Peculiar Quotes - Page 32

• The truth is that no horizon is especially interesting by itself, by virtue of its peculiar content, and that any horizon, wide or narrow, brilliant or dull, varied or monotonous, may possess an interest of its own which merely requires a vital adjustment to be discovered.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Interesting, Horizon, Dull

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• I am about to discuss the disease called 'sacred'. It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred that other diseases, but has a natural cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men's inexperience, and to their wonder at its peculiar character.

  Hippocrates

  Character, Men, Inexperience

  Hippocrates (1967). “Hippocrates”

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• The peculiarity of sculpture is that it creates a three-dimensional object in space. Painting may strive to give on a two-dimensional plane, the illusion of space, but it is space itself as a perceived quantity that becomes the peculiar concern of the sculptor. We may say that for the painter space is a luxury; for the sculptor it is a necessity.

  Herbert Read

  Two, Luxury, Space

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• Happy Ending I did with Paul Winfield. There was a play- within- the- play and I was his mother - which is a peculiar bit of casting, to say the least.

  Brett Somers

  Mother, Play, Casting

  "Somers in the City". Interview with Michael Portantiere, www.theatermania.com. July 3, 2003.

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• The deserving are not always blest. That peculiar attribute known as personality is as potent a factor as genius.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Personality, Genius, Attributes

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• The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Men, Special, Wealth

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena”, p.69, Cornell University Press

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• I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way I could.

  John James Audubon

  Song, Bird, Listening

  John James Audubon (1899). “Audubon and His Journals”

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• I will make a prophecy that may now sound peculiar. In fifty years Lincoln's name will be inscribed close to Washington's on this Republic's roll of honor.

  Carl Schurz

  Names, Years, Honor

  Carl Schurz, Frederic Bancroft (1913). “Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz”, Putnam Juvenile

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• To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am - a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions - can be so happy as he can be in the United States.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Men, Vanity

  "On Being An American". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1922.

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• Logic is the subject that has helped me most in picking stocks, if only because it taught me to identify the peculiar illogic of Wall Street. Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out just by sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A lot of investors sit around and debate whether a stock is going up, as if the financial muse will give them the answer, instead of checking the company.

  Peter Lynch

  Horse, Wall, Thinking

  Peter Lynch (2012). “One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In”, p.50, Simon and Schuster

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• If Christ be a fraud, he was among the most peculiar yet brilliant of frauds in saying that only he was the way, the truth, and the life. This is the importance of grace - some people think that simply being nice and not harming others is morality; others think that following rules and tithing are morality. But without Christ, all moral beliefs ultimately boil down to the one sin which perpetually rails against the concept of grace: man's lawful, religious, and futile attempt at establishing his own righteousness.

  Criss Jami

  Religious, Nice, Men

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.15, Criss Jami

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• This writer, who is horribly perspicacious and vigorous, demonstrates the certainty of a great European war, and regards it with the peculiar satisfaction excited by such things in a certain order of mind. His phrases about "dire calamity" and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the "inevitable." Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.

  George Gissing

  War, Writing, Mean

  "The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft". Book by George Gissing. Summer, § VII, p. 89, 1903.

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• A peculiar work in any art must not be too hastily judged. New styles have to create new tastes.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Art, Style, Taste

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.22

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• It's not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice - with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.

  Bernard of Clairvaux

  Choices, Grace, Done

  "On Grace & Free Choice". Book by Bernard of Clairvaux, 1988.

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• Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Ice, Land, Water

  Pierre Trudeau during House of Commons Debate, October 24, 1969.

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• Because of our peculiar electoral law, the American government is divided between two parties. The American people are not.

  Michael Lind

  Party, Government, Law

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• Bacteria and parasites cannot cause disease processes unless they find their own peculiar morbid soil in which to grow and multiply.

  Henry Lindlahr

  Disease, Bacteria, Soil

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• Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Philosophical, Imagination, Age

  "The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, 1795 - 1822.

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• We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor to rescue human beings from their legends in science if only so that we may understand the process of scientific thought aright.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Simple, May, Legends

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.348, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The translator ... Peculiar outcast, ghost in the world of literature, recreating in another form something already created, creating and not creating, writing words that are his own and not his own, writing a work not original to him, composing with utmost pains and without recognition of his pains or the fact that the composition really is his own.

  Lydia Davis

  Pain, Writing, Creating

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• Faith from, its essential nature implies the fallen state of man, while it recognizes the principles of the covenant of grace. It is itself the condition of that covenant. It is a grace which is alike distinguished from the love of angels and the faith of devils. It is peculiar to the returning sinner. None but a lost sinner needs it; none but a humbled sinner relishes it.

  Gardiner Spring

  Angel, Men, Grace

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". P. 233. Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, 1895.

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• Light enhances but its shadow deletes, thus giving the picture its depth, its third dimension and its subtractive properties... I believe that commitment and technical skill can be achieved by means of one's own will and study , while fantasy and passion are more valuable because they are innate and inescapably peculiar assets.

  Augusto De Luca

  Believe, Passion, Mean

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• To be a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact, patience, and thoroughness of a scholar but the stamina of a horse.

  Nancy Milford

  Horse, Endeavor, Scholar

  Nancy Milford (2001). “Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay”, p.11, Random House

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• Every family had its own peculiar cult, to which no stranger was ever admitted, and which alone could appease and satisfy the gods of that family. The cult was handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, and could not be lost without condemning the whole series of ancestors to eternal misery.

  Helen Bosanquet

  Father, Son, Generations

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• We are perhaps too near the age of transition to see clearly the interplay of all that made for progress. Each of us has had his own peculiar training, his own personal contact with the mighty ones of the immediate past; and this forms as it were a telescopic tube determining limits to our field of vision. No doubt we may range the whole horizon; but after all we look from our own point of vantage.

  Cargill Gilston Knott

  Past, Vision, Doubt

  "Life and Scientific Work of Peter Guthrie Tait: supplementing the two volumes of Scientific papers published in 1898 and 1900". Book by Cargill Gilston Knott, p. 1, 1911.

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