Quotes about fine (1393 quotes, page 7)

“The day after your departure I started a new painting at Le Cours-la-Reine, in the afternoon in a glow of sun, and another in the morning by the water below St. Paul's Church. These two canvases are fairly well advanced, but I still need one session in fine weather without too much mist to give them a little firmness. Until now I have not been able to find the effect I want, I have even been forced to change the effect a bit, which is always dangerous. I have also an effect of fog... Until now I have not been able to find the effect I want, I have even been forced to change the effect a bit, which is always dangerous. I have also an effect of fog, another, same effect, from my window, the same motif in the rain, several sketches in oils, done on the quays near the boats; the next day it was impossible to go on, everything was confused, the motifs no longer existed; one has to realize them in a single session.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter from Rouen 11 October 1883, to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 42
1880's

Departure , Water , Change , Sun

“We're at a time when we are being presented with undeniable changes in the global climate and fundamental issues that affect every single one of us, and it's the time we're listening to the most hokey shite on the radio and watching vacuous bullshit celebrities being vacuous bullshit celebrities and desperately trying to forget about everything. Which is fine, you know, but personally speaking, I can't do that.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

source http://web.archive.org/web/20031208173545/http://www.icyeyes.com.br/interp.htm

Change , Time , Personality , Forgetting

“There [is] no little vigour and force added to words, when they are delivered in a neat and fine way, and somewhat out of the ordinary road, common and dull language relishing more of the clown than the gentleman. But herein also affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself, than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn.”

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648) Anglo-Welsh soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher

Source: The Autobiography, Pp. 35-6

Way

“I returned last week…from visiting the Italian front. I was up with the Eighth Army, that Army which will always seem to me to epitomize the unity of our Commonwealth and Empire. I saw there in Italy Canadians, South Africans, and New Zealanders. I recalled talking with General Alexander the great deeds of the Australians. As I saw our lads from all our countries so fine and gallant, I was thrilled with pride.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the conference of representatives of the British and Dominion Labour parties, Westminster, London (12 September 1944), quoted in The Times (13 September 1944), p. 8.
War Cabinet

Country

“I recognize fully that you do not draw well, my dear Lucien [his son, also painter]. I told you any number of times that it is essential to have known forms in the eye and in the hand. It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

In a letter, 1883, to his son Lucien; as quoted by C., & Rewald, in Camille Pissarro: Letters to his son Lucien, New York: Pantheon Books, 1943 p. 32
1880's

Time , Drawing

“One shining morning, at the head of the Pacheco Pass, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most divinely beautiful and sublime I have ever beheld. There at my feet lay the great central plain of California, level as a lake thirty or forty miles wide, four hundred long, one rich furred bed of golden Compositae. And along the eastern shore of this lake of gold rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, in massive, tranquil grandeur, so gloriously colored and so radiant that it seemed not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city. Along the top, and extending a good way down, was a rich pearl-gray belt of snow; then a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension of the forests; and stretching along the base of the range a broad belt of rose-purple, where lay the miners' gold and the open foothill gardens — all the colors smoothly blending, making a wall of light clear as crystal and ineffably fine, yet firm as adamant. Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years in the midst of it, rejoicing and wondering, seeing the glorious floods of light that fill it, — the sunbursts of morning among the mountain-peaks, the broad noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, — it still seems to me a range of light.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" The Treasures of the Yosemite http://books.google.com/books?id=ZzWgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA483", The Century Magazine, volume XL, number 4 (August 1890) pages 483-500 (at page 483)
1890s

Beauty , Color , Way , Mountain

“A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

World , Heart

“I determined there was a great future in the mail-order business, and I landed a job that brought me to the head of a large department. About this time our daughter Joan was born.
Having a good job and every prospect for advancement, I decided to go into business for myself, with harrowing results. I had no capital when I started and less when I got through. At this time the mail-order company offered me an excellent position if I wanted to come back If I had accepted it, I would probably have been fixed for life with a good living salary. Yet the chances are that I would never have written a story, which proves that occasionally it is better to do the wrong thing than the right.
When my independent business sank without a trace, I approached as near financial nadir as one may reach. My son, Hulbert, had just been born. I had no job, and no money. I had to pawn Mrs, Burroughs' jewelry and my watch in order to buy food. I loathed poverty, and I should have liked to have put my hands on the man who said that poverty is an honorable estate. It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is nothing honorable or fine about it. To be poor is quite bad enough. But to be poor without hope … well, the only way to understand it is to be it.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

Life , Money , Food , Hope

“Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others, and this is a gift interred only by the self.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860), Behavior

Support

“To shoot a grouse exacts something from the thinking man. It requires principle, which like good manners is not old-fashioned and never has been. It is something in your heart and in your head. The perceptive gunner is immersed in the style and charm of his dog’s work and in the shot, but with it all, he is one with what happens to the bird. His shooting is not vindictive, a getting-even because the grouse is so hard to hit. To regret a miss is normal animal response to temporary failure, not to be confused with sentient “the bastard got away.” Emotions are drawn to such thin threads they reach the breaking point, but when finely-honed tensions balance, shooting becomes a spiritual thing between you and the grouse.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Dogs , Fashion , Failure , Bird

“The icing on the cake is where I had to take second fiddle to Yaxeni Oriquen Garcia 2005 Ms Olympia that was a big stab in the back at the time we were instructed to reduce 20% in the muscularity round.. I normally compete at 160-162 that year being the embassador of the sport I must lead by example, which I did. I competed at 155lbs still same conditioning, shape etc…. Lord behold second fiddle to Yaxeni.. It looked as if Yaxeni had did the opposite of what the current ruling stated and she was being rewarded.. Come on we have two different body types! I have a small tapered waist line, fine detail flowing through out my body, nice harmony and she's displaying nothing but BIG. When someone refers to Yaxeni body they say she's a big girl.. She has great confidence about herself on stage, which is an EXCELLENT tool and having that can always gain you a few points, but to flat out win is RIDICULOUS and not possible… Anyhow, Yaxeni was more surprised then I when hearing her name announced victoriously. And believe it or not annoucing the winner that year was Lenda Murray, so she was probably soaking up every second of me losing as a mild way of payback. I was always told when going after the champ you have to completely knock the champ "OUT."”

Iris Kyle (1974) American bodybuilder

Anything close should not cause you a win.
2012-02-05
An Exclusive Interview With the Ms. Olympia Champion Iris Kyle
RX Muscle
Internet
http://www.rxmuscle.com/rx-girl-articles/female-bodybuilding/4986-an-exclusive-interview-with-the-ms-olympia-champion-iris-kyle.html
Sourced quotes, 2012

Way , Confidence , Girl , Sport

“Sinbad is produced in accordance with the fine old Shubert precept that nothing succeeds like undress. p. 6”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 1: 1918

“The fact is that I spent twenty-five years in the private sector. And that obviously teaches you something that you don't learn if you haven't spent any time in the private sector. If you were to say to me, tell me what you learned from your schooling that would help you be a President, it's like, well, how do I begin going through a list like that? You learn through life's experience. The President's experience has been exclusively in politics and as a community organizer. Both of those are fine areas of endeavor. But right now we have an economy in trouble, and someone who spent their career in the economy is more suited to help fix the economy than someone who spent his life in politics and as a community organizer.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-05-23
http://thepage.time.com/2012/05/23/the-complete-romney-interview-transcript/
The Complete Romney Interview Transcript
TIME
2012

Life , School , Communication , Learning

“I’ve negotiated bank deals all over the globe. Everything is a compromise. … I never take anything off the table. They say good luck, put your government together. Fine — I’ve loved it. So we have jumped in with vigor. I have now had CEOs who have called me, several have come to visit me, and made it clear to me that I better get this workforce development fixed or they have to take other options available to them. Obviously, the biggest challenge is state government is so immense, so many different departments, so many people involved. It’s a challenge but not an overwhelming challenge — I actually enjoy it. I haven’t taken time off since the election. Many of my predecessors have said ‘You need to do that.’ It’s really not my personality.”

Terry McAuliffe (1957) American businessman and politician

Quoted on Times Dispatch, "An interview with Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe" http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/state-regional/virginia-politics/an-interview-with-gov--elect-terry-mcauliffe/article_1165648d-8a21-57a1-baec-bfef6a7baa91.html, December 22, 2013

Love , People , Time , Personality

“A wet summer and a fine winter should be the farmer's prayer.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Georgics, Book I, p. 39
Translations, The Poems of Virgil Translated Into English Prose (1872)

Winter , Summer

“You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy
But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!”

Bertolt Brecht The Threepenny Opera

Macheath in "Second Threepenny-Finale"; Act 2, scene 3, p. 67
Variant translations:
However much you twist, whatever lies you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on.
Used by the Pet Shop Boys, in "What Keeps Mankind Alive?", Can You Forgive Her (1993 EP)
Food first, then morality.
The Threepenny Opera (1928)

Waiting

“In this Summer time of ours with Scheveningen on the shore the bathing time and the hot weather I did very few things.... was only busy calculating my studies [for later paintings] and to see what I should do.... an interior with some figures an outside Schevening shore scene a scene with sentiment of feeling or a picture quite after nature so natural as if it was the old dutch school [17th century].... I hope the next days will bring me a safe outcome from the turbulations in my head, all is so fine and beautiful to do..”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

original text by Israëls
In a letter from The Hague, 26 August 1872, to his friend and colleague George Reid in Edinburgh; as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, p. 363
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

School , Beauty , Hope , Feeling

“The king of Gurjars maintain numerous faces and no other Indian prince has so fine a cavalry. He has great riches and his camels and horses are numerous. There is no country in India more safe from robbers”

Mihira Bhoja I (836–885) Ruler of the Gurjara Pratihara dynasty

Words by Salaiman an arab invader who visited India during the emperor's reign.[History of Ancient India: Earliest Times to 1000 A. D., http://books.google.co.in/books?id=cWmsQQ2smXIC&pg=PA207&dq]
About

Horse , Country

“My baby ohhh
Come take control, just grab a hold
Of my body and mind; soon we'll be making it
Honey, oh we're feeling fine
You're my medicine. Open up and let me in.
Darling, you're so great;
I can't wait for you to operate.”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

Sexual Healing.
Song lyrics, Midnight Love (1982)

Feeling , Waiting , Baby

“You can be ruthless by playing football and one-touch football. Sometimes we get confused between desire and playing football. There is a fine line and sometimes we could pass the ball to each other a bit better. Football is a team effort and sometimes when you're not playing well together you need to go back to basics and play as a team.”

Thierry Henry (1977) French association football player

" Thierry Henry player profile http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,278-377977,00.html, Times Online

Effort , Football

“It was a beautiful embodied thought,
A dream of the fine painter, one of those
That pass by moonlight o'er the soul, and flit
'Mid the dim shades of twilight, when the eye
Grows tearful with its ecstasy.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1st June 1822) Poetic Sketches. Second Series - Sketch the Fifth. Mr. Martin’s Picture of Clytie
8th June 1822) The Deserter see The Improvisatrice (1824
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Beauty , Dreams , Soul , Tear

“What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions? All these, indeed, need the cultivator’s skill. Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness. These Moses often calls by the compound name of wholefruits. In the case of growths which spring from the earth, neither are the trees the fruit nor the fruit the trees, but in the soul’s plantation the saplings of wisdom, of justice, of temperance, have their whole being transformed completely into fruits.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

68-71.
Every Good Man is Free

Wisdom , Justice , Soul , Search

“I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm… in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs—at all costs—our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost—because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”

Daniel Berrigan (1921–2016) American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet

No Bars to Manhood (1971), p. 49.

Love , Life , Death , Men

“Perhaps the editor may be accused of nationality, when he says, that, taking the total merits of this work together, he prefers it to the early exertions of even the Italian muse, to the melancholy sublimity of Dante, and the amorous quaintness of Petrarca…Here indeed the reader will find few of the graces of fine poetry, little of the attic dress of the muse; but here are life and spirit, and ease and plain sense, and pictures of real manners, and perpetual incident and entertainment. The language is remarkably good for the time, and far superior in neatness and elegance even to that of Gawin Douglass, who wrote more than a century after.”

John Barbour (1316–1395) Scottish poet

John Pinkerton, in his edition of The Bruce (London: G. Nicol, 1790) vol. 1, p. x.
Criticism

Life , Sense , Time

“Women have two orgasms, the real ones and the ones they make up on their own. And I can give you the male point of view on this, which is: we're fine with it. You do whatever you have to do, and we'll do whatever we have to…. To a man, sex is like a car accident anyway, and trying to determine a female orgasm is like asking, "What did you see after the car went out of control?" "Well, there were a lot of screeching noises, I was facing the wrong way at one point, and in the end, my body was thrown clear."”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Women , Sex , Cars , Way

“NATO is going to be just fine. But NATO countries -- we have 28 countries -- many of them are taking advantage of us because they're not paying. So we're protecting these countries and they're not paying. … I'm all in favor of NATO. I said NATO is obsolete. I was asked a question by one of your competitors and I said NATO is obsolete, because it's not taking care of terror.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, This Week Interview (July 30, 2016)

Question , Country

“Science Fiction Gods; Do they take much of an interest in us? I doubt it. How much entertainment does an ant's nest provide you with?
'Adepticus Sir, that bunch of Ornithoids on Artoc 4 that you asked me to observe, well they've just trashed their planet.'
'Oh that is a pity Initiatus Jones. What was it this time, ecological screw up or nuclear winter?'
'Worse than that sir, i looks lke they were mucking around with vacuum energy without having first invented the Mobius sphere.'
'Ah yes, the old classic mistake, we loose a few like that.'
'Could we not have tipped them off about it Sir?'
'I'm afraid not Jones, stupidity must remain its own reward, it's regrettable but there you are. Did you salvage anything?'
'They composed some fairly good poetry a couple of centuries ago, and some rather fine cloud sculptures fairly recently, I've logged some records in the archives.'
'Splendid Jones, I'll peruse them this evening. What about those Apes on Sol 3, how are they getting on?'
'Quit a bit of warfare as usual Sir, mostly based on chemical explosives these days, but with the occasional use of plutonium. Many of them have developed a belief in a big bang theory, and they reckon that they have the maths to prove it.'
'Really? Smith in anthropology will probably find that hilarious, I'm sure she would appreciate the data. It was one of her old Stomping grounds you know?'
'No I didnt know that Sir'
'It was a long time ago Jones, and a bit of a fiasco actually, she gave them a piece of her mind about some of their barbaric behavior which then abruptly became worse. Ever since then they have been obsessed with the number plate on her craft, it read 'JHVH'. The department gave her a desk job after that.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: The Apophenion (2008), p. 107-108

God , Stupidity , Behavior , Science

“She don’t set no store to see a king. Her pa a king back in Africa, and they shoot him dead. Them Portuguese slavers show her what it mean to be a king—it mean you die quick like everybody, and spill blood red like everybody, and cry out loud in pain and scared—oh, fine to be a king, and fine to see one. Do them White folk believe this lie?”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 2.

Pain , Lie , Cry , Dead

“The picture rises before us vivid and bright: the finely carved, dragon-shaped prow; the high, curving stern; the long row of shields, black and yellow alternately, ranged along the sides; the gleam of steel; the scent of murder.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On the Viking Long Ships, Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

“Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible—though very unlikely—that our whole world is controlled by elves. But supernatural explanations like these are simply never needed; we manage to understand the natural world just fine using reason and materialism.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), pp. 224-225

World , Understanding , Nature , Science

“I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for England if she is the first European nation which utterly abolishes it! I was told before leaving England that after living in slave countries all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the negro character. It is impossible to see a negro and not feel kindly towards him; such cheerful, open, honest expressions and such fine muscular bodies. I never saw any of the diminutive Portuguese, with their murderous countenances, without almost wishing for Brazil to follow the example of Hayti; and, considering the enormous healthy-looking black population, it will be wonderful if, at some future day, it does not take place.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter VI: "The Voyage", page 246 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=264&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image; letter to sister Caroline Sarah Darwin (22 May 1833)
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

Feeling , Future , Country

“It's not necessarily against a system that it collapses, because most systems do collapse in the end. That’s a part of the wheel of life - systems do collapse. So I’m to some extent slightly inclined to forgive capitalism for being about to collapse. I mean there are lots of fine things, lots of love affairs and the like which have come to a sticky end. On the other hand, it is quite an accusation - quite hard for it to live down - that it's going to destroy the entire planet with it.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Interview, November 4th, 2010 http://www.darkoptimism.org/2016/10/14/by-popular-demand-david-flemings-interviews/

Love , Life , Forgiveness , Parting

“Investigators identified 29 members of the 173rd Airborne as suspects in confirmed cases of torture. Fifteen of them admitted the acts. Yet only three were punished, records show. They received fines or reductions in rank. None served any prison time.”

Nick Turse (1975) American writer

A Tortured Past http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-vietnam20aug20-story.html#page=1, August 2006

Time

“I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humour.”

Edward Albee Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961)

Sense

“A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and th' action fine.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Source: The Temple (1633), The Elixir, Lines 17-20

Law

“He also knew when to stop. In the fine art of deceit and personal advancement as in any other calling this is the hallmark of the master.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 31 “Reintroducing the Twins” (p. 173)

Art , Personality

“In build and appearance, Tuppy somewhat resembles a bulldog, and his aspect now was that of one of these fine animals who has just been refused a slice of cake.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Appearance , Animals

“We mortals sometimes cut a pitiable figure in our attempts at display. We may be sure of our own merits, yet fatally ignorant of the point of view from which we are regarded by our neighbour. Our fine patterns in tattooing may be far from throwing him into a swoon of admiration, though we turn ourselves all round to show them.”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Source: Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Chapter 11 (at page 117)

Tattoo

“I paused and set down my glass, searching for the fine edge of deceit that always lies right up against the truth.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 32 (p. 394)

Truth , Search

“January, 14th, 1835: We came to anchor in the spacious bay of Santa Barbara. There was only one vessel in the port. Beside the vessel, there was no object to break the surface of the bay… directly opposite the anchoring ground, lie the mission and town of Santa Barbara, on a low plain, but little above the level of the sea, covered with grass, though entirely without trees, and surrounded on three sides by an amphitheater of mountains, which slant off to the distance of fifteen or twenty miles. The mission stands a little back of the town, and is a large building, or rather a collection of buildings, in the center of which is a high tower, with a belfry of five bells. The whole, being plastered, makes quite a show at a distance, and is the mark by which vessels come to anchor. The town lies a little nearer to the beach — about half a mile from it — and is composed of one-story houses built of sun-baked clay, or adobe, some of them whitewashed, with red tiles on the roof. I should judge that there was about a hundred of them… The town is finely situated, with a bay in front, and an amphitheater of hills behind.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

Two Years Before the Mast (1840)

Lie , Mountain , Tree , Grass

“We must exercise faith. We don’t pretend we’re fine. We don’t deny it. But we trust in Him.”

John Townsend (1952) Canadian clinical psychologist and author

Where Is God (2009, Thomas Nelson publishers)

Faith , Exercises

“One man prays thus: How shall I be able to lie with that woman? Do thou pray thus: How shall I not desire to lie with her? Another prays: How shall I be released from this? Another prays: How shall I not desire to be released? Another thus: How shall I not lose my little son? Thou thus: How shall I not be afraid to lose him? In fine, turn thy prayers this way, and see what comes.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

IX, 40
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IX

Lie , Way

“If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep inflicted lacerations never heal - cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge - so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo: caressing kindnesses - loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Ch. XXII: The Letter

Love , Life , Death

“I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man’s Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore).

Life , Idea , Learning , Universe

“If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow the wealth which they spend? They are clad in velvet and camlet lined with squirrel and ermine, while we go dressed in coarse cloth. They have the wines, the spices and the good bread: we have the rye, the husks and the straw, and we drink water. They have shelter and ease in their fine manors, and we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain in the fields. And from us must come, from our labour, the things which keep them in luxury”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Et, se venons tout d'un père et d'une mere, Adam et Eve, en quoi poent il dire ne monstrer que il sont mieux signeur que nous, fors parce que il nous font gaaignier et labourer ce que il despendent? Il sont vestu de velours et de camocas fourés de vair et de gris, et nous sommes vesti de povres draps. Il ont les vins, les espisses et les bons pains, et nous avons le soille, le retrait et le paille, et buvons l'aige. Ils ont le sejour et les biaux manoirs, et nous avons le paine et le travail, et le pleue et le vent as camps, et faut que de nous viengne et de nostre labeur ce dont il tiennent les estas.
Book 2, p. 212.
Froissart is again quoting John Ball.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Spring , Drink , Water , Wine

“I'm fine thanks for the support, but I had a little accident on the set. I will return to work as soon as possible. Having a strong skull gives results when an iron bar fell on her face. She hit me in several places and also I broke my nose in two points. I got a nose for it, but I'm glad to be alive. it's okay. the doctor told me I have an unusual fiber in a little thicker muscle that was what saved me.”

Dominic Purcell (1970) actor

Quoted in, Dominic Purcell, of 'Prison Break', are injured in shooting and put photo on the web http://ego.globo.com/famosos/noticia/2016/06/dominic-purcell-de-prision-break-se-fere-em-filmagem-e-posta-foto-na-web.html, ego.globo, 3 March 2016

Support , Strong

“My dear Theo, Feeling, even a fine feeling, for the beauties of nature isn't the same as religious feeling, although I believe that the two are closely connected. The same is true of a feeling for art. Don't give in to that too much either. Hold fast especially to your love for the firm [of the Paris' art dealers Goupil & C0, where both brothers worked - Vincent started in 1869 and Theo in 1873] and for your work.... Nearly everyone has a feeling for nature, some more than others, but there are few who feel that God is a spirit, and that they must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Pa is one of the few, Ma too, and also Uncle Vincent, I believe.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

quote from his Letter #049 to Theo on 'religious feeling' (Paris, 17 Sept. 1875) http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let049/letter.html
1870s

Love , God , Truth , Beauty

“Homer is one of the men of genius who solve that fine problem of art — the finest of all, perhaps — truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal.”

Victor Hugo book William Shakespeare

Homère est un des génies qui résolvent ce beau problème de l’art, le plus beau de tous peut-être, la peinture vraie de l’humanité obtenue par le grandissement de l’homme, c’est-à-dire la génération du réel dans l’idéal.
Part I, Book II, Chapter II, Section I
William Shakespeare (1864)

Men , Art , Problem

“Don’t never depend on somebody else to take care of you, sugar. Trust in the Lord, and then you just take care of yourself, and things will work out fine.”

Mary Kay Andrews (1954) American writer(original name/Kathy Hogan Trocheck)

Little Bitty Lies (2003)

Dependency

“France is herself Only in the winter, her naked self, without manners. In the fine weather, all the world can love her.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

Love , World , Winter , Weather

“Courage is the highest quality for a soldier, but technology is a fine substitute.”

David Mitchell (1969) English novelist

Part 6
number9dream (2001)

Courage

“In a word, the home is a little dull. When you have got a woman in a box, and you pay rent on the box, her relationship to you insensibly changes character. It loses the fine excitement of democracy. It ceases to be companionship, for companionship is only possible in a democracy. It is no longer a sharing of life together—it is a breaking of life apart. Half a life—cooking, clothes, and children; half a life—business, politics, and baseball. It doesn’t make much difference which is the poorer half. Either half, when it comes to life, is very near to none at all.Of course, this artificial distinction does not strictly obtain in any particular marriage. There is an attempt to break it down. It is an honourable attempt. But our civilization is nevertheless built on that distinction, In order to break down that distinction utterly, it will be necessary to break down all the codes and restrictions and prejudices that keep women out of the great world. It is in the great world that a man finds his sweetheart, and in that narrow little box outside of the world that he loses her. When she has left that box and gone back into the great world, a citizen and a worker, then with surprise and delight he will discover her again, and never let her go.”

Floyd Dell (1887–1969) novelist, poet, playwright, critic, editor

[Dell, Floyd, Feminism for Men, The Masses, New York, 1914]

Life , Women , Marriage , Children

“[Edmonton is a] fine city with too many socialists and mosquitoes. At least you can spray the mosquitoes.”

Ralph Klein (1942–2013) Canadian politician

Source: Welcome to Ralph's World: 10 of Ralph Klein's most colourful quotes http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/welcome-to-ralph-s-world-10-of-ralph-klein-s-most-colourful-quotes-1.1216791

“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

The Two Paths, Lecture II: The Unity of Art, section 54 (1859).

Art , Heart

“The best way, of course, to understand the animator is to see that he parallels the actor. He has the same responsibility a fine actor has. […] Even the people who write about animation just don't seem to understand that when you have a drawing, you don't have a character. […] "This is the first Bugs Bunny" has no meaning. It's how Bugs came to stand and move and act, and what his feelings were, and his thoughts, and what kind of personality he was. That developed over a period of time. And you need fine animators to do that.”

Chuck Jones (1912–2002) American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films

Adamson, "Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats", 61.

People , Way , Feeling , Understanding

“There has been an increased but still rather limited response to general systems theory, as variously reflected in the work of Bateson, Vayda, Rappaport, Adams, and an interest in the use of computers, programming, matrices, etc. But the interaction between general systems theory (as represented, for example, by the theoretical work of Von Bertalanffy) has been compromised, partly by the state of field data, extraordinarily incomparable as it inevitably is, as well as historical anthropological methods of dealing with wholes. General systems theory has taken its impetus from the excitement of discovering larger and larger contexts, on the one hand, and a kind of microprobing into fine detail within a system, on the other. Both of these activities are intrinsic to anthropology to the extent that field work in living societies has been the basic disciplinary method. It is no revelation to any field-experienced anthropologist that everything is related to everything else, or that whether the entire sociocultural setting can be studied in detail or not, it has to be known in general outline.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Changing Styles of Anthropological Work, 1973, p. 8

Study

“Look at that young, active, energetic Hindu who has received education in some English school or college. Yesterday what was he? An ignorant Indian. To-day what is he? An active, intelligent, fine-looking, educated man. Tomorrow what is he? He has English books on one side, he has the dangerous bottle of whisky on the other side. What is he the next day? Oh sad catastrophe! The whole house mourns the death of the promising young man.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech at St. Jame’s Hall, Picadilly, London, on 19th May 1870.

Death , Books , Education , Sadness

“17. Wednesday. A fine morning. Proceeded on my journey towards Braintree. Stopped to see Mr. Haven, of Dedham, who told me, very civilly, he supposed I took my faith on trust from Dr. Mayhew, and added, that he believed the doctrine of satisfaction of Jesus Christ to be essential to Christianity, and that he would not believe this satisfaction unless he believed the Divinity of Christ. Mr. Balch was there too, and observed, he would not be a Christian if he did not believe mysteries of the gospel; that he could bear with an Arminian, but when, Dr. Mayhew they denied the Divinity and satisfaction of Christ, he had no more to do with them; that he knew to make of Dr. Mayhew's two discourses upon the expected of all things. They gave him an idea of a cart whose wanted greasing; it rumbled on in a hoarse, rough manner; there was a good deal of ingenious talk in them, but it was thrown together in a jumbled, confused order. He believed the Doctor wrote them in a great panic. He added further that Arminians, however stiffly they maintain their opinions in health, always, he takes notice, retract when they come to die, and choose to die Calvinists. Set out for Braintree, and arrived about sunset.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Entry for 17 February 1756 in Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams vol. 2, 10-1
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)

Health , Faith , Idea , Christ

“So I think we need a new plan. Next time a country wants to take us on, 'stead of sending bombs, let's try this: send everyone in the country a color television and a satellite dish. And give 'em the basic package, not HBO — screw those people. And before the war starts, we make them all sit down. "Okay, we'll go to war with you. You want a piece of us, fine, fine. Before we go, I want you guys to understand us a little better, so you have to sit down and watch ESPN2 for 24 hours. 'Cause you watch ESPN2 for a full day, you're gonna understand America a lot better. 'Hi, we're America! We build monster trucks for fun! We developed the top fuel dragster, zero to three hundred thirty miles an hour in under five seconds, cause, pfft, we were bored. Piss us off, heh, and see what we build! And we may feel bad about it later! Ask Japan. But before we feel bad…we're gonna jack you up! And then we're gonna send you FOOD! 'Cause we're America; we're schizophrenic. Don't mess with a nation that needs medication!'"”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

The Fifth-Annual End-of-the-World Tour (2007)

War , People , Food , Color

“I am reasonably certain of one thing. The unquestioning acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation has served to hold back progress on the development of alternative approaches. Blind acceptance of the orthodox position cannot produce the challenges needed to push the theory eventually to its breaking point. And break it will, probably in a way nobody can predict, to produce a theory nobody can imagine. The arguments about reality will undoubtedly persist, but at least we will have a better theory.
I have tried to argue that quantum theory is a difficult subject for modern students of physical science because its interpretation is so firmly rooted in philosophy. If, in arguing the case, I have only made the subject seem even more confusing, then I apologize. However, my most important message is a relatively simple one: quantum theory is rife with conceptual problems and contradictions, and its most common interpretation is anti-realist in nature. If you fine the theory difficult to understand, this is the theory's fault—not yours.”

Jim Baggott (1957) British writer

Closing remarks
Beyond Measure (2004)

Way , Imagination , Understanding , Nature

“When I left school, I had a list of priorities headed by 'marriage' and 'children'. That is how, I suppose, as a woman, you are brought up to think. At the same time, as I grew older, I told myself that if it happens, it happens, and that will be fine, but if it doesn't, that will be fine, too.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Women's Weekly interview (2006)

Marriage , Children , School , Thinking

“And for me, it's pretty clear-cut that until we learn some better explanation for how life began, there is a God who always existed and created the heavens and the earth. And until somebody gives me a better explanation, I'll go for it. And it doesn't scare me at all when scientists say, "Oh, but that can't be proved," because neither can any of the Darwinian hypotheses about how life began be proved. Anyway, I couldn't give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. It doesn't earn any extra respect from me, because it's not as if science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists were telling Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists were telling Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50 million people in order to further the revolution.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Interviews: Ben Stein is Expelled! Christianity Today Movies, Christianity Today Movies: Interview with Ben Stein, 15 April 2008, 2008-04-18 http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/benstein.html,

Life , God , People , Idea

“May it [the opposition to fine writing] be accounted for by the fact that the spirit of Puritanism, having been banished from the province of moral conduct, has found a refuge among the arts?”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Fine Writing,” p. 306
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Art

“"If wine is fine, everything is fine, and if it's bad, never mind, as long as it is wine."”

Julián Hernández (1960)

"Si el vino está bien, todo está bien, y si está mal, da lo mismo, con tal de que sea vino..."
taken by Rock de Lux magazine.

Wine

“I had been journeying to and fro on the face of a fine broad bit of English earth, seeking what wages I could earn, what work I could get, and what facts I could devour. I found, I got, I devoured, every morsel which came in my way. I read, marked, learned and inwardly digested, as the prayer book says somewhere, all I could lay my hands or ears or eyes on. At the same time I was taking in a supply of facts which would not be digested—tough facts about the land and the labourer, that accumulated and lay within my mind, heavy as a lump of lead, and hard as a stone. No matter what I did, whether I was working with my hands or my head, that mass of indigestible facts was always in the background, worrying and bothering me. I got no peace; it worried and bothered me more and more as each year went by.”

Joseph Arch (1826–1919) British politician

Source: The Story of his Life Told by Himself (1898), pp. 42-43

Books , Peace , Way , Learning

““Music is a fine thing, but metal lasts.” He struck the table with two huge fingers to emphasize his point….
As I left, I thought about what Kilvin had said. It was the first thing he had said to me that I did not agree with wholeheartedly. Metal rusts, I thought, music lasts forever.
Time will eventually prove one of us right.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 60, “Fortune” (pp. 443-444; ellipsis represents minor elision of description)

Music , Time

“In use of the broad powers with which I have been invested, I have found it proper to declare that
1. Priests of any cult who, abusing their ministry, excite hate or disrespect for our laws, our government, or its rights, will be punished by three years’ imprisonment or deportation.
2. Because of the present crisis all cathedral chapters are suppressed, except for that of Guadalajara because of its patriotic behavior.
3. Priests of all cults are forbidden from wearing their vestments or any other distinguishing garment outside of the churches… All violators will be punished with fines of ten to one hundred pesos or imprisonment from fifteen to sixty days.”

Benito Juárez (1806–1872) President of Mexico during XIX century

Proclamation in response to church officials openly encouraging support for French forces. (30 August 1862)

Hate , Law , Behavior

“Indians tend to be a little insecure and they should stop being insecure — I have visited India many times and I can tell you questions I get after my talks are as perceptive as anywhere else in the world, including places like Harvard or MIT. It’s perfectly fine to take pride that someone from their region has used their background and succeeded. That gives them a positive message that they can do anything that they want.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

Venki’ makes light of India link- Winner says not to treat science like cricket; league of misses grows

World , Question , Time

“I stole every nickel, dime and dollar and blew it on fine threads, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes and other sensual goodies. I partied in every capital in Europe and bask on all the worlds most famous beaches.”

Frank W. Abagnale (1948) American security consultant, former confidence trickster, check forger, impostor, and escape artist

Variant: I stole every nickel, dime and dollar and blew it on fine threads, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes and other sensual goodies. I partied in every capital in Europe and bask on all the worlds most famous beaches.
Source: Catch Me if You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake, 2002, Ch.1 Pg.4(a), Ch.1 Pg. 11(b),Back cover(c), Ch.6 Pg.116(d)

World

“That all legislation is based on the natural law, and that all coercion must be brought about by the choice and consent of the subjects, since we are equally free by nature, and that jurisdictions that are created have no power from themselves, but only according to the laws and canons. This is a fine argument.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De concordantia catholica

De concordantia catholica (The Catholic Concordance) (1434)

Law , Nature

“Our meeting with Admiral Leighton Smith, on the other hand, did not go well. He had been in charge of the NATO air strikes in August and September [1995], and this gave him enormous credibility, especially with the Bosnian Serbs. Smith was also the beneficiary of a skillful public relations effort that cast him as the savior of Bosnia. In a long profile, Newsweek had called him "a complex warrior and civilizer, a latter-day George C. Marshall." This was quite a journalistic stretch, given the fact that Smith considered the civilian aspects of the task beneath him and not his job - quite the opposite of what General Marshall stood for.
After a distinguished thirty-three-year Navy career, including almost three hundred combat missions in Vietnam, Smith was well qualified for his original post as commander of NATO's southern forces and Commander in Chief of all U. S. naval forces in Europe. But he was the wrong man for his additional assignment as IFOR commander, which was the result of two bureaucratic compromises, one with the French, the other with the American military. General Joulwan rightly wanted the sixty thousand IFOR soldiers to have as their commanding officer an Army general trained in the use of ground forces. But Paris insisted that if Joulwan named a separate Bosnia commander, it would have to be a Frenchman. This was politically impossible for the United States; thus, the Franh objections left only one way to preserve an American chain of command - to give the job to Admiral Smith, who joked that he was now known as "General" Smith. (…)
On the military goals of Dayton, he was fine; his plans for separating the forces along the line we had drawn in Dayton and protecting his forces were first-rate. But he was hostile to any suggestions that IFOR help implement any nonmilitary portion of the agreement. This, he said repeatedly, was not his job.
Based on Shalikashvili's statement at White House meetings, Christopher and I had assumed that the IFOR commander would use his authority to do substancially more than he was obligated to do. The meeting with Smith shattered that hope. Smith and his British deputy, General Michael Walker, made clear that they intended to take a minimalist approach to all aspects of implementation other than force protection. Smith signaled this in his first extensive public statement to the Bosnian people, during a live call-in program on Pale Television - an odd choice for his first local media appearance. During the program, he answered a question in a manner that dangerously narrowed his own authority. He later told Newsweek about it with a curious pride: "One of the questions I was asked was, "Admiral, is it true that IFOR is going to arrest Serbs in the Serb suburbs of Sarajevo?" I said, "Absolutely not, I don't have the authority to arrest anybody"."”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

This was an inaccurate way to describe IFOR's mandate. It was true IFOR was not supposed to make routine arrests of ordinary citizens. But IFOR had the authority to arrest indicted war criminals, and could also detain anyone who posed a threat to its forces. Knowing what the question meant, Smith had sent an unfortunate signal of reassurance to Karadzic - over his own network.
Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p.327-329

Hostility , War , People , Hope

“Satire in media such as The Interview and Charlie Hebdo walk a fine line between freedom of speech and dangerous incitement.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Freedom

“It is unnecessary for our pupose to go into the sordid details of the Company's early administration of their Diwani of Bengal. In brief, it may be stated that for a decade the whole power of the organized State was directed to a single purpose ‑ plunder. It was a robber State that had come into existence, and Richard Becher, a servant of the Company, wrote to his masters in London on May 24, 1769, as follows: `It must give pain to an Englishman to have reason to think that since the accession of the Company to the Diwani the condition of the people of this country has been worse than it was before …. This fine country, which flourished under the most despotic and arbitrary government, is verging towards ruin.'…”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Pain , People , Thinking , Country

“I remember one clear example of the problem of communicating what is to be learned. You may have heard of or gone through a similar experience with a student or your child. Years ago, the child of a friend whom I was visiting arrived home from his day at school, all excited about something he had learned. He was in the first grade and his teacher had started the class on reading lessons. The child, Gary, announced that he had learned a new word. "That's great, Gary," his mother said. "What is it?" He thought for a moment, then said, "I'll write it down for you." On a little chalkboard the child carefully printed, HOUSE. "That's fine, Gary," his mother said. "What does it say?" He looked at the word, then at his mother and said matter-of-factly, "I don't know."The child apparently had learned what the word looked like — he had learned the visual shape of the word perfectly. The teacher, however, was teaching another aspect of reading — what words mean, what words stand for or symbolize. As often happens, what the teacher had taught and what Gary had learned were strangely incongruent.As it turned out, my friend's son always learned visual material best and fastest, a mode of learning consistently preferred by a number of students. Unfortunately, the school world is mainly a verbal, symbolic world, and learners like Gary must adjust, that is, put aside their best way of learning and learn the way the school decrees. My friend's child, fortunately, was able to make this change, but how many other students are lost along the way?”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.237

World , School , Way , Home

“The usual jokes about the Army aside, one of the many fine things one has to admit is the way that the Army has carried the American democratic ideal to its logical conclusion, in the sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on the grounds of ability.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Introduction to "It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

Color , Way , Sense

“475. Fine words dresse ill deedes.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“The next day, I called one of them and asked if I could come to his office to discuss the briefing. Fine with him, so off I went. I sat down and asked him a question: “Norm, how did you decide so exactly where the bomb would explode?” He looked at me as if I were a country bumpkin and explained how SAC calculated its bombing accuracy and he had gotten the accuracy of this particular drop straight from the horse’s mouth. Now I don’t want to bore you with how SAC arrived at planning estimates for the delivery accuracy of its nuclear bombers, except to say that it was a statistical process based on thousands of practice sorties, whose results would be mathematically analyzed to allow estimates to be made of the results of a large bombing campaign; not one bomber flying over one city and one bombardier, with the lives of perhaps millions of Muscovites at his fingertips, dropping one bomb. This I pointed out to Norm, implying that he had gone to all that fuss and bother for naught. His response was that in doing his calculations as a mathematician, he was going by the accepted ground rules. The bombing accuracy he had assumed had been provided to him by others. His was not to reason why.”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Mathematics , Question , Horse , Flying

“Hungry rooster don't cackle w'en he fine a wum.”

Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908) Journalist, children's writer

Plantation Proverbs.

“The disconcerting fact may first be pointed out that if you write badly about good writing, however profound may be your convictions or emphatic your expression of them, your style has a tiresome trick (as a wit once pointed out) of whispering: ‘Don’t listen!’ in your readers’ ears. And it is possible also to suggest that the promulgation of new-fangled aesthetic dogmas in unwieldy sentences may be accounted for—not perhaps unspitefully—by a certain deficiency in aesthetic sensibility; as being due to a lack of that delicate, unreasoned, prompt delight in all the varied and subtle manifestations in which beauty may enchant us.
Or, if the controversy is to be carried further; and if, to place it on a more modern basis, we adopt the materialistic method of interpreting aesthetic phenomena now in fashion, may we not find reason to believe that the antagonism between journalist critics and the fine writers they disapprove of is due in its ultimate analysis to what we may designate as economic causes? Are not the authors who earn their livings by their pens, and those who, by what some regard as a social injustice, have been more or less freed from this necessity—are not these two classes of authors in a sort of natural opposition to each other? He who writes at his leisure, with the desire to master his difficult art, can hardly help envying the profits of money-making authors.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

criticizing the Cambridge School of criticism, e.g. John Middleton Murry and Herbert Read, “Fine Writing,” pp. 306-307
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Money , Beauty , Art , Fashion

“Our brains have evolved mainly to deal with our body and its interactions with the world it senses to be around us. Is this world real? This is a venerable philosophical issue and I do not wish to be embroiled in the finely honed squabbles to which it has led. I merely state my own working hypothesis: that there is indeed an outside world, and that it is largely independent of our observing it. We can never fully know this outside world, but we can obtain approximate information about some aspects of its properties by using our senses and our brain.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994)

World , Sense

“If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate instruments with which to fine-tune accumulation, then how can the periodic headlong slides into crisis be explained?”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 10, Finance Capital And Its Contradictions, p. 316

“Even sticking to the higher plane of love, is it so very obvious that you can't love more than one person? We seem to manage it with parental love (parents are reproached if they don't at least pretend to love all their children equally), love of books, of food, of wine (love of Chateau Margaux does not preclude love of a fine Hock, and we don't feel unfaithful to the red when we dally with the white), love of composers, poets, holiday beaches, friends... why is erotic love the one exception that everybody instantly acknowledges without even thinking about it?”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/richard_dawkins/2007/11/banishing_the_greeneyed_monste.html, November 2007.

Love , Children , Books , Unfaithfulness

“It was a fine thing to be a newspaperman and I very much wanted to be a good one.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 2, Ceremonies of Innocence, p. 175

“Especially do the evils of the times, the folly and blindness of the masses, the injustice of rulers, the perversion of religion in unfruitful ceremonialism work upon the souls more finely attuned as a stimulus and spur; the feeling of the evil stirs their moral judgment or conscience to the criticism of the existing situation, and out of the criticism there grows for them the new ideal which impresses itself upon them as the truth that has the power to save from the corruption of the time; and while they first raise themselves to this ideal, they also win power and courage to draw others toward it. Thus they become the proclaimers of a higher truth which, over against the antecedent error, appears as something wholly new, as a revelation from above, but which is, indeed, nothing else than a higher development of the impulse toward truth and righteousness that is a natural quality of the human mind.”

Otto Pfleiderer (1839–1908) German Protestant theologian

Source: Evolution and Theology (1900), p. 11.

Truth , Religion , Error , Feeling

“Society is eliminating the prerogatives and privileges of feudal. aristocratic culture together with its content. The fact that the transcending truths of the fine arts, the aesthetics of life and thought, were accessible only to the few wealthy and educated was the fault of a repressive society. But this fault is not corrected by paperbacks, general education, long-playing records, and the abolition of formal dress in the theater and concert hall. The cultural privileges expressed the injustice of freedom, the contradiction between ideology and reality, the separation of intellectual from material productivity; but they also provided a protected realm in which the tabooed truths could survive in abstract integrity—remote from the society which suppressed them.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 64-65

Life , Truth , Education , Art

“Confronted, when the weather is fine and I am in propitious emotional circumstances, with certain landscapes, certain works of art, certain human beings, I know, for the time being, that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world. On other occasions, skies and destiny being inclement, I am no less immediately certain of the malignant impersonality of an uncaring universe. Every human being has had similar experiences. This being so, the sensible thing to do would be to accept the facts and frame a metaphysic to fit them. But with that talent for doing the wrong thing, that genius for perversity, so characteristically human, men have preferred, especially in recent times, to take another course. They have either denied the existence of these psychological facts; or if they have admitted them, have done so only to condemn as evil all such experiences as cannot be reconciled in a logical system with whatever particular class of experiences they have chosen, arbitrarily, to regard as "true" and morally valuable. Every man tries to pretend that he is consistently one kind of person and does his best consistently to worship one kind of God. And this despite the fact that he experiences diversity and actually feels himself in contact with a variety of divinities.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” pp. 3–4
Do What You Will (1928)

Men , God , World , Art

“If a horse lost condition, the fines came down to the water carriers and sweepers employed in the stable. When an elephant died through neglect, the attendants (some of whom drew less than three rupees a month) had to pay the price of the animal.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Water , Animals , Horse

“Most men develop convictions about the cosmos and such beliefs come in two varieties. One kind is a conviction that the cosmos does not make sense. That it exists by chance and changes by chance and human beings do not matter. This view produces a fine complacency. The other kind is a belief that the cosmos does make sense, and was designed with the idea that people were going to live in it, and that what they do and what happens to them is important. This theory seems to be depressing.”

Murray Leinster (1896–1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Time Tunnel (1964), Chapter 1 (p. 8).

Men , People , Idea , Sense

“She was an appetising woman with a full-cheeked smile, about thirty, a Nordic blonde but not icy, though ice was suggested in its tamed winter-sport aspects : the flush after skating, log-fires and hot rum and butter, fine heavy thighs, that would warm your hand like a muff, under a skirt that had swirled in a rink waltz. Her beaver lamb coat was thrust back from a green suit : solid charms, thoroughly wholesome, were indicated.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Smile , Sport , Winter

“General Myers seems to assume that things have gone well in Iraq. General Myers seems to assume that the American people, the support for our conflict there is not eroding. General Myers seems to assume that everything has gone fine and our declarations of victory, of which there have been many, have not had an impact on American public opinion. Things have not gone as we had planned or expected, nor as we were told by you, General Myers. And that's why I'm very worried, because I think we have to win this conflict.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Comments made to General Richard Myers in U.S. Senate hearings into the Iraq War http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec05/hearings_9-29.html (29 September 2005)
2000s, 2005

People , Support , Thinking , Victory

“Look at your [English] ladies of quality—are they not forever parting with their husbands—forfeiting their reputations—and is their life aught but dissipation? In common genteel life, indeed, you may now and then meet with very fine girls—who have politeness, sense and conversation—but these are few—and then look at your trademen's daughters—what are they?—poor creatures indeed! all pertness, imitation and folly.”

Frances Burney (1752–1840) English writer

The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 1, p. 47, journal entry, November 17, 1768.
Letters

Life , Girl , Sense , Parting

““We have a war to fight. You don’t understand. We fight in God’s name.”
“I understand just fine,” Nyx said.”

Kameron Hurley (1980) American writer

Source: God’s War (2011), Chapter 32 (p. 235).

God , War , Understanding , Fight

“When we have guests, my wife and I serve them sometimes. In fact, a mediaperson from Germany who probably expected me to dress in fine clothes, once mistook me for my secretary.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

Entertaining his guests at the modest Pattom palace, in "Royal vignettes: Travancore - Simplicity graces this House (30 March 2003)"

Clothes

“For the yearners know that the life of flesh is but the bridge to the fleshless Life. And the yearners know that the coarse and inadequate senses are but the peepholes into the world of the infinitely fine and adequate sense. And the yearners know that every flesh they tear they must inevitably repair, sooner or later, with their own flesh; and every bone they crush they must rebuild with their own bone; and every drop of blood they spill they must replenish with their own blood. For, that is the law of flesh.”

Mikha'il Na'ima book The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad (1948)

Life , World , Law , Sense

“Van Gogh is congenial to me, 'Vincent' in his letters. Perhaps nature does have something. There is no need, after all, to speak of the smell of earth; it has too peculiar a savor. The words we use to speak about it, I mean, have too peculair a savor. Too bad that the early Van Gogh was so fine a human being, but not so good as a painter, and that the later, wonderful artist is such a marked man. A mean should be found between these four points pf comparison: then, yes!”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 808, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html
1903 - 1910

Nature

“Had I not been a classical singer, I would have loved to spend my entire life in a garage fine-tuning a Fiat or a Maruti.”

Bhimsen Joshi (1922–2011) Indian vocalist

His often repeated lines. Relentless riyaz- Bhimsen Joshis recipe for success, 29 November 2013, Deccan Herald http://archive.deccanherald.com/content/Nov52008/national2008110598978.asp?section=thirdcolumnupdatenews,

Love , Life

“For the first thing a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine, but control is better.”

Elfriede Jelinek book The Piano Teacher

P 5
The Piano Teacher (1988)

Learning

“Oh, I agree he went mad in the end. It is the only explanation. Something must have snapped in that fine brain, and he saw the little bit more which we call madness. Thank God, you and I are prosaic fellows…”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Space (1912)

God , Madness

“Life is unfixed when one lives in Berlin, where one has to fight for a living. It is painfully base here. I see that a fine, free culture cannot be created under these circumstances and wish to leave as soon as I have overcome this big slump.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

End of 1911; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann (transl. Claire Louise Albiez); Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 45
remark, shortly after their move to Berlin - the bustle, tempo, and anonymity of city-life soon got tough to Kirchner and the other Brücke members
1905 - 1915

Life , Fight

“The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and there are, indeed, some who resign themselves to accept it and accept it as it is, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the "trap." But it has been said by Calderón that "to seek to persuade a man that the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not console him for them, but it is another misfortune in addition." And furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart," as Fray Diego de Estella said”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

Vanidad del Mundo, cap. xxi.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy

Life , Beauty , Problem , Suffering

Quotes about fine page 7

Quotes about fine
page 7