Quaint Quotes - Page 3

• The idea that war should be conducted within a moral framework may seem like a quaint medieval practice, but as speech separates humans from the apes, so morality separates civilisation from the barbarians.

  Eric Corley

  War, Practice, Ideas

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• We have a number of very powerful women in the world now - Mrs. [Angela] Merkel, who the Germans call Mutti. What did we call Mrs. [Margaret] Thatcher? When she was minister of education, she stopped the children's free school milk. This may sound quaint, but after the war we were such a malnourished nation that part of the founding of the welfare state were public health initiatives. Every little schoolchild got milk. Mrs. Thatcher stopped it. They called her "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher."

  Hilary Mantel

  Powerful, Children, War

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• Poetical feelings are a peril to scholarship. There are always poetical people ready to protest that a corrupt line is exquisite. Exquisite to whom? The Romans were foreigners writing for foreigners two millenniums ago; and for people whose gods we find quaint, whose savagery we abominate, whose private habits we don't like to talk about, but whose idea of what is exquisite is, we flatter ourselves, mysteriously identical to ours.

  Tom Stoppard

  Writing, Ideas, Two

  Tom Stoppard (2014). “The Invention of Love”, p.27, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The same costume will be Indecent ten years before its time, Shameless five years before its time, Outre (daring) one year before its time, Smart (in its own time), Dowdy one year after its time, Ridiculous twenty years after its time, Amusing thirty years after its time, Quaint fifty years after its time, Charming seventy years after its time, Romantic one-hundred years after its time, Beautiful one-hundred-and-fifty years after its time.

  James Laver

  Beautiful, Smart, Years

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• We live in a culture bound by sin like bands of iron. Moral stories, quaint maxims, and life lessons shared from the heart of a beloved pulpiteer or spiritual life coach have no real power against such darkness. We need preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ who know the Scriptures, and by God's grace face any culture with the cry, 'Thus saith the Lord!'

  Paul Washer

  Spiritual, Jesus, Life Lesson

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• Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?

  Peter Brook

  Real, Oddities, Hands

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• I suspect that our own faith in psychiatry will seem as touchingly quaint to the future as our grandparents' belief in phrenology seems now to us.

  Gore Vidal

  Grandparent, Phrenology, Belief

  Gore Vidal, Donald Weise (1999). “Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking, Collected Sex Writings”

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• And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Tree, Age, Ordinary

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• I grew up Windlesham in Surrey, which is a beautiful and quaint village.

  Kirsty Gallacher

  Beautiful, Village, Grew Up

  "Kirsty Gallacher: my Saturday job" by Mark King, www.theguardian.com. March 2, 2012.

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• One is struck in the study of saints, angels and gods by a pattern that seems quaint and harmless. Yet, it is so common that I know there must be a deeper meaning. There always seem to be guardians and spirits of doors, bridges, exits and entranceways.

  Richard Rohr

  Angel, Doors, Bridges

  "Life on the Edge: Understanding the Prophetic Position" by Fr. Richard Rohr, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 19, 2011.

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• The problem is that those of us sympathetic with the plight of indigenous people view them as quaint and colorful, but somehow reduced to margins of history as the real world [(our world)] moves on We will be known as an era in which we stood by and either actively endorsed or passively accepted the massive destruction of both biological and cultural diversity on the planet.

  Wade Davis

  Real, Moving, Our World

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• American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  Country, African Tribes, Missionary

  "The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939". Book by A. J. P. Taylor, "The Great War: The Triumph of E. D. Morel", p. 157, 1957.

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• Mostly, as I said, a desire to do a bit of good, and the quaint notion that this is what we signed up for, this is the business that we have chosen.

  Christiane Amanpour

  Desire, Said, Notion

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• I mean, source code in files; how quaint, how seventies!

  Kent Beck

  Mean, Source, Programming

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• Dig deep into its communitarian ethos and it reads more like an America that might have been, an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of working together and getting along. Of course, this America does exist. It's called Canada.

  Sarah Vowell

  Ethos, America, Goal

  Sarah Vowell (2008). “The Wordy Shipmates”, p.33, Penguin

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• Let not young souls be smothered out
  Before they do quaint deeds
  And fully flaunt their pride.

  Vachel Lindsay

  Pride, Soul, Deeds

  Vachel Lindsay (1992). “The Congo and Other Poems”, p.38, Courier Corporation

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• I do what I want to do. It was a brash statement of(her)girlhood. Now she was an adult, the boast seemed quaint. For rarely do you know what you want. Even after you've done it you can't say clearly if that was what you'd wanted or just something that happened to you, like weather.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Weather, Adults, Done

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories”, p.152, Zondervan

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• A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is To meet an antique book In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think, His venerable hand to take, And warming in our own, A passage back, or two, to make To times when he was young. His quaint opinions to inspect, His knowledge to unfold On what concerns our mutual mind, The literature of old.

  Emily Dickinson

  Book, Thinking, Hands

  Emily Dickinson (2009). “Poems: Series I - III, Complete”, p.19, The Floating Press

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• Many organic practices simply make sense, regardless of what overall agricultural system is used. Far from being a quaint throwback to an earlier time, organic agriculture is proving to be a serious contender in modern farming and a more environmentally sustainable system over the long term.

  David Suzuki

  Agriculture, Practice, Long

  David Suzuki, David Taylor (2009). “The Big Picture: Reflections on Science, Humanity, and a Quickly Changing Planet”, p.184, Greystone Books

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• In this age of 24-7 headlines, the term 'newsweekly' seems almost quaint.

  Graydon Carter

  Age, Headlines, Term

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• While in a vintage restaurant..."the past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you see it as decor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.

  Margaret Atwood

  Distance, Past, Vintage

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• Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Death, Children, Philosophy

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• Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.... Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.

  Robertson Davies

  Knowledge, Order, Healthy

  Robertson Davies (1952). “Tempest-tost”, Clarke Irwin

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• Civility is perhaps a quaint notion but civility in Parliament is something we should always strive to uphold.

  Jay Weatherill

  Civility, Strive, Parliament

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• Avoid the politic, the factious fool,
  The busy, buzzing, talking harden'd knave;
  The quaint smooth rogue that sins against his reason,
  Calls saucy loud sedition public zeal,
  And mutiny the dictates of his spirit.

  Thomas Otway

  Talking, Mutiny, Knaves

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