Peculiar Quotes - Page 25

• The first time I ever felt the necessity or inevitableness of verse, was in the desire to reproduce the peculiar quality of feeling which is induced by the flat spaces and wide horizons of the virgin prairie of western Canada.

  T. E. Hulme

  Space, Feelings, Desire

  T. E. Hulme, Patrick McGuinness (2003). “Selected Writings”, p.64, Psychology Press

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• Carlyle must undoubtedly plead guilty to the charge of mannerism. He not only has his vein, but his peculiar manner of working it.He has a style which can be imitated, and sometimes is an imitator of himself.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Style, Veins, Sometimes

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.276, Simon and Schuster

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• The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages.

  Washington Irving

  Money, Land, Dollars

  1855 Wolfert's Roost,'The Creole Village'.

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• The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.

  Alexander Smith

  Artist, Greatness, Individuality

  Alexander Smith (1914). “Dreamthorp”

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• It is not the nature of avarice to be satisfied with anything but money. Every passion that acts upon mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and fluctuating; they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a fixed, uniform passion.

  Thomas Paine

  Passion, Uniforms, Operations

  Thomas Paine (2015). “Common Sense, The Crisis, & Other Writings from the American Revolution: (Library of America Paperback Classic)”, p.333, Library of America

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• That indescribable expression peculiar to people who hope they have not been asleep, but know they have.

  Helen Hunt Jackson

  Expression, People, Indescribable

  Helen Hunt Jackson (2010). “Ramona”, p.160, Modern Library

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• Who's counting? It was, of course, the minority who were counting. It always is. Most of the women I know today would dearly like to use their fingers and toes for some activity more enthralling than counting. They have been counting for so long. But the peculiar problem of the new math is that every time we stop adding, somebody starts subtracting. At the very least (the advanced students will understand this) the rate of increase slows. ... The minority members of any group or profession have two answers: They can keep score or they can lose.

  Ellen Goodman

  Math, Two, Long

  Ellen Goodman (1990). “Making Sense”, Penguin Group USA

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• Up to the days of Indiana's early statehood, probably as late as 1825, there stood, in what is now the beautiful little city of Vincennes on the Wabash, the decaying remnant of an old and curiously gnarled cherry tree, known as the Roussillion tree, le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillion, as the French inhabitants called it, which as long as it lived bore fruit remarkable for richness of flavor and peculiar dark ruby depth of color.

  Maurice Thompson

  Beautiful, Book, Dark

  Maurice Thompson (2008). “Alice of Old Vincennes (Volume 1 of 2 ) (EasyRead Super Large 24pt Edition)”, p.1, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• ... I suppose that the party or sect which is to do any work in the world must breathe its own peculiar atmosphere, speak its own little patois, and see but one side of the question on which it fights.

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  Party, Fighting, Atmosphere

  Rebecca Harding Davis (1904). “Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography”, p.99, Vanderbilt University Press

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• Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.

  Anne Tyler

  Jobs, Knowledge, Information

  Anne Tyler (1991). “Anne Tyler: a new collection : three complete novels”, Outlet

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• All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.

  John Ruskin

  Beautiful, Way, Habit

  John Ruskin, Louisa Caroline Tuthill (1860). “The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals and Religion: Selected from the Works of John Ruskin...”, p.254

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• Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.

  Samuel Smiles

  Religious, Soul, May

  Samuel Smiles (1881). “Duty, with Illustrations of Courage, Patience, and Endurance”

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• Paris in the early morning has a cheerful, bustling aspect, a promise of delicious things to come, a positive smell of coffee and croissants, quite peculiar to itself. The people welcome a new day as if they were certain of liking it, the shopkeepers pull up their blinds serene in the expectation of good trade, the workers go happily to their work, the people who have sat up all night in night-clubs go happily to their rest, the orchestra of motor-car horns, of clanking trams, of whistling policemen tunes up for the daily symphony, and everywhere is joy.

  Nancy Mitford

  Morning, Coffee, Night

  Nancy Mitford (1963). “The Nancy Mitford Omnibus”

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• I was seduced by secrets, which are to true love as artificial sweetener is to sugar, calorie-free but in the long run carcinogenic, not the real thing, and only a peculiar aftertaste in the mouth to tell you so, to warn you.

  Fay Weldon

  Running, Real, Long

  Fay Weldon (1993). “Life Force”

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• The peculiar need to write is increased, it seems, rather than allayed with practice.

  Fay Weldon

  Writing, Practice, Needs

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• I sometimes wonder ... if the land is not destroying the people who inhabit it as the people who inhabit it are destroying the land. A magic continent, a Peculiar Treasure, stuffed with riches, millions in it are starving in the midst of plenty.

  Edna Ferber

  Land, People, Magic

  Edna Ferber (1939). “A Peculiar Treasure”

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• You can approach 'The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death' in a variety or combination of ways: as a startlingly eccentric hobby; as a series of unresolved murder mysteries; as the manifestation of one woman's peculiar psychic life; as a lesson in forensics; as a metaphor for the fate of women; as a photographic study.

  Robert Gottlieb

  Fate, Murder Mysteries, Psychics

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• A Finnan haddock has a relish of a peculiar and delicate flavour, inimitable on any other coast than that of Aberdeenshire. Some of our Edinburgh philosophers tried to produce their equal in vain. I was one of a party at dinner where the philosophical haddocks were placed in competition with the genuine Finnan fish. These were served round without distinguishing whence they came; but only one gentleman out of twelve present espoused the cause of philosophy.

  Walter Scott

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Party

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• So far as I ever observed God's dealings with my soul, the flights of preachers sometimes entertained me, but it was Scripture expressions which did penetrate my heart, and in a way peculiar to themselves.

  John Brown

  Bible, Heart, Expression

  John Brown (1797). “The posthumous works of the late Rev. Mr. John Brown, minister of the Gospel at Haddington: with short memoirs, and a summary of what he uttered in his last illness”, p.20

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• I'm less confident now than I've ever been. In this peculiar craft, confidence is something you spend a lifetime losing. I used to be frightened only one night a week but now I'm frightened of every performance. I mean really frightened.

  Glenda Jackson

  Mean, Night, Actors

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• The advertising agency, as it stands today, is a peculiar manifestation of American business life of the twentieth century - glossy, brash, and insecure.

  Ilka Chase

  Insecure, Agency, Today

  Ilka Chase (1942). “Past Imperfect”

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• For some strange reason, we believe that anyone who lived before we were born was in some peculiar way a different kind of human being from any we have come in contact with in our own lifetime. This concept must be changed; we must realize in our bones that almost everything in time and history has changed except the human being.

  Uta Hagen

  Believe, Way, Different

  Uta Hagen (2009). “Respect for Acting”, p.104, John Wiley & Sons

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• I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and clichés.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Black, Proud

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• It has been noticed that people who are not parents often have a peculiar fondness for children. This is sometimes attributed to a very beautiful nostalgia for a gift denied to them - dream-children, flowers that have only bloomed in imagination - but we think it is rather because they have not the faintest idea how dreadful children are.

  Angela Thirkell

  Beautiful, Dream, Children

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• It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered, before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide, and, apparently, an impervious boundary of forests, severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict.

  James F. Cooper

  War, Struggle, Book

  "The Last of the Mohicans". Book by James F. Cooper, 1826.

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