Subjects Quotes - Page 17

• Opinions: men's thoughts about great subjects. Taste: their thoughts about small ones: dress, behavior, amusements, ornaments.

  George Eliot

  Men, Dresses, Taste

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• (Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Agreement, People, Intellectual

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Counsels and Maxims: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.64, 谷月社

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• The selection of a subject is to the author what choice of position is to the general,--once skilfully determined, the battle is already half won. Of a few writers it may be said that they are popular in despite of their subjects--but of a great many more it may be observed that they are popular because of them.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Choices, Battle, Half

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.26

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• Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.

  Jonathan Swift

  Memories, Two, Needs

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• What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. ... What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you could live.

  Annie Dillard

  Book, Imagination, People

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.174, Canongate Books

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• Fiction keeps its audience by retaining the world as its subject matter. People like the world. Many people actually prefer it to art and spend their days by choice in the thick of it.

  Annie Dillard

  Art, People, Choices

  Annie Dillard (1983). “Living by Fiction”, New York : Harper & Row

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• Whenever an encounter between a writer of good will and a regular person of good will happens to touch on the subject of writing, each person discovers, dismayed, that good will is of no earthly use. The conversation cannot proceed.

  Annie Dillard

  Writing, Encounters, Use

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• I do not find that I feel myself to be any different as an English subject than as an American. I have not the vote in either place, so I am not a citizen of either, and have no call to be patriotic. In fact, I do not see how women can ever feel like anything but aliens in whatever country they may live, for they have no part or lot in any, except the part and lot of being taxed and legislated for by men.

  Hannah Whitall Smith

  Country, Patriotic, Men

  Hannah Whitall Smith (1949). “A religious rebel: the letters of "H. W. S." (Mrs. Pearsall Smith)”

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• To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.

  William Hazlitt

  Modesty, Speak, Intimate

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1464, Delphi Classics

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• In its permission to man to render subject to him all other living creatures of the earth, it continued the cruelty of the barbarian and the pagan, and endowed these with what appeared a divine authority.

  Ouida

  Men, Religion, Earth

  Ouida (1896). “Views and Opinions”

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• An egotist will always speak of himself, either in praise or in censure, but a modest man ever shuns making himself the subject of his conversation.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Men, Speak, Praise

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• Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Conversation, Egotism

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• Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness.

  Honore de Balzac

  Paris, Pretty Woman, Inexplicable

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• The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Writing, Self, Hints

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.69

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• We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves. When we see the martyr to virtue, subject as he is to the infirmities of a man, yet suffering the tortures of a demon, and bearing them with the magnanimity of a God, do we not behold a heroism that angels may indeed surpass, but which they cannot imitate, and must admire.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Humility, Angel, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.212

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• In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here--to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves. The Christian messenger cannot think too highly of his prince, nor too humbly of himself.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Christian, Lying, Thinking

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.44

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• All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is no such thing as a non-religious subject. But much bad or downright sacrilegious art depicts so-called religious subjects.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Religious, Art, Real

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.32, Open Road Media

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• Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Education, School, Poetry

  Nikki Giovanni (1992). “Conversations with Nikki Giovanni”, p.137, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• One would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started into discourse; but, instead of this we find that conversation is never so much straightened and confined, as in numerous assemblies.

  Joseph Addison

  Thinking, Would Be, Assembly

  Joseph Addison (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Joseph Addison (Illustrated)”, p.2472, Delphi Classics

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• Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either by the prejudice of education or by a deference to the judgment of those who perhaps in their own hearts disapprove the opinions which they industriously spread among the multitude.

  Joseph Addison

  Heart, Prejudice, Opinion

  Joseph Addison (1858). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.258

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• Government mitigates the inequality of power, and makes an innocent man, though of the lowest rank, a match for the mightiest of his fellow-subjects.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Innocent Man, Inequality

  Joseph Addison (1872). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.443

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• the novel is inherently a political instrument, regardless of its subject. It invites you - more than invites you, induces you - to live inside another person's skin. It creates empathy. And that's the antidote to bigotry. The novel doesn't just tell you about another life, which is what a newspaper would do. It makes you live another life, inhabit another perspective. And that's very important.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Perspective, Empathy, Political

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• All biographers, no matter how sympathetic, end up using their subjects as mirrors to figure themselves out. I don't want to be anyone's mirror.

  Gloria Steinem

  Mirrors, Want, Matter

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• That man is guilty of impertinence who considers not the circumstances of time, or engrosses the conversation, or makes himself the subject of his discourse, or pays no regard to the company he is in.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Pay, Guilty

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• Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lucky, Genius, Sparrows

  Samuel Johnson (1803). “The Lives of the Most Prominent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works”, p.175

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