Unwritten Quotes - Page 3

• What is the little one thinking about?
  Very wonderful things, no doubt;
  Unwritten history!
  Unfathomed mystery!
  Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks,
  And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks,
  As if his head were as full of kinks
  And curious riddles as any sphinx!

  J. G. Holland

  Thinking, Laughing, Doubt

  J. G. HOLLAND (1863). “BITTER-SWEET A POEM”, p.26

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• New Haven cultivates ... an open gloom that seems happy to acknowledge disrepair and the superfluity of appearance. ... I realized that what cramped the town was the weight of unwritten volumes: they scored lines of unfinished writing on every second face that walked the streets.

  Sara Suleri

  Writing, Cities, Faces

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• I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Book, Men, Different

  "Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et l’art d’inventer". Book by Gottfried Leibniz, 1690.

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• Everyone bowed to that unwritten law of family life which ordains that, in the long run, everyone submerges his personal preference in the effort to conform to that of the member of the circle who complains most loudly and is most difficult to satisfy.

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  Family, Running, Law

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1956). “A harvest of stories, from a half century of writing”

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• There is a brotherliness about a drinking person, which is coldly lacking in the straight and narrow enemies of drink; the difference between the two is more marked than nationality or belief: it is an opposite species altogether. It is against the unwritten laws of congeniality for them to mix. For me, a man who does not drink is distinctly indecent.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Drinking, Men, Law

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• Proverbs were anterior to boots, and formed the wisdom of the vulgar, and in the earliest ages were the unwritten laws of morality.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Law, Age, Boots

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• Each one could be a Jesus mild,
  Each one has been a little child,
  A little child with laughing look,
  A lovely white unwritten book;
  A book that God will take, my friend,
  As each goes out at journey's end.

  John Masefield

  Jesus, Children, Book

  John Masefield (1978). “Selected poems”, Not Avail

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• enter into the life of the trees. Know your relationship and understand their language, unspoken, unwritten talk. Answer back to them with their own dumb magnificence, soul words, earth words, the God in you responding to the God in them.

  Emily Carr

  God, Tree, Dumb

  Emily Carr (2009). “Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr”, p.56, D & M Publishers

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• I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on my face!

  George Eliot

  Ciphers, Faces, Poet

  George Eliot (1863). “Romola”, p.107

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• about ten days ago I got started on a new book, and am completely, brazenly devoted to it: my hair is uncut, my letters are unwritten, the house is a shambles, and I sit here as happy as Mrs. Jellaby, though I am in 1836, not Africa. It won't go on like this, I shall fall over some obstacle, and wake out of my dreams with a black eye and broken shins: but while it does last, I daren't interrupt it. I haven't had such a spell of writing for nearly three years.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Dream, Book, Fall

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• Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.

  Agnes Repplier

  Believe, Writing, Men

  Agnes Repplier (1898). “Varia”

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• So far from genius discarding law, rather is it the supreme joy of genius to re-enact the eternal and unwritten law in the chamber of its own intel-lect.

  Charles Henry Parkhurst

  Law, Joy, Genius

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• I have not, in general, much belief in the ability of woman as a creative artist. Unwritten lyrics, as [Ralph Waldo] Emerson said once when we conversed on this subject, should be her forte.

  Fredrika Bremer

  Artist, Creative, Belief

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• Every love relationship rests on an unwritten agreement unthinkingly concluded by the lovers in the first weeks of their love. They are still in a kind of dream but at the same time, without knowing it, are drawing up, like uncompromising lawyers, the detailed clauses of their contract. O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.

  Milan Kundera

  Dream, Betrayal, Drawing

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• Motherhood is the greatest potential influence either for good or ill in human life. The mother's image is the first that stamps itself on the unwritten page of the young child's mind. It is her caress that first awakens a sense of security; her kiss, the first realization of affection; her sympathy and tenderness, the first assurance that there is love in the world.

  David O. McKay

  Mother, Children, Kissing

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• To put it another way, every love relationship is based upon unwritten conventions rashly agreed upon by the lovers during the first weeks of their love. On the one hand, they are living a sort of dream; on the other, without realizing it, they are drawing up the fine print of their contracts like the most hard-nosed of lawyers. O lovers! Be wary during those perilous first days! If you serve the other party breakfast in bed, you will be obliged to continue same in perpetuity or face charges of animosity and treason!

  Milan Kundera

  Dream, Party, Drawing

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• Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.

  Rob Sheffield

  Song, Moments, Right Now

  Rob Sheffield (2007). “Love Is a Mix Tape: Life, Loss, and What I Listened To”, p.90, Crown Archetype

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• This place is full of unwritten rules.

  Alexander Gordon Smith

  Unwritten Rules

  Alexander Gordon Smith (2010). “Escape from Furnace 1: Lockdown”, p.64, Faber & Faber

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• Something about first love defies duplication. Before it, your heart is blank. Unwritten. After, the walls are left inscribed and graffitied. When it ends, no amount of scrubbing will purge the scrawled oaths and sketched images, but sooner or later, you find that there’s space for someone else, between the words and in the margins.

  Tammara Webber

  Wall, Heart, First Love

  Tammara Webber (2011). “Where You Are”, p.8, Tammara Webber

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• And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.

  John Green

  Book, Thinking, Kind

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.45, Penguin

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• Tell my daughter Elizabeth -- no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.

  Philippa Gregory

  Daughter, Rights, Age

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• All I need to understand is the unwritten law of warriors," he said firmly. "And women and children are never sent to do our work without our protection." He pointed to the trees, emphatically. "That's the language I share with them.

  Melina Marchetta

  Children, Warrior, Law

  Melina Marchetta (2015). “The Complete Lumatere Chronicles”, p.162, Penguin UK

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• I'm not the color of my skin. I'm a story. One with a past and a future unwritten.

  Heidi W. Durrow

  Past, Color, Skins

  Heidi W. Durrow (2011). “The Girl Who Fell from the Sky”, p.264, Algonquin Books

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• There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.

  Ian Mcewan

  Character, Self, Views

  FaceBook post by Ian McEwan from Dec 19, 2012

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• It's an unwritten rule - girl friends' boyfriends are off limits, even after they break up.

  Kristin Cavallari

  Moving On, Break Up, Girl

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