Degrees Quotes
More Degrees Quotes
Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot; Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, Where long ago a giant battle was; And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass In every place where infant Orpheus slept. Feel we these things? that moment have we stept Into a sort of oneness, and our state Is like a floating spirit's. But there are Richer entanglements, enthralments far More self-destroying, leading, by degrees, To the chief intensity: the crown of these Is made of love and friendship, and sits high Upon the forehead of humanity.
john keats— Bk. I, l. 789.
There are degrees and kinds of solitude. ... I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood; nor do the geese, who have seen more kinds and degrees of aloneness than I have.
aldo leopold— “April: Come High Water”, p. 25
Daily life is a comprimised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism , and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.
e. o. wilson— Wilson cites Goffman's Frame Analysis (1974) as a reference here
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act II, scene 3, line 377.
Sothat finding myself at present inorabout onehundred and twenty degrees off east longitude from England, it bred in me a desire to proceed on the same easterly course till I had ended where I began, and so to have once made one circle round the globe of the earth, which would have been a voyage of voyages.
Peter Mundy— c.1640 Objections were raised and Mundy was unable to fulfil this aim. Travels (published c.1650).
Would puzzle a convocation of casuists to resolve their degrees of consanguinity.
Miguel de Cervantes— Ch. 8. (Part I)
Not unlike the bear which bringeth forthIn the end of thirty dayes a shapeless birth;But after licking, it in shape she drawes,And by degrees she fashions out the pawes,The head, and neck, and finally doth bringTo a perfect beast that first deformed thing.
guillaume de salluste du bartas— First Week, First Day. Compare: "I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
Asking who won a given war, someone has said, is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake. That in war there is no victory but only varying degrees of defeat is a proposition that has gained increasing acceptance in the twentieth century.
kenneth waltz— Chapter I, Introduction, p. 1
Not only does a journey transport us over enormous distances, it also causes us to move a few degrees up or down in the social scale. It displaces us physically and also for better or for worse takes us out of our class context, so that the colour and flavour of certain places cannot be dissociated from the always unexpected social level on which we find ourselves in experiencing them.
claude lévi-strauss— Chapter 9 : Guanabara, p.86
It is sufficiently evident from many circumstances, that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ did not establish itself without much opposition, especially from the unlearned among the Christians, who thought that it savoured of Polytheism , that it was introduced by those who had had a philosophical education, and was by degrees adopted by others, on account of its covering the great offence of the cross , by exalting the personal dignity of our Saviour.
joseph priestley— Part I : The History of Opinions Relating to Jesus Christ, § IV : Of the Difficulty with which the Doctrine of the Divinity of Christ was Established.
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.
bertrand russell— "Skepticism"
Not unlike the bear which bringeth forth In the end of thirty dayes a shapeless birth; But after licking, it in shape she drawes, And by degrees she fashions out the pawes, The head, and neck, and finally doth bring To a perfect beast that first deformed thing.
guillaume de salluste du bartas— Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578), First Week, First Day. Compare: "I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
Work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at all things.
thomas carlyle— 1843 Past and Present, bk.3, ch.2.
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)— 1767 Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy.
All arts are taught by degrees. The first process in art of the painter is the composition of colours. Let your mind be afterwards applied to the study of the mixtures.
— An Essay UponVarious Arts (translated by Robert Hendrie,1847), bk.1, preface.
I'm the least-educated person in my immediate family. My two other brothers have multiple advanced degrees, and I only have one. [...] Actually, now that I've got a Nobel Prize, I feel equal.
steven chu— Interview by Spencer Michels, The NewsHour, PBS, 2 May 2007 [1]
You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.
anne louise germaine de staël— Bk. 4, ch. 3
I strenuously object to the very word "grotesque" which has become hackneyed to the point of nausea…I would prefer my music to be described as "Scherzo-ish" in quality, or else by three words describing the various degrees of the Scherzo – whimsicality, laughter, mockery.
sergei prokofiev— Page 37; from his fragmentary Autobiography.
Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have.
joshua reynolds— Discourse no. 8, delivered on December 10, 1778; vol. 1, p. 247.
That there are degrees in the knowledge of rational beings, and also in their capacities to acquire it, cannot be disputed, as it is so very obvious among mankind.
ethan allen— Ch. IV Section I - Speculation on the Doctrine of the Depravity of Human Reason
Symons … remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.
Alain de Botton— p. 113 (The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009))
The master was never impressed by diplomas or degrees. He scrutinized the person, not the certificate. He was once heard to say, 'When you have ears to hear a bird in song, you don't need to look at its credentials."
anthony de mello— p. 76 (Anthony De Mello : Writings (1999))
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees.
john keats— Stanza 26. (The Eve of St. Agnes)
Thus, while I thought myself employed only in forming a Nomenclature, and while I proposed to myself nothing more than to improve the chemical language, my work transformed itself by degrees, without my being able to prevent it, into a treatise upon the Elements of Chemistry.
antoine lavoisier— p.xiv (Elements of Chemistry (1790))
[The doctrine of air] I was led into in consequence of inhabiting a house adjoining to a public brewery, where I at first amused myself with making experiments on the fixed air [carbon dioxide] which I found ready made in the process of fermentation . When I removed from that house I was under the necessity of making the fixed air for myself; and one experiment leading to another, as I have distinctly and faithfully noted in my various publications on the subject, I by degrees contrived a convenient apparatus for the purpose, but of the cheapest kind.
joseph priestley— Letter to Dr. Price (Oct. 19, 1771) as quoted in John Towill Rutt, Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley (1831)
The custom of tormenting and killing of beasts will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men.
john locke— John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
Curiosity is inherent in man; and, in some measure, accompanies every degree of human understanding, and every modification of the mind . From the philosopher to the peasant , scarcely any one is found who is not desirous of information on one subject or the another; but this curiosity is directed to different objects, in different minds, in proportion to their degrees of elevation , or the extent of their previous improvements.
— John Bigland, in “Letters on the Study and Use of Ancient and Modern History”, p.18
There are three degrees of comparison: stupido, stupidissimo, and tenore.
— Pietro Mascagni, in Scott Beach, Musicdotes, (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1977), p. 94.
How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act II, scene 3, line 376.
