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Norman Vincent Peale 63
American writer 1898–1993Related quotes

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
Source: The Secret History

"Nick Lowe" interview with Noel Murray at the A.V. Club (27 June 2007)

“Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.”
F 78
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Source: Aspects of the Novel (1927), Chapter Five: The Plot
Context: A man does not talk to himself quite truly — not even to himself: the happiness or misery that he secretly feels proceeds from causes that he cannot quite explain, because as soon as he raises them to the level of the explicable they lose their native quality. The novelist has a real pull here. He can show the subconscious short-circuiting straight into action (the dramatist can do this too); he can also show it in its relation to soliloquy. He commands all the secret life, and he must not be robbed of this privilege. "How did the writer know that?" it is sometimes said. "What's his standpoint? He is not being consistent, he's shifting his point of view from the limited to the omniscient, and now he's edging back again." Questions like this have too much the atmosphere of the law courts about them.

22 February 1908
India's Rebirth
Context: Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath. That man only is likely to dominate the chances of a Revolution, who makes no plans but preserves his heart pure for the will of God to declare itself. The great rule of life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose. If the will is fixed on the purpose it sets itself to accomplish, then circumstances will suggest the right course; but the schemer finds himself always tripped up by the unexpected.

“Once you start cancelling, there's always something which is not quite right.”
The Express on Sunday, 06/01/2002
Musician's life

“To be a serviceable man has always seemed to me something quite repulsive.”
Être un homme utile m'a paru toujours quelque chose de bien hideux.
Journaux intimes (1864–1867; published 1887), Mon cœur mis à nu (1864)

“Muffins should always be eaten quite calmly, as it is the only way to eat them!”
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest