Quotations Quotes - Page 10

• Some lines are born quotations, some are made quotations, and some have "quotation" thrust upon them.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Lines, Born, Made

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• Anatole France frankly advised, "When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it." Yes, indeed, but do more. Copy many well-said things. Pierce them together. Assimilate them. Make the process of reading them a way to form the mind and shape the soul. As anthologies can never be complete, we will never exhaust the ways quotations can enrich our lives.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Reading, Soul, Mind

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• A single gnomic line can come to resonate with centuries of subsequent wisdom.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Lines, Century

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• Unless created as freestanding works, quotations resemble "found" art. They are analogous, say, to a piece of driftwood identified as formally interesting enough to be displayed in an art museum or to a weapon moved from an anthropological to an artistic display.... The presenter of found art, whether material or verbal, has become a sort of artist. He has not made the object, but he has made it as art.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Art, Museums, Interesting

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• I wonder if "an" ever occurs before "haughty" except in a quotation, or whether you can make anything sound like a quotation by adding a word like "goeth"?

  Gary Saul Morson

  Sound, Wonder, Goeth

  Gary Saul Morson (2011). “The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture”, p.4, Yale University Press

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• The attribution of a speaker is in fact a part of the quotation. Some statements simply are better if a certain famous person said them.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Facts, Said, Certain

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• Reframing an extract as a quotation constitutes a kind of coauthorship. With no change in wording, the cited passage becomes different. I imagine that the thrill of making an anthology includes the opportunity to become such a coauthor.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Opportunity, Different, Thrill

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• We sometimes think of quotations as extracts from larger texts, but some quotations originated complete unto themselves.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Thinking, Sometimes

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• A knowledge of general literature is one of the evidences of an enlightened mind; and to give an apt quotation at a fitting time, proves that the mind is stored with sentential lore that can always be used to great advantage by its possessor.

  James Ellis

  Giving, Mind, Literature

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• A wise word is not a substitute for a piece of herring.

  Sholom Aleichem

  Wise, Pieces, Substitutes

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• The teachings of elegant sayings Should be collected when one can. For the supreme gift of words of wisdom, Any price will be paid.

  Akkineni Nagarjuna

  Teaching, Words Of Wisdom, Should

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• I feel a reassuring oneness with other people when I find that even my most intimate, anguished, socially inadmissible emotions and desires are known to others.... Kindred souls—indeed, my selves otherwise costumed—turn up in books in the most unexpected places. Discovering them is one of the great rewards of a liberal education. If I quote liberally, it is not to show off book learning, which at my stage of life can only invite ridicule, but rather to bathe in this kinship of strangers.

  Yi-Fu Tuan

  Book, Self, Oneness

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• The quotation-business is booming. No subdivision of the culture seems too narrow to have a quotation book of its own.... It would be an understatement to say that these books lean on one another. To compare them is to stroll through a glorious jungle of incestuous mutual plagiarism.

  James Gleick

  Book, Would Be, Culture

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• Clichés are static, the emotion behind them long spent. If you are tempted to use them, here is a saying of my mother’s: Fang pi bu-cho, cho pi bu-fang. Basically that translates to: "Loud farts don’t stink, and the really smelly ones don’t make a sound." In other words: When you’re full of beans, you just blow a lot of hot air. If you want to have a real impact, be deadly but silent. Oh, also recognize the difference between a bad cliché and a good quotation. My mother’s saying is a good quotation. You should use it often.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Real, Blow

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• Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Intelligent, Doe

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• It is important to say all the great thoughts again, without knowing that they have already been said.

  Elias Canetti

  Knowing, Important, Said

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• We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: "It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.

  Bernard Malamud

  Country, Apology, Russia

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• There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work.

  Joseph Joubert

  Essence, Volume, Sentences

  Joseph Joubert (1867). “Some of the "Thoughts" of Joseph Joubert”, p.150

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• Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. Nothing in the world was irrelevant: the stars on a general's sleeve, the stock-market quotations, the olive harvest, the style of the judiciary, the wheat exchange, flower-beds. Nothing. This order, fearful and feared, whose details were all inter-related, had a meaning: my exile.

  Jean Genet

  Stars, Flower, Order

  Jean Genet (1973). “The Thief's Journal”

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• Any stupid remark, quoted often enough, becomes gospel.

  Leslie Charteris

  Stupid, Enough, Remarks

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• I get asked to read new works a lot, in the hope that I will give a quotation and I will only give a 'puff' for a book I truly love.

  Peter James

  Book, Giving, New Work

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• In places this book is a little over-written, because Mr Blunden is no more able to resist a quotation than some people are to refuse a drink.

  George Orwell

  Book, People, Littles

  George Orwell (2001). “Orwell's England: the Road to Wigan Pier in the context of essays, reviews, letters and poems selected from the Complete works of George Orwell”, ePenguin

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• If you take my sayings and explode them in the air, they remain only sayings. But if you fit them together in their correct places, you will have the whole story.

  Pablo Picasso

  Air, Together, Stories

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• A great many complimentary things have been said about the faculty of memory, and if you look in a good quotation book you will find them neatly arranged.

  Robertson Davies

  Memories, Book, Looks

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• Life cannot be captured in a few axioms. And that is just what I keep trying to do. But it won't work, for life is full of endless nuances and cannot be captured in just a few formulae.

  Etty Hillesum

  Trying, Nuance, Life Is

  Etty Hillesum (1985). “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”

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