Peculiar Quotes - Page 26

• 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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• Oh, that in religion, as in everything else, man would judge his brother man by his own heart; and as dear, as precious as his peculiar creed may be to him, believe so it is with the faith of his brother!

  Grace Aguilar

  Brother, Believe, Heart

  Grace Aguilar (1902). “The Vale of Cedars: & Other Tales”

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• I think that most of my books are part of some process of self-education, often about the places I go to. Most of all, they are about the peculiar tension between institutional loyalty and loyalty to oneself; the mystery of patriotism, for a Brit of my age and generation, where it runs, how it should be defined, what it's worth and what a corrupting force it can be when misapplied. All that stuff is just in me and it comes out in the characters. I don't mean to preach, but I know I do, and I'm a very flawed person. It's quite ridiculous.

  John le Carre

  Loyalty, Running, Book

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• Poor teaching leads to the inevitable idea that the subject (mathematics) is only adapted to peculiar minds, when it is the one universal science and the one whose four ground-rules are taught us almost in infancy and reappear in the motions to the universe.

  Henry John Stephen Smith

  Teaching, School, Taught Us

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• A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Animal, Space, Brain

  "Economics and Ecology". Book by Kenneth Boulding, p. 225, 1966.

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• Without modesty, woman is devoid of beauty and culture. Humility, purity of thought and manners, meekness, surrender to high ideals, sensitivity, sweetness of temper - the peculiar blend of all these qualities is modesty. It is the most invaluable of all jewels for women.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Humility, Jewels, Quality

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• The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Like Love, Superstitions, Evidence

  "London Perceived" by V. S. Pritchett, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Ch. 1, (p. 14), 1962.

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• Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• Some people have a peculiar faculty for denying facts.

  George D. Prentice

  People, Facts, Faculty

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• Every town, like every man, has its own countenance; they have a common likeness and yet are different; one keeps in his mind all their peculiar touches.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Men, Mind, Different

  Hans Christian Andersen (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Hans Christian Andersen (Illustrated)”, p.3630, Delphi Classics

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