Superfluous Quotes - Page 6

• Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

  William Shakespeare

  Blessed, Flames, House

  1596-7 Prince Harry to Falstaff. Henry IV Part One, act1, sc.2, l.6-12.

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• I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Happiness, Beautiful, Home

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Selections from the Journals”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gifts...Thus a heavy task is laid upon Gift-love. It must work toward its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say 'They need me no longer' should be our reward. But the instinct, simply in its own nature, has no power to fulfill this law.

  C. S. Lewis

  Law, Giving, Tasks

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• If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement.

  Fred Astaire

  Dance, Dancing, Ballet

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• The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

  Maya Angelou

  Block, Ghetto, Men

  "Bill Moyers Journal", billmoyers.com. November 21, 1973.

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• At the time of Caliph Omar's invasion of Egypt, the Arab officer on duty in the destruction of the library of Alexandria used two stamps with which he marked the books. One said: 'Does not agree with the Koran - heretic, must be burned'. The other said: 'Agrees with the Koran - superfluous, must be burned'.

  Nils Kjaer

  Book, Two, Egypt

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• One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it

  David Hilbert

  Work, Math, Science

  Quoted in Howard Eves, Mathematical Circles Revisited (1971)

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• But life is short: while one lives, everything is lacking; when one is dead, everything is superfluous.

  Lope de Vega

  Life Is Short, Life Is, Lacking

  "La Dorotea". Book by Lope de Vega, 1632.

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• There is a joy in going without things, a fine tang in eliminating the superfluous.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Joy, Fine, Eliminating

  Elbert Hubbard (2005). “Loyalty in Business: One and Twenty Other Good Things”, p.63, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Superfluous advice is not retained by the full mind.

  Horace

  Advice, Mind

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• Knowledge and liberty are so prevalent in this country, that I do not believe that the United States would ever be disposed to establish one religious sect, and lay all others under legal disabilities. But as we know not what may take place hereafter, and any such test would be exceedingly injurious to the rights of free citizens, I cannot think it altogether superfluous to have added a clause, which secures us from the possibility of such oppression.

  Oliver Wolcott

  Country, Religious, Father

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• Although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is nothing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to correspond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Beautiful, Nature, Science

  Leonardo da Vinci (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Leonardo da Vinci (Illustrated)”, p.971, Delphi Classics

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• It is but a poor establishment where there are not many superfluous things which the owner knows not of, and which go to the thieves.

  Horace

  Thieves, Poor, Owners

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• Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, moat earnest humor.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Character, Diversity, Moats

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• A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero,--the wise, the good, or the great man,--very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light.

  Joseph Addison

  Education, Wise, Art

  Joseph Addison (1856). “The works of ... Joseph Addison, with notes by R. Hurd”, p.96

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• Our current prison state has the dual effect of getting rid of a superfluous population of basically unskilled workers (with a close race-class correlation), and also demonizing them... The drug war is basically for this - It has nothing to do with drugs, but it has plenty to do with criminalizing an unwanted population and scaring everybody else.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Race, Class

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• Words would be superfluous if we had deeds to show for Them.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Would Be, Deeds, Action

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• A man should remove not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous activity will not follow.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Men, Unnecessary, Should

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• All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.

  Karl Marx

  Essence, Would Be, Appearance

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.532, Oxford University Press, USA

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• If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments [if] one suffices.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Mean, Two, Done

  Thomas Aquinas, Anton C. Pegis (1997). “Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, Volume 2”, p.129, Hackett Publishing

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• I immersed myself in The Periodic Table gladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderful pure, and beautifully translated...I was deeply impressed.

  Saul Bellow

  Book, Essentials, Tables

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• Justification by religious performances, and meritorious deeds, is nothing better than the old Pharisaism with a Christian name stuck upon it. . . That doctrine makes the Lord Jesus Christ to be practically a nobody; for if salvation be of works, then the way of salvation through faith in a Savior is superfluous, and even mischievous

  Charles Spurgeon

  Christian, Religious, Jesus

  Charles Spurgeon (2015). “The Complete Works of C. H. Spurgeon, Volume 37”, p.433, Delmarva Publications, Inc.

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• Demetrius was wont to say that there was no difference between the words and speech of the unskilled and ignorant and the sounds and rumblings caused by the stomach being full of superfluous wind. This he said, not without reason, for, as he held, it did not in the least matter from what part of them the voice emanated, whether from the lower parts or the mouth, since the one and the other were of equal worth and importance.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Wind, Voice, Differences

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• All human beings are born with the same creative potential. Most people squander theirs away on a million superfluous things. I expend mine on one thing and one thing only: my art.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Creating, People

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• The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic. It has engaged the industry and wisdom of ancient and modern geometers to such an extent that it would be superfluous to discuss the problem at length. ... Further, the dignity of the science itself seems to require that every possible means be explored for the solution of a problem so elegant and so celebrated.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Mean, Numbers, Important

  "Disquisitiones Arithmeticae". Book by Carl Friedrich Gauss, 1801.

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