subject quotes

Nothing has raised more questioning among my critics thanthese wordsnoble, thegrand style† Ithink it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

- Matthew Arnold
  On Translating Homer; Last Words.

Rem tene, verba sequentur. Stick to your subject, and words will follow.

-'the Censor'
Attributed advice to orators. Quoted in Gaius  Julius Victor  Ars Rhetorica,'De inventione'.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

- G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
  Heretics, ch.3.

Spare the poet for his subject's sake.

-William Cowper
  Poems,'Charity', l.636.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

- Salvador Dal| 
Quoted in Esar A  Treasury of Humorous Quotations (1951).

It is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times, a hundred times.

- (Hilaire Germain) Edgar Degas
  Letter to Bartholome  ,17  Jan.

A propriety of thoughts and words; or, in other terms, thought and words elegantly adapted to the subject.

-John Dryden
  Definition of wit.'The  Author's  Apology for Heroic Poetry and Heroic Licence', an essay prefacing State of Innocence, a libretto based on Paradise Lost.

The most important thing about photographing people isnot clicking the shutter†it is clicking with the subject.

- Alfred Eisenstaedt
  Witness to Our Time.

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and who manages to avoid them.

-Werner Heisenberg
  Der Teil und das Ganze, translated by A  J Pomerans as Physics and Beyond (1971).

In this country, my Lords†the individual subject†has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them.

- Samuel Horsley
  Speech in the House of Lords,13 Nov.

If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.

- (James Henry) Leigh Hunt
Table-Talk,'Eating'.

   Knowledge is oftwo kinds.We knowa subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  Remark,18  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

Happily, there is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up; the theory of the subject is complete.

-John Stuart Mill
  Principles of Political Economy, with Some Applications to Social Philosophy.

   My celestial patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored, And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse: Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late.

-John Milton
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.9, l.21^6.

Certes, c'est un sujet merveilleusement vain, divers et ondoyant, que l'homme. Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject.

- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
  Essais, bk.1, ch.1 (translated by Charles Cotton).

   I have always wanted to develop a way of writing that was irrevocably black. I don't have the resources of a musician but I thought that if it was truly black literature, it would not be black because Iwas, it would notevenbe black because of its subject matter. It would be something intrinsic, indigenous, something in the way it was put togetherthe sentences, the structure, texture and toneso that anyone who read it would realize.

-Toni Chloe Anthony ne  e Wofford Morrison
Quoted in Paul Gilroy Small  Acts (1993),'Living memory: a meeting with Toni Morrison'.

I therefore fearlessly challenge the verdict which this house†is to give on the question now brought before it†whether, as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong.

- HenryJohnTemple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
  From his four-and-a-half hour Don Pacifico speech, Jun. Don Pacifico was a PortugueseJew resident in Athens, born in Gibraltar and therefore a British subject. In support of his claims for compensation from the Greek government for damage done to his property by a mob, Palmerston sent the British fleet to blockade Piraeus and brought the two countries to the brink of war.

L'homme n'est qu'un sujet plein d'erreur, naturelle et ineffa c° able sans la gra"  ce. Man is nothing but a subject full of natural error that cannot be eradicated except through grace.

- Blaise Pascal
c.1654^1662  Pense  es, no.83 (translated byA Krailsheimer).

The spirit that now resists your taxation in America is†the same spirit that established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your libertiesthat no subject of England shall betaxed but byhis ownconsent. The glorious spirit of Whiggismanimates three million in America, who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as free men.

-William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder Pitt
  Speech to the House of Lords, 20 Jan.

The grand manner consists of four elements: subject or theme, concept, structure, and style. The first requirement, fundamental to all the others, is that the subject and the narrative be grandiose, such as battles, heroic actions, and religious themes.

- Nicolas Poussin
Quoted in Giovanni Pietro Bellori Lives of the Modern Painters (1672).

Jamais je ne m'assujettis aux heures: les heures sont faites pour l'homme, et non l'homme pour les heures. I never subject myself to hours: hours are made for men; men are not made for hours.

- Fran c° ois Rabelais
  Gargantua, bk.1, ch.41.

   The subject is to the painter what the rails are to a locomotive. He cannot do without it.

- Diego Rivera
  CreativeArt.

Nothing is so poor and melancholy as an art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

- George Sandys
Quoted inJohn Gassner and SidneyThomas (eds) The Nature of Art (1964).

   Was man scheint, Hat jedermann zum Richter; was man ist, hat keine. What we appear to be is subject to the judgement Of all mankind, and what we truly are, of no one.

- Friedrich Schiller
  Maria Stuart, act 2, sc.5.

The discussion of any subject is a right that you have brought into the world with your heart and tongue. Resign your heart's blood before you part with this inestimable privilege of man.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
  An Address to the Irish People.

The Old Testament makes woman a mere after-thought in creation; the author of evil; cursed in her maternity; a subject in marriage; and all female life, animal and human, unclean.

- Elizabeth ne  e  Cady Stanton
  TheWoman's Bible, pt.2, preface.

A libretto that should never have been accepted on a subject that should never have been chosen bya man who should never have attempted it.

-Virgil Thomson
  Of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Modern Music.

Math was my worst subject because I could never persuade the teacher that my answers were meant ironically.

- Calvin Marshall Trillin
  In the NewYorkTimes,7 Oct. US literary  critic whose works,  such  as The Liberal  Imagination (1950)  and  Beyond  Culture  (1965),  gained him  a  reputation for scholarly  and  astute  social  comment.  He  also  wrote  a  novel, The Middle of  theJourney (1947).

   The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

- Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, preface.