Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer
Session 426, Page 25
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 9
Source: Real Presences (1989), II: The Broken Contract, Ch. 4 (p. 82).
Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer
Session 426, Page 25
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 9
“If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.”
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author
John Kenneth Galbraith book The Affluent Society
Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 4, Section IV, p. 45
Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist
Source: "The End of Reason" (1941), p. 44.
Tom Robbins (1932) American writer
The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
Context: Certain individual words do possess more pitch, more radiance, more shazam! than others, but it's the way words are juxtaposed with other words in a phrase or sentence that can create magic. Perhaps literally. The word "grammar," like its sister word "glamour," is actually derived from an old Scottish word that meant "sorcery." When we were made to diagram sentences in high school, we were unwittingly being instructed in syntax sorcery, in wizardry. We were all enrolled at Hogwarts. Who knew?
When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work. The pervasive brutality in current fiction – the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord – is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world. Less apparent is that bland writing — timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing – is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies.
Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement
The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam http://www.allamaiqbal.com/works/prose/english/reconstruction/index.htm
P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister
As cited in Dictionary of South African Quotations, Jennifer Crwys-Williams, Penguin Books 1994, p. 22
“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.”
Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer
“I'm always right. This time I'm just even more right than usual.”
Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker
Message to linux-kernel mailing list, 2005-07-14, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org/msg83284.html, <br class="br">2000s, 2005