Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 88; as cited by David Byrne (1999)
“There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.”
The Conservative http://www.rwe.org/the-conservative/ (1842)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Design of Inquiring Systems (1971), p. 11

On songwriting styles of the post-World War II era, in an interview with Bob Boilen on All Songs Considered (17 November 2006) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15961159 (NPR)
Context: The songwriting style, to me, is superior... there was a certain amount of joy in it, no matter how sad the song is. You get joy in listening to these Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison sad lyrics. I'm attracted to songs that have balance between the darks and the lights and giving them all equal opportunity.

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 137

“If certain facts present themselves with an alarming regularity”
Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: I have always comprehended with difficulty... how persons pre-occupied doubtless by ideas, have seen any tendency to materialism in exposition of a series of facts deduced from documents. In giving to my work the title of Physics, I have had no other aim than to collect, in uniform order, the phenomena affecting man, nearly as physical science brings together the phenomena appertaining to the material world. If certain facts present themselves with an alarming regularity, to whom is blame to be ascribed? Ought charges of materialism to be brought against him who points out that regularity?

Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

"Off the Page: Martin Amis" (2003)
Context: I'd like to be remembered as someone who kept the comic novel going for another generation or so. I fear the comic novel is in retreat. A joke is by definition politically incorrect — it assumes a butt, and a certain superiority in the teller. The culture won't put up with that for much longer.

“But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
IQ84 (2009-2010)
Variant: It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.
Source: 1Q84