, that under no circumstance can it be of the smallest possible utility.

  Henry John Stephen Smith

  Beauty, Math, Science

  6 Copy quote

• Chastity is the lily of virtues, and makes men almost equal to Angels. Everything is beautiful in accordance with its purity. Now the purity of man is chastity, which is called honesty, and the observance of it, honor and also integrity; and its contrary is called corruption; in short, it has this peculiar excellence above the other virtues, that it preserves both soul and body fair and unspotted.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Beautiful, Honesty, Integrity

  15 Copy quote

• The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, - every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Wisdom, Nature, Travel

  15 Copy quote

• It is not merely the brevity by which the haiku isolates a particular group of phenomena from all the rest; nor its suggestiveness, through which it reveals a whole world of experience. It is not only in its remarkable use of the season word, by which it gives us a feeling of a quarter of the year; nor its faint all-pervading humour. Its peculiar quality is its self-effacing, self-annihilative nature, by which it enables us, more than any other form of literature, to grasp the thing-in-itself.

  Reginald Horace Blyth

  Art, Nature, Self

  Reginald Horace Blyth (1982). “Haiku: Haiku”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a close examination of the evidences of Christianity may be expected of one class of men more than another, it would seem incumbent upon lawyers who make the law of evidence one of our peculiar studies. Our profession leads us to explore the mazes of falsehood, to detect its artifices, to pierce its thickest veils, to follow and expose its sophistries, to compare the statements of different witnesses with severity, to discover truth and separate it from error.

  Simon Greenleaf

  Men, Errors, Law

  22 Copy quote

• It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.

  Jonathan Swift

  Law, Special, Care

  "Gulliver's Travels". Book by Jonathan Swift. Part IV: "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms". Chapter 5, 1726.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to his work.

  Lytton Strachey

  Giving, Age, Majority

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.72, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words like strengths or squinched, many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps, which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled, icy, black language of blackberry - eating in late September.

  Galway Kinnell

  Art, Fall, Knowing

  Galway Kinnell (2001). “A New Selected Poems”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy

  Samuel Alexander

  Stars, Philosophy, Tree

  8 Copy quote

• By a peculiar prerogative, not only each individual is making daily advances in the sciences, and may make advances in morality (which is the science, by way of eminence, of living well and being happy), but all mankind together is making a continual progress in proportion as the universe grows older. So that the whole human race, during the course of so many ages, may be considered as one man who never ceases to live and learn.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Race, Progress

  7 Copy quote