model quotes

I prefer you to take as your model a mediocre sculpture rather than an excellent painting, for from painted objects we train our hand only to make a likeness, whereas from sculptures we learn to represent both likeness and correct incidence of light.

- Leon Battista Alberti
  On Painting (translated by Cecil Grayson).

I am a free man, I do not need to copy Petrarch or Boccaccio. My own genius is enough. Let others worry themselves about style and so cease to be themselves. Without a master, without a model, without a guide, without artifice,Igotowork and earnmy living, my well- being, and my fame.What do Ineedmore? Witha goose quill and a few sheets of paper I mock the universe.

- Pietro Aretino
Quoted in  J H Plumb (ed)  The Horizon Book of the Renaissance (1961, new edn by Penguin,1982).

I describe imperfect characters. Every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line.

- Charlotte Bronte« 
  Shirley, ch.5.

Remember, the prince is like a mirror exposed to the eyes of all his subjects who continually look to him as a pattern on which to model themselves, and who in consequence without much trouble discover his vices and virtues.

-CharlesV
  Instructions a'   Philippe II son Fils ( Advice To His Son, translated1788). Quoted in G R Elton Renaissance and Reformation,1300^1648 (2nd edn,1968), p.137.

The House of Lords is a model of how to care for the elderly.

- Frank Field
  In the Observer, 24 May.

I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I've information vegetable, animal and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.

- Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck) Gilbert
   The Major-General's song, The Pirates of Penzance, act1.

To model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

- Alexander Hamilton
^8  The Federalist Papers.

Thereareno handlestoa horse, butthe1910 model has a string to each side of its face for turning its head when there is anything you want it to see.

- Stephen Butler Leacock
  Literary Lapses,'Reflections on Riding'.

It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.

- Susan Sontag
  Of AIDS. AIDS and Its Metaphors, ch.8.

   It is the business of a statesman to judge of the expediency of different schemes of economy, and by degrees to model the minds of his subjects so as to induce them from the allurement of private interest to concur in the execution of his plan.

- SirJames Steuart (later Denham)
  Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy.

He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well thoughand loathed him.

- Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
  TheAdventures of Tom Sawyer, ch.1.

Although Marycannot be a model for the New Woman, a goddess is better than no goddess at all, for the sombre-suited masculine world of the Protestant religion is altogether too much like a gentlemen's club to which the ladies are only admitted on special days.

- Marina Sarah Warner
  Alone of All Her Sex: the Myth and Cult of theVirgin Mary, epilogue.