Vivid Quotes
More Vivid Quotes
In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.
mikhail lermontov— A Hero of Our Time
On either side of them, as they glided onwards, the rich meadow-grass seemed that morning of a freshness and a greenness unsurpassable. Never had they noticed the roses so vivid, the willow-herb so riotous, the meadow-sweet so odorous and pervading. Then the murmur of the approaching weir began to hold the air, and they felt a consciousness that they were nearing the end, whatever it might be, that surely awaited their expedition.
Kenneth Grahame— Ch. 7 (The Reluctant Dragon)
If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness When everything is as it was in my childhood Violent, vivid and of infinite possibility.
— 1947 'If I Could Only Live at the Pitch That Is Near Madness'.
* "In the vivid description of the Gospel, it would seem that we must help the Christ hidden in every poor man, in every prisioner, in every sufferer. But if we paraphrased the marvelous scene and applied it to the child, we should find that Christ goes to help all men in the form of the child."
maria montessori— The Secret of Childhood, p. 106.
Do we want blanks, asterisks and exclamation marks which people can fill in with their own imaginations, or are we prepared and strong enough to tolerate, even if we do not approve, the strong Anglo-Saxon, realistic and vivid language?
john mortimer— Defending record shop proprietor Christopher Seale against obscenity charges for displaying advertisements for Sex Pistols' LP Never Mind the Bollocks, Nottingham Magistrates Court (1977-11-14)
On John Edwards, U.S. Senator from North Carolina: "The stump speech of pretty-boy Senator John Edwards, which I've heard often enough to be able to mouth along with him, has room for everything, including vivid, wrenching portraits of despair: 'Tonight somewhere in America a ten-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm.' You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be doubled up in laughter at that line.
mark steyn— "It's the war, stupid", 1 March 2004
I liked this because of the elimination of the essential in the composition. I cut it down and down, and down. This squeezed up to make it vivid.
william carlos williams— Annotation on "Chicory and Daisies" (1915) on John C. Thirlwell's copy of The Collected Earlier Poems (c. 1958)
Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
— Songs of Travel (published 1896), MyWife (1894).
I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses.
— 1916 'Easter,1916', l.1-4. Collected in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921).
Mr. Buckles has a vivid recollection of historic times, and one way for me to honor the service of those who wear the uniform in the past and those who wear it today is to herald you, sir, and to thank you very much for your patriotism and your love for America.
frank buckles— George W. Bush
— CNN March 8, 2008.
With his geisha-white complexion and vivid blue eyes, he is a touch of exotica even in the colourful world of Soho.
martin firrell— The Times Magazine (5 February 2005)
Literature, like memory, selects only the vivid patches.
t. e. hulme— As quoted in Notes of T E Hulme, Imagism & Imagists (1931) by Glenn Hughes
The 'inquests' which resulted in the compilation of the Domesday Book made a vivid and unfavorable impression on the country. A similar effect was produced by the inquests of 1166 and 1170, before alluded to. Even to this day, the word 'inquisitorial' bears the burden of historical unpopularity.
edward jenks— Chapter IV, Improved Legal Procedure, p. 47
"'Babies of course are not human — they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes; the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates. In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.'"
lewis padgett— A quote from A High Wind in Jamaica : The Innocent Voyage (1932) by Richard Arthur Warren Hughes, read by Rex Holloway
Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,Steel-true and blade-straight,The great artificerMade my mate.
Robert Louis Stevenson— No. XXVI, My Wife.
From the summer of my twelfth year I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of my boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them.
larry watson— Ch. 1 (Montana 1948)
America washes its dirty linen in public. When scandals such as this one hit, they do sully America's image in the world. But what usually also gets broadcast around the world is the vivid reality that the United States forces accountability and punishes wrongdoing, even at the highest levels.
fareed zakaria— Zakaria, Fareed (November 14, 2005). "Pssst ... Nobody Loves a Torturer". Newsweek. Retrieved on 2006-09-01.
With respect to the use of this sparkling coloured material (butterfly wings around 1955, fh) – the constituent parts of which remain indistinguishable – with the aim of producing a very vivid effect of scintillation, I realised that, for me, this responds to needs of the same order as those that formerly led me, in many drawings and paintings, to organize my lines and patches of colour so that the objects represented would meld into everything around them, so that the result would be a sort of continuous, universal soup with an intensive flavour of life.
jean dubuffet— Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, Vol. II, Jean Dubuffet, Gallimard, Paris 1967, p. 116
"This Ayah indicates that the pious person should express his love to Allah by believing in His Prophet and following the Message, and through obeying the Prophet, abiding by his orders, leaving what he prohibits and obeying all what Allah has revealed to him, because that is the vivid expression of the practical love that fills his whole entity."
mohammad hussein fadlallah— The mutual love between Allah and His servants
[Concerning an aurora, "vivid crimson ... indescribably rich and deep":] The white, rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks of the California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most telling of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. But here the mountains themselves were made divine, and declared His glory in terms still more impressive.
john muir— Travels in Alaska (1915), chapter 9: The Discovery of Glacier Bay
Here was my city, immense, overpowering, flooded with energy and light... The world, at that moment , opened before me, challenging me, beckoning me, demanding something of me that it would take more than a lifetime to give, but raising all my energies by its own vivid promise to a higher pitch.
Lewis Mumford— " Sketches from Life: The Autobiography of Lewis Mumford (1982), p. 130
When that amusing "Pauli effect" of the overturned vase occurred, on the occasion of the founding of the Jung Institute, I had the immediate and vivid impression that I should " pour out water inside " ( to use the symbolic language that I have acquired from you). Then when the connection between psychology and physics took up a relatively large part of your talk, it became even more clear to me what I was to do. The outcome of all this is the enclosed essay.
wolfgang pauli— Letter to Carl Jung (16 June 1948), referring to an incident where a vase fell over, apparently spontaneously as he entered a room, and an essay: Moderne Beispiele zur 'Hintergrunds-physik' (Modern Examples of 'Background Physics' ). Jung and Pauli worked together in developing theories of Synchronicity.
Shelley appealed to me from his hatred of tyranny. And also from his very vivid sense of beauty, natural beauty, and every kind of beauty. And I thought he sort of portrayed a lovely world of the imagination.
Percy Bysshe Shelley— Bertrand Russell, in an interview with David Susskind (10 June 1962).
As when the moon , refulgent lamp of night , O'er heaven 's clear azure spreads her sacred light , When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene; Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain's head; Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.
— Homer, in The Iliad as translated by Alexander Pope, Book VIII, line 687
To the degree that a man possesses a vivid ideal of the good life, submerges himself in the sea of human misery and endeavors to alleviate suffering, kindles imagination in hours of silence and by visions of beauty, and follows the noblest personality into the presence of a loving, suffering Father to the extent that he lives meaningfully, he will be convinced of sin and cry aloud for deliverance.
— "Penitence and Social Progress" World Tomorrow 15 (May, 1932)
The work deserved its success for its own merits, for despite the narration of many marvellous sights, the author remained urbane and tolerant. He was a superb storyteller with a vivid imagination, who was able to combine the novel with the familiar, and moral exhortation with entertainment.
— N. F. Blake, in Whitney F. Bolton (ed.) The Middle Ages (London: Sphere, 1970) p. 381.
The 'inquests' which resulted in the compilation of the Domesday Book made a vivid and unfavorable impression on the country. A similar effect was produced by the inquests of 1166 and 1170, before alluded to. Even to this day, the word 'inquisitorial' bears the burden of historical unpopularity.
— Chapter IV, Improved Legal Procedure, p. 47
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy.
anatole france— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (vol. 1 of The Works of Anatole France), trans. Lafcadio Hearn, part 2, chapter 4, June 6, 1860, p. 198 (1924).
Loud o'er my head though awful thunders roll, And vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole, Yet 'tis Thy voice, my God, that bids them fly, Thy arm directs those lightnings through the sky. Then let the good Thy mighty name revere, And hardened sinners Thy just vengeance fear.
walter scott— Walter Scott, On a Thunderstorm. Written at the age of twelve. Found in Lockhart's Life of Scott, Volume I, Chapter III
