Specimens Quotes
More Specimens Quotes
I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a Book which to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.
walter savage landor— Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 33.
Most of these handpicked leaders were lawyers, and a few were physicians or educators; most had earned doctoral degrees. Among the more exotic specimens were Otto Ohlendorf, a handsome but argumentative young economist who had fallen into disfavor with Himmler.
otto ohlendorf— Richard Rhodes, 2003
They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zoo - an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as "India", just a geographical expression, just a construct of the British; no such thing as Hinduism, just a word used by Arabs to describe the assortment they encountered, just an invention of the communalists to impose a uniformity - that has been their stance. For this they have blackened the Hindu period of our history, and, as we shall see, strained to whitewash the Islamic period.
arun shourie— Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (p. x)
The great moral lesson which Saul's history leaves for the instruction of mankind is this: That without true piety the finest qualities of character and the highest position in society will utterly fail to make a true and noble man. If Saul's heart had been true to God, he would have been one of the grandest specimens of humanity; but, lacking this true obedience to God, he made his life an utter failure, and his character amoral wreck.
william mackergo taylor— P. 453. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Antique art has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and we have virtuously adapted our taste to this necessity. Almost all our favorite specimens of Greek sculpture, from the sixth century onward, were originally parts of compositions, and if we were faced with the complete group in which the Charioteer of Delphi was once a subsidiary figure, we might well experience a moment of revulsion. We have come to think of the fragment as more vivid, more concentrated, and more authentic.
kenneth clark— Ch. VI: Pathos
A monk of La Trappe, a French soldier of the Imperial Guard, and a thriving mill-owner, supposing each a type, and no more than a type, of his class, are all interesting specimens of humanity, but narrow ones, so narrow that even all the three together would not make up a perfect man.
john ruskin— Volume V, part IX, chapter XI (1860).
...the miserable specimens who call themselves ' liberals ' are really conservatives: they're desperately even hysterically defending a welfare-warfare kleptocracy that is now at least four generations old, against growing numbers of us (unlike Republicans , who seem to become more ignorant with every passing year) who have actually managed to learn something from history and are struggling to dismantle said kleptocracy.
l. neil smith— "A Matter of Definition,"[44] 8 August 2010
It's the flock, the grove, that matters. Our responsibility is to species, not to specimens; to communities, not to individuals.
— Sara Stein, Noah's Garden, 1998.
The great moral lesson which Saul's history leaves for the instruction of mankind is this: That without true piety the finest qualities of character and the highest position in society will utterly fail to make a true and noble man. If Saul's heart had been true to God, he would have been one of the grandest specimens of humanity; but, lacking this true obedience to God, he made his life an utter failure, and his character a moral wreck.
— William Mackergo Taylor, p. 453. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Narad Bhakthi sutra surpasses not merely sandilya by its easy eloquence and fervid devotion but it may be even regarded as one of the best specimens of Bhakthi literature that have ever been written. The Sandilya-sutra is more philosophical than Narada-Sutra. It goes into the question of nature of Brahman and Jiva , their inter-relation, the question of creation , and so on.
— R. D. Ranade, in "Mysticism in India: The Poet-Saints of Maharashtra", p.12
And all my endeavours are unlucky explorers come back, abandoning the expedition; the specimens, the lilies of ambition still spring in their climate, still unpicked; but time, time is all I lacked to find them, as the great collectors before me.
Gavin Douglas— 1944 'On a Return from Egypt,1943-44' (published1946).
I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'.
savitri devi— Pilgrimage (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958, p. 327, )
