“They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater the…" by John O'Hara?

John O'Hara4

American journalist 1905–1970

Related quotes

“Small minds can never handle great themes.”
Grandes materias ingenia parva non sufferunt.

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

Letter 60
Letters

“When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity. And when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

“Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the individual — these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that make up the history of science and the history of religion.”

Freeman Dyson book Infinite in All Directions

Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 1 : In Praise of Diversity
Context: Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features. They share these features also with other enterprises such as art, literature and music. The most salient features of all these enterprises are discipline and diversity. Discipline to submerge the individual fantasy in a greater whole. Diversity to give scope to the infinite variety of human souls and temperaments. Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the individual — these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that make up the history of science and the history of religion.

“Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.”

Alberto Moravia (1907–1990) Italian writer and journalist

“It is dangerous these days for a male to write even glancingly on feminist themes. Did anyone attack Margaret Atwood’s right to extrapolate religio-machismo in The Handmaid’s Tale? Women writers appear vouchsafed insight into the souls of men—credit that seldom flows the other way. It is a sexist and offensive assumption, which does not advance understanding.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Afterword (p. 561)
Glory Season (1993)

“There is no higher honor than to serve free men and women, no greater privilege than to labor in government beneath the Great Seal of the United States and the American flag.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

George Bush: "Remarks to Members of the Senior Executive Service," January 26, 1989. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16628&st <br class="br">Address to the Senior Executive Service (1989)

“The expansion of life, moving out from Earth into its inheritance, is an even greater theme than the expansion of England across the Atlantic. As Hakluyt wrote that there is under our noses the great and ample country of Virginia, I am saying that there is under our noses the territory of nine planets, forty moons, ten thousand asteroids and a trillion comets.”

Freeman Dyson book Infinite in All Directions

Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 7 : Roots

“I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

"Venice," The Century Magazine, vol. XXV (November 1882), reprinted in Portraits of Places (1883) and later in Italian Hours http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8ihou10.txt (1909), ch: I: Venice, pt. I.

“It'll say, 'Danny Elfman, who wrote the theme to 'The Simpsons,' etcetera…That's what I'll be remembered for.”

Danny Elfman (1953) American composer, record producer, and actor

On what he believes will be his obituary, from the Los Angeles Times cover story, "A Different Beat", 1999.

“Lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Ainsi les postes éminents rendent les grands hommes encore plus grands, et les petits beaucoup plus petits.
Aphorism 95
Les Caractères (1688), De l'Homme

“They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John O'Hara4

Related quotes

Related topics