Rare Quotes
More Rare Quotes
I am finding the inherent politeness of this place quite destabilising. Having come from a House where politeness is about as rare as an orderly queue at a London bus stop, the culture shock on entering your Lordships' House has been profound. Indeed, such relentless politeness is not merely destabilising, but positively exhausting.
lord stratford— Maiden speech to the House of Lords, 20 July 2005; quoted by United Kingdom Parliament World Wide Web Service
— contrasting the House of Lords with the House of Commons.
We must appraise civilization in relation to its territory and in relation to its duration. The character of the medium of communication tends to create a bias in civilization favourable to an over-emphasis on the time concept or on the space concept and only at rare intervals are the biases offset by the influence of another medium and stability achieved.
harold innis— A Plea for Time (1950), a paper presented at the University of New Brunswick, published in The Bias of Communication (1951) p.64.
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
erica jong— "The Artist as Housewife", in The First Ms. Reader (1972).
The critical sense is so far from frequent that it is absolutely rare, and the possession of the cluster of qualities that minister to it is one of the highest distinctions... In this light one sees the critic as the real helper of the artist, a torchbearing outrider, the interpreter, the brother... Just in proportion as he is sentient and restless, just in proportion as he reacts and reciprocates and penetrates, is the critic a valuable instrument.
Henry James— Criticism
Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.
Simone Weil— p. 193 (The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941))
If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere -- probably more than the rest of the world combined. Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations -- many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
walt whitman— Walt Whitman (1892). "III. Notes Left Over 3. Ventures, on an Old Theme". Complete Prose Works. Philadelphia: David McKay. p. 324.
Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare.
mark twain— (1899), Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Her cheeks so rare a white was on, No daisy makes comparison; (Who sees them is undone); For streaks of red were mingled there, Such as are on a Cath'rine pear, (The side that's next the Sun).
Sir John Suckling— A Ballad Upon a Wedding, Stanza 10.
It is all too rare today to hear the clear, clean ring of a really original insult.
Jim Richard carrigan— 1987 In Time, 28 Aug.
I have a feeling I'm falling on rare occasions but most of the time I have my feet on the ground I can't help it if the ground itself is falling.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti— 1973 'Mock Confessional'.
It is frivolous stuff, and how rare, how precious is frivolity! How few writers can prostitute all their powers! They are always implying 'I am capable of higher things.'
ronald firbank— Vainglory
Let us award a just, a brilliant homage to those rare men whom nature has endowed with the precious privilege of arranging a thousand isolated facts, of making seductive theories spring from them; but let us not forget to state, that the scythe of the reaper had cut the stalks before one had thought of uniting them into sheaves!
françois arago— Joseph Fourier, p. 409
[T]he rare earth elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch like an unknown sea before us mocking, mystifying and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities.
william crookes— As quoted in Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements (New Edition) by John Emsley (page 266)
Happy the man with a book-length grievance — and rare. Each of these books contains one possible magazine article surrounded by more padding than an offensive lineman: every little indignity that ever happened to them, and every two-bit feud, magnified to a Horrible Example to justify a larger printing.
wilfrid sheed— "Unnecessary Roughness" (1971), p. 150
From what little was known about the subject, insincerity itself was regarded as another form of psychosis but one which was exceedingly rare.
raymond smullyan— Planet Without Laughter (1980)
"Art, and, above all, music, has a fundamental function, which is to catalyze the sublimation that it can bring about through all means of expression. It must aim through fixations which are landmarks, to draw [one] towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect. If a work of art succeeds in this undertaking even for a single moment, it attains its goal."
iannis xenakis— Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition, ISBN 1576470792
Alvin had met true evil in his life, but he still persisted in thinking it was awful rare, and the word was bandied about too much by those who didn’t understand what real badness was.
orson scott card— Chapter 10 (Alvin Journeyman (1995))
Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary...
claude debussy— Wilfrid Mellers, Foreword to Images: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy (2001), p. xi
And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, grasping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.
james russell lowell— Prelude to Pt. I, st. 5.
In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, 'independent' regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections.
ilana mercer— "Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go Poof", WorldNetDaily.com, January 3, 2014
I confess to a rare problem gynekinetophobia, or the fear of women falling on me but this is a rather mild illness compared with many affluent suburbanites, who have developed an almost total zoophobia, or fear of anything that moves. It is, as any traveller can confirm, a complaint best developed in the affluent North American, and it seems to be part of blue toilet dyes, air fresheners, lots of paper tissues, and two showers a day.
bill mollison— chapter 2.5 (Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988))
In this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of us singlehanded against a host of foes, the last requisite for a good fight, the last proof and test of our courage and manfulness, must be loyalty to truth the most rare and difficult of all human qualities. For such loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks ever more and more of us, and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and higher.
thomas hughes— Thomas Hughes, The Manliness of Christ? (1880), p. 29.
On woman Nature did bestow two eyes, Like Hemian's bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining, Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise And wary heads, made rare by art's refining.
Robert Greene— Robert Greene, Philomela, Sonnet.
Padmanabha Swamy temple located inside the East Fort, this Vaishnava temple is very famous attracting devotees from all parts. Dedicated to Lord Vishnu sleeping on Anantha, the serpent king, this temple is a rare blend of Dravidian architecture and the Kerala style.
— Biju Mathew, in Pilgrimage to Temple Heritage, 2013. p.65
And but two ways are offered to our will, Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, The problem still for us and all of human race.
james russell lowell— James Russell Lowell, Under the Old Elm, Part VII, Stanza 3.
Light-leaved acacias, by the door, Stood up in balmy air, Clusters of blossomed moonlight bore, And breathed a perfume rare.
George MacDonald— George MacDonald, Song of the Spring Nights, Part I.
He had often noticed that six months' oblivion amounts to newspaper-death, and that resurrection is rare. Nothing is easier, if a man wants it, than rest, profound as the grave.
henry adams— Ch. 22. (The Education of Henry Adams (1907))
I have read a rondeau or rondel by Marzials in the Athenaeum beginning and ending "When I see you": it was very graceful and shewing an art and finish rare in English verse. This makes me the more astonished about Flop flop.
theo marzials— Gerard Manley Hopkins, letter to Robert Bridges (1878-05-13).
It's rare that the sequel to a good movie lives up to expectations. Such is the case with Die Hard 2 , the somewhat-muddled but still entertaining return of Bruce Willis' John McClane. Fortunately, the original Die Hard was good enough that there's room for the second installment to be enjoyable while still not matching the pace or possessing the flair of its predecessor.
james berardinelli— Review of Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)
