Vivid Quotes
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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.
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More Vivid Quotes
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'.
Memories are like fireflies darting across the surface of my mind, showing me here and there images so sharp and vivid that I catch my breath in wonder before the vignette disappears, sinking like a pebble into the quicksand of regret and recrimination.
susan kay— Giovanni (p. 133)
* "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)
In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed.
David Hume— 1845-62 Kosmos (translated as Cosmos,1897).
The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre. Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun, And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
Sir Stephen Harold Spender— 1933 'I Think Continually ofThose'.
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.
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
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.
john mandeville— N. F. Blake, in Whitney F. Bolton (ed.) The Middle Ages (London: Sphere, 1970) p. 381.
"'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.
Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a ‘poetic mood’. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one’s thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.
ludwig wittgenstein— p. 75e (Culture and Value (1980))
“I haven’t changed my mind, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said at length. The stench and crackle of burning boats was vivid to him.
john brunner— continuity (3) “After One Decade”
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
The eye instinctively looks for analogies and amplifies them, so that a face imagined in the pattern of a wallpaper may become more vivid than a photograph.
kenneth clark— Ch. IX: The Nude As an End in Itself
"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
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).
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted in the waving grass
And by the streamers of the white cloud
And whispers of the wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
— "I Think of Those Who Were Truly Great"
Here where I lie is the hot pit
Crowding on the mind with coal
And the will turned against it
Only drills new seams of darkness
Through the dark-surrounding whole.
Our vivid suns of happiness
Withered from summer, drop their flowers;
Hands of the longed, withheld tomorrow
Fold on the hands of yesterday
In double sorrow.
— The Still Centre, "The Separation" (1939)
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.
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
