Superfluous Quotes - Page 2

• Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.

  Ezra Pound

  Doe, Adjectives, Use

  Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, Jonathan Stalling, Lucas Klein (2008). “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition”, p.9, Fordham Univ Press

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• We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.

  Joseph Joubert

  Business, Ideas, Age

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• I was thinking that I should be content to kiss him until the break of day. Bertrand ran out of kisses too soon; desire made them superfluous in his eyes. They were only a stage on the road to pleasure, not something inexhaustible and self-sufficient, as Luc had revealed them to me.

  Francoise Sagan

  Eye, Kissing, Thinking

  Francoise Sagan (1956). “Certain Smile”

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• Each superfluous line, each wrongly placed line, any color placed without veneration or care, can spoil everything, that is, the spiritual.

  Theo van Doesburg

  Spiritual, Color, Drawing

  Dutch art-magazine: 'Eenheid' no. 283, November 6, 1915.

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• We are not to suppose, that there is any violent exertion of power, such as is required in order to produce a great event in little time; in nature, we find no deficiency in respect of time, nor any limitation with regard to power. But time is not made to flow in vain; nor does there ever appear the exertion of superfluous power, or the manifestation of design, not calculated in wisdom to effect some general end.

  James Hutton

  Nature, Science, Power

  James Hutton (1788*). “Theory of the earth; or an investigation of the laws observable in the composition, dissolution and restoration of land upon the globe. (From. the Trans., Roy. soc. of Edinb.).”, p.86

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• Students today should live fully every moment of time. This dew-like life fades away; time speeds swiftly. In this short life of ours, avoid involvement in superfluous things and just study the Way.

  Dogen

  Short Life, Discipline, Dew

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• Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Writing, Language

  "The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow".

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• I held a blue flower in my hand, probably a wild aster, wondering what its name was, and then thought that human names for natural things are superfluous. Nature herself does not name them. The important thing is to know this flower, look at its color until the blends becomes as real as a keynote of music. Look at the exquisite yellow flowerettes at the center, become very small with them. Be the flower, be the trees, the blowing grasses. Fly with the birds, jump with a squirrel!

  Sally Carrighar

  Real, Flower, Names

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• The custom of Mother Church in baptizing infants is certainly not to be scorned, nor is it to be regarded in any way as superfluous, nor is it to be believed that its tradition is anything except apostolic.

  Saint Augustine

  Mother, Baptism, Church

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• We can hardly expect the nation-state to make itself superfluous, at least not overnight. Rather what we must aim for is really nothing more than caretakers of a bankrupt international machine which will have to be transformed slowly into a new one. The transition will not be dramatic, but a gradual one. People will still cling to national symbols.

  Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

  People, Transition, Machines

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• What if it is for life's sake that we must die? In truth we are not individuals; and it is because we think ourselves such that death seems unforgivable. We are temporary organs of the race, cells in the body of life; we die and drop away that life may remain young and strong. If we were to live forever, growth would be stifled, and youth would find no room on earth. Death, like style, is the removal of rubbish, the circumcision of the superfluous. In the midst of death life renews itself immortally.

  Will Durant

  Strong, Struggle, Thinking

  "Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God".

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• It is superfluous to try by the standards of theory, a part of the constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable" . . . the equal vote allowed to each state, is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual states, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty.

  James Madison

  Hands, Political, Trying

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• We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Mean, Simple

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.154, Harvard University Press

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• We are ignorant of things necessary, because we learn things superfluous and unnecessary

  Richard Baxter

  Ignorant, Unnecessary, Christianity

  Richard Baxter, William Orme (1830). “The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter: With a Life of the Author, and a Critical Examination of His Writings”, p.167

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• Superfluous money buys wasted time, propelling desires that otherwise lay buried beneath the feet of honest toil.

  Cyril Smith

  Money, Feet, Desire

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• Through your life, most people peel away the junk that's not useful, that's superfluous. You are determined to peel that away. I do one thing at a time. One man at a time. One car. One house. One child. One job.

  Grace Slick

  Jobs, Children, Men

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• A movie is better than real life because in the movies only the bad guys die. Or you can pick the good movies where the bad guys die and only those. If you get tricked and a good person dies in the movie then you can rewrite it in your head so the good person lives and the part about death is superfluous.

  Kathryn Erskine

  Real, Guy, Good Movie

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• a salesman is an it that stinks to please but whether to please itself or someone else makes no more difference than if it sells hate condoms education snakeoil vac uumcleaners terror strawberries democ ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair

  e. e. cummings

  Hate, Hair, Differences

  E. E. Cummings (1959). “100 Selected Poems”, p.86, Grove Press

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• I'm a Nietzschean about human nature. The bulk of humanity is exhausted and superfluous, miscreant, confused, latently criminal, opportunistic. I rely on that. That's leverage, man.

  Cody Wilson

  Confused, Men, Humanity

  Source: motherboard.vice.com

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• Also a great part of Polish industry proved to have existed only to support the Soviet military industry, and it became superfluous and incapable of being transformed into anything else. We did not foresee that or the magnitude of these phenomena.

  Andrzej Wajda

  Military, Support, Magnitude

  "'Why Not Have Our Own World?' Interview with Andrzej Wajda". Interview with Renata Murawska, sensesofcinema.com. July 2005.

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• Whatever respect photography may once have deserved is now superfluous in view of its own superfluity.

  Will Self

  Photography, Views, May

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• Idealism does not represent a superfluous expression of emotion, but in truth it has been, is, and will be, the premise for what we designate as human culture...Without his idealistic attitude all, even the most dazzling faculties of the intellect, would remain mere intellect just like outward appearance without inner value, and never creative force....The purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest knowledge.

  Adolf Hitler

  Attitude, Expression, Creative

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• When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless

  John Henry Newman

  Mean, Men, Hopeless

  'Faith and Reason, contrasted as Habits of Mind' (Epiphany, 1839), in 'Oxford University Sermons' (1843) no. 10

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• The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.

  Horace

  Reality, Order, Mind

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• The erection of a monument is superfluous, our memory will endure if our lives have deserved it.

  Pliny the Younger

  Memories, Endure, Recollection

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