Quotes about styling
page 9

Roy Strong (1935) art historian from the United Kingdom

“I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violence, and I am not violent).”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 51, note 63

Nature, Painting

“Our primary concern is not to be style icons ourselves.”

Susannah Constantine (1962) British fashion designer and journalist

Scots Are So Stylish... (2007)

“Here you will find a pleasant and agreeable style, of a natural simplicity. The narrative is pure and the good faith of the author shines from it, exempt from the vanity of talking about oneself, and from partiality or envy when speaking of others. His ideas and exhortations are accompanied more by good zeal and truth than by any fine ability; and all throughout there is an authoritative tone and gravity proper to a man of good background, brought up in great affairs.”

Philippe de Commines (1447–1511) writer and diplomat

Vous y trouverez le langage doux et aggreable, d'une naïfve simplicité, la narration pure, et en laquelle la bonne foy de l'autheur reluit evidemment, exempte de vanité parlant de soy, et d'affection et d'envie parlant d'autruy : ses discours et enhortemens, accompaignez, plus de bon zele et de verité, que d'aucune exquise suffisance, et tout par tout de l'authorité et gravité, representant son homme de bon lieu, et élevé aux grans affaires.
Michel de Montaigne Essais Bk. II, ch. 10: "Des Livres"; translation from Serge Hughes (trans.) The Essential Montaigne (New York: New American Library, 1970) p. 293.
Criticism

Truth, Faith, Idea, Nature

“So many different styles of music have influenced us individually and as a band. I think heavy metal is there. It’s not always the most predominant factor in Fall Out Boy, but it’s definitely there. Andy and I are huge metal heads.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

Music, Boy, Thinking

“Fashion as a whole is a farce, completely. The people behind it are perverted, the styles are created by freaked out people, just natural weirdos. I know this because I worked with all those people while I was modeling.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : American Girl (1982)

People, Fashion, Nature

“At any rate, it would detract sadly from the richness of the game if deduction of character from a player's style was a forbidden pursuit, for undoubtedly the main reason why cricketers are remembered for years, for decades, after the heroes of other sports are forgotten is that they set the impress of character, apart from technical batting or bowling, on the minds of those who watched them, and whether that cricket-character falsely represented the real man is, in the last analysis, unimportant.”

Dudley Carew (1903–1981) English journalist, writer, poet and film critic

To the Wicket (1946)

Game, Sport, Falseness

“With the tentacles of branding reaching into every crevice of youth culture, leaching brand-image content not only out of street styles like hip-hop but psychological attitudes like ironic detachment, the cool hunt has had to go further afield to find unpilfered space and that left only one frontier: the past.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Three, "Alt. Everything"

Youth, Past

“By new style I meant mainly technical aspects. It is impossible to experience things from an entirely new angle through will-power; it has to mature in solitude.”

Otto Mueller (1874–1930) German painter and printmaker of the expressionist movement

from (letter 03 205) and (letter 03 147); as quoted in Otto Mueller: A Stand-Alone Modernist, Dieter W. Posselt; 2006 / new edition 2010, Books on Demand, GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany - ISBN:978-3-8448-6866-1, unpaged

Solitude

“Fortunately, a sculptor's style and aim are, to a great extent, dictated to him by his materials. To make a sculpture seem at all moving or inspiring, an artist must, of course, be gifted with a certain personality that speaks movingly through the subject and materials of his work. But he must select appropriate materials, and use them appropriately, too... My materials often dictate my change of aims, and I choose to work in a different material much as a man may suddenly feel an appetite for a change in diet.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, pp. 154-155

Feeling, Change, Personality

“Death: frightening and inevitable./ It is necessary to give rise to better offspring./ It is necessary to give way to a better life-style/ It is necessary due to the law of nature.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Death: Live It! p. 20.
Death: Live It! (2005)

Life, Death, Law, Way

“This is sad. I just think it’s a little ridiculous we are still only looking at the surface of one another. Red hair? Blue hair? Pink? Blonde? Short? Long? Whatever. We might as well shave our heads. Hair has nothing to do with the reason we playing music. It’s a style. Something that will never last as long as the songs we play and the words we sing. Listen up ladies in bands, I’m so proud to be one of you and I don’t care if we all look exactly alike or if we are all carbon copies of each other. We have things to say and it’s up to us to get people to not just look but to LISTEN!”

Hayley Williams (1988) American singer-songwriter and musician

Hayley on her Tumblr talking about Nikki Simmons (lead singer of the rock/metal upcoming band Morningside http://www.facebook.com/themorningside) who was being cyber-bullied because she looks like Hayley. http://yelyahwilliams.tumblr.com/post/8459667145

People, Sadness, Music, Thinking

“For centuries, Ottoman sultans dreamed of conquest in the name of Islam. When they failed on the battlefield they sought glory in building mosques. Eighty years after the Caliphate was abolished to make way for a Western-style republic, the tradition is being revived by Turkey’s current leaders. Led by the ebullient Recep Tayyip Erdogan and inspired by an ideological hodgepodge labeled “neo-Ottomanism,” they are using urban architecture to kill the European dream of secular Turks. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the republic, adopted the Latin alphabet, purged Turkish of Arabic words and brought mosques and religious endowments under state control. He also enlisted a team of French ethnologists to invent the myth of a Turkish nation related to Hungarians and Finns and stretching from Central Europe to Central Asia. For decades, Turkey’s Islamists tried to undo as much of Ataturk’s “reforms” as possible but failed because a majority of Turks would not vote for a party with an Islamist agenda. Erdogan solved that problem by uniting some 20 different Islamist groups into a new party that made no mention of Islam.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Farewell Ataturk" http://nypost.com/2013/06/27/farewell-ataturk/, New York Post (June 27, 2013). New York Post

Dreams, Way, Problem

“The spontaneous individual optimization that drives the theories with which I began is important, but it is not enough by itself. If spontaneous Coase‐style bargains, whether through laissez-faire or political bargaining and government, eliminated socially wasteful predation and obtained the institutions that are needed for a thriving market economy, then there would not be so many grossly inefficient and poverty-stricken societies.”

Mancur Olson (1932–1998) American economist

"Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations Are Rich, and Others Poor"

Optimism

“The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 386.

Literature

“If we both ignore the unique contribution of “male-style” parenting and jail a man who responsibly contributes it, fatherhood becomes another hazardous occupation. More precisely, it becomes the largest 100%-male hazardous occupation. And in the process, our children lose one of the greatest potential gifts of Stage II -- genuine fatherhood. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are ways of creating a father and child reunion….”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 237.

Children, Way, Parent

“I myself represent the style of a Bach who was a human being with all his heights and depths, who knew life very well. My Bach is the experience of my playing the whole literature; and filling the different voices with their own life, vitality, vividness; it’s the independent speaking-until-singing of the different voices; and lastly it’s a balance between pianistic virtuosity and something chamber-music-like.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Life, Music, Literature, Singing

“As a liberal I would hesitate to propose a blanket ban on any style of dress because of the implications for individual liberty and freedom of choice.”

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

As quoted in Richard Dawkins causes outcry after likening the burka to a bin liner https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7936221/Richard-Dawkins-causes-outcry-after-likening-the-burka-to-a-bin-liner.html (10 August 2010), The Telegraph.

Freedom

“I think Rummy should walk up to the table, take the oath, offer his prepared apologies and explanations and then, at the end of his remarks, he should take out a long Japanese knife. He should then cut off his pinky. If this Yakuza style contrition doesn't work he should look to the ranking Democrat on the committee and continue removing fingers until he gets a Shogun-like nod that his offering is acceptable. He should then wrap-up up his hand, curtly bow, and then say 'I am now pleased to take your questions.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

May 2004 http://web.archive.org/web/20001011/www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_05_02_corner-archive.asp 2000s, 2004

Question, Thinking

“The critics are occasionally pleased to compliment a pianist by saying that he plays in the grand style. Exactly what do they mean by that phrase? In the broadest sense, they mean a style of playing which penetrates deeper than the physical conquering of the piano. It concerns itself with the release of music. The “grand style” moved listeners through interpretation.”

Benno Moiseiwitsch (1890–1963) British musician

Playing in the Grand Style (1950)

Music, Sense

“When mons. Descartes's philosophical Romance, by the Elegance of its Style and the plausible Accounts of natural Phænomena, had overthrown the Aristotelian Physics, the World received but little Advantage by the Change: For instead of a few Pedants, who, most of them, being conscious of their Ignorance, concealed it with hard Words and pompous Terms; a new Set of Philosophers started up, whose lazy Disposition easily fell in with a Philosophy, that required no Mathematicks to understand it, and who taking a few Principles for granted, without examining their Reality or Consistence with each other, fancied they could solve all Appearances mechanically by Matter and Motion; and, in their smattering Way, pretended to demonstrate such things, as perhaps Cartesius himself never believed; his Philosophy (if he bad been in earnest) being unable to stand the test of the Geometry which he was Master of.”

John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744) French-born British natural philosopher and clergyman

Source: Course of Experimental Philosophy, 1745, p. vi-v: Preface

World, Way, Understanding, Nature

“He could only conjecture what style pheromones Zula was throwing off to her peers, but to him it was a sort of hyperspace-librarian, girl-geek thing that he found clever and fetching without attracting him in a way that would have been creepy.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Way, Girl

“Legrand scratched his cheek with one of Conté's lead pencils and started to Koranize: I say unto you that you have been brought low by kings who lie with houris on the fat sofas of Stamboul and by those that were once among you and came from lands of the sunset, men pale but warlike, to steal your camels and women and snatch the bread from your teeth, in no wise to raise you high among the peoples of the earth. Meanwhile the C-in-C got on with other things - gunpowder factory, street-lighting, Paris-style café, accommodation for laundresses, a balloon demonstration.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

Women, Men, People, Lie

“The Ainu, with their improvisational style of both composing music and dancing, greatly influenced me. I became very different from the other music students, who had been raised with European pieces, because of this. They had been taught that composition is very difficult, but to me, it seemed relatively easy because of the freedom allowed for by the improvisational style of the Ainu.”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1992)

Music, Freedom, Dance

“In televisionland we are all sophisticated enough now to realize that every statistic has an equal and opposite statistic somewhere in the universe. It is not a candidate's favorite statistic per se that engages us, but the assurance with which he can use it.
We are testing the candidates for self-confidence, for "Presidentiality" in statistical bombardment. It doesn't really matter if their statistics be homemade. What settles the business is the cool with which they are dropped.
And so, as the second half hour treads the decimaled path toward the third hour, we become aware of being locked in a tacit conspiracy with the candidates. We know their statistics go to nothing of importance, and they know we know, and we know they know we know.
There is total but unspoken agreement that the "debate," the arguments which are being mustered here, are of only the slightest importance.
As in some primitive ritual, we all agree — candidates and onlookers — to pretend we are involved in a debate, although the real exercise is a test of style and manners. Which of the competitors can better execute the intricate maneuvers prescribed by a largely irrelevant ritual?
This accounts for the curious lack of passion in both performers. Even when Ford accuses Carter of inconsistency, it is done in a flat, emotionless, game-playing style. The delivery has the tuneless ring of an old press release from the Republican National Committee. Just so, when Carter has an opportunity to set pulses pounding by denouncing the Nixon pardon, he dances delicately around the invitation like a maiden skirting a bog.
We judge that both men judge us to be drained of desire for passion in public life, to be looking for Presidents who are cool and noninflammable. They present themselves as passionless technocrats using an English singularly devoid of poetry, metaphor and even coherent forthright declaration.
Caught up in the conspiracy, we watch their coolness with fine technical understanding and, in the final half hour, begin asking each other for technical judgments. How well is Carter exploiting the event to improve our image of him? Is Ford's television manner sufficiently self-confident to make us sense him as "Presidential"?
It is quite extraordinary. Here we are, fully aware that we are being manipulated by image projectionists, yet happily asking ourselves how obligingly we are submitting to the manipulation. It is as though a rat running a maze were more interested in the psychologist's charts on his behavior than in getting the cheese at the goal line.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"And All of Us So Cool" (p.340)
There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)

Life, Men, Behavior, Exercises

“Young Prokofiev was attentive to new musical trends. We can find traces of various influences in his early compositions. Some of the piano works from the set Visions fugitives, op. 22 (1915–17), are reminiscent of Debussy; the Andante assai section of the First Piano Concerto, op. 10 (1911–12), sounds like Rachmaninov; and the harmonies of the symphonic poem Osen neye(Autumnor Autumnal Sketch), op. 8 (1910), harken back to Scriabin. These, however, were rather passing influences. Others proved to be more enduring.
One of them was the fairy-tale streak in Russian music. Russians have always been fond of fairy tales, which to this day continue to be an important part of every child’s upbringing. …
Another significant influence was the Classical style.”

Boris Berman (1948) Russian/American musician

Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Prokofiev: His Life and the Evolution of His Musical Language

Music, Autumn, Parting

“Creating an action score can be quite challenging because action music can become too overwhelming. If all the music in the game is high energy it will become monotonous. I set out to build a pace in the score, so that there would be a variety of emotions and energy levels in the music. The challenge became to create these different music styles while still maintaining an action feel.”

Jesper Kyd (1972) musician

Go! Game! Music! interview

Music, Feeling, Game

“I know that the real Brockovich liked to dress provocatively; that's her personal style and she's welcome to it. But the Hollywood version makes her look like a miniskirted hooker, with bras that peek cheerfully above her necklines.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/erin-brockovich-2000 of Erin Brockovich (17 March 2000) Reviews, Two star reviews

Personality

“Legendary in the Wikipedia world, Wadewitz had more than 50,000 'edits' or contributions to her credit. She also was the author of 36 'featured' articles, the highest distinction bestowed by other Wikipedians based on accuracy, fairness, style and comprehensiveness.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Woo, Elaine (April 23, 2014). "Adrianne Wadewitz dies at 37; helped diversify Wikipedia" http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-adrianne-wadewitz-20140424,0,1077455.story. Los Angeles Times. About

World

“In most writers, style is a welcome, an invitation, a letting down of the drawbridge between the artist and the world. Shaw had no time for such ruses. Unlike most of his countrymen, he abominated charm, which he regarded as evidence of chronic temperamental weakness.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Bernard Shaw" (1956), p. 102
Profiles (1990)

World, Time

“Machines change their style so rapidly. If one tries to reproduce them in art as realistically as man and the horse in classical art, one immediately lapses into a kind of anecdotic or documentary art... Only the stylisation of a painter like Leger could integrate the machine as the subject matter of art. Here in Italy, the futurists, before 1914, attempted a similar integration of the machine.... César [French sculptor, in the generation of Marini] creates with elements borrowed from industry and the world of machines, sculptural fossils that appear to have survived the same kind of catastrophe as my own figures. But I would like to show you [ interviewer w:Eduard Roditi now in my studio my latest fossils..”

Marino Marini (1901–1980) Italian sculptor

Source: Interview with Edouard Roditi' (1958), p. 89

World, Art, Appearance, Change

“We consider ourselves the leading military school in the country, and we want to stay there. We adapt to change very well; we recognize different learning styles and we adapt to that. We maintain our standards and use the military model as a way to provide structure in education.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Baker's comments in a May 15, 2009 press release from Hargrave Military Academy, celebrating the school's 100th graduation.

Education, School, Way, Learning

“He can only be defined by his contradictions: a patriot whose ultimate allegiance was not to Ireland but to the Cayman Islands; a preacher of family values who kept an expensive mistress; a lover of power who allowed himself to become a kept man; a product of the Catholic lower middle class who spent millions of pounds of other people's money in affecting the style of an Ascendancy gent; a man of the people who secretly sniggered at the people's credulity; a charmer who liked to cultivate an air of menace and warned his own bank that he could be a very troublesome adversary.”

Charles Haughey (1925–2006) Irish politician

Fintan O'Toole, "A Life and Legacy". Irish Times, 14th June 2006.
About

Money, People, Family, Lovers

“A well-known magazine asks a man how they should refer to him, as Psychologist X, as Author X? He suggests man of letters, for that is what he is, in the eighteenth-century meaning. But they can’t buy that because the word doesn’t exist in Time-style; he cannot be that, and presumably the old function of letters cannot exist.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 145.

Time

“Neither Sassoon or Owen were notably exploratory or original in technique, each developed a style which permitted them to give a full expression to their deepest thoughts & feelings about war.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Not Without Glory, 1976

War, Feeling

“There is no medal better than being acclaimed for your style. As a coach, my teams might have won more games if we’d played in a less adventurous way. Maybe I’d have earned a little more and the bonuses would have been bigger, but if people say that Barcelona were playing the nicest football in the world with me as coach, what more can I ask for? If you’re appearing in the World Cup final it may be the biggest occasion of your life, so why be sad and fearful? Be happy, express yourself and play. Make it special for you and for everyone watching. For the good of football, we need a team of invention, attacking ideas and style to emerge. Even if it doesn't win, it will inspire footballers of all ages everywhere. That is the greatest reward.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

reported in David Winner (2012). Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football.

Life, People, Age, World

“Now as to what pertains to these Surd numbers (which, as it were by way of reproach and calumny, having no merit of their own are also styled Irrational, Irregular, and Inexplicable) they are by many denied to be numbers properly speaking, and are wont to be banished from arithmetic to another Science, (which yet is no science) viz. algebra.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 44

Way, Science

“One cannot condemn tendencies in art; one can only condemn works of art. To be categorically against a current art tendency or style means, in effect, to pronounce on works of art not yet created and not yet seen. It means inquiring into the motives of artists instead of into results. Yet we all know — or are supposed to know — that results are all that count in art.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"Wyndham Lewis Against Abstract Art" (1957), p. 164
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)

Art, Motivation

“There is a paradox at the heart of Chopin's style, in its unlikely combination of a rich chromatic web of polyphony, based on a profound experience of J. S. Bach, with a sense of melody and a way of sustaining the melodic line derived directly from Italian opera. The paradox is only apparent, and it is never felt as such when one hears the music. The two influences are perfectly synthesized, and they give each other a new kind of power.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 5 : Chopin: Counterpoint and the Narrative Forms

Music, Way, Sense, Heart

“Resentment isn't a magnetic personal style.”

Peggy Noonan (1950) American author and journalist

"Confessions of A White House Speechwriter" in The New York Times (15 October 1989) http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/15/magazine/confessions-of-a-white-house-speechwriter.html

Personality

“Consumerism has created a culture that values style over substance, image over reality, and perception over performance.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Reality

“.. we parted in 1914, when Kandinsky, being an enemy alien [because of his Russian nationality], had to flee from Germany to Switzerland, as did Jawlensky and Marianne de Werefkin too [to neutral Switzerland]... Ever since we parted in 1914, I have worked mainly by myself. After the First World War, here in Munich, we found that our Blue Rider group had broken up. Franz Marc and Macke had both been killed [in World War 1. ] Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Marianne were no longer here; Bloch and Burliuk were in America. Those of us who were still in Munich remained friends, of course, but each one of us had learned to work by himself rather than in a group. Besides.... we had always been individualists and our Blue Rider group never had a style of its own as uniform as that of the Paris cubists.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 121

War, World, Learning, Parting

“We wish to see churches and Christian Chinese presided over by pastors and officers of their own countrymen, worshipping the true God in the land of their fathers, in the costume of their fathers, in their own tongue wherein they were born, and in edifices of a thoroughly Chinese style of architecture.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Four: Survivors’ Pact. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1984, 356).

God

“[S]cientists are not robotic inducing machines that infer structures of explanation only from regularities observed in natural phenomena (assuming, as I doubt, that such a style of reasoning could ever achieve success in principle). Scientists are human beings, immersed in culture, and struggling with all the curious tools of inference that mind permits […]. Culture can potentiate as well as constrain—as Darwin's translation of Adam Smith's laissez-faire economic models into biology as the theory of natural selection. In any case, objective minds do not exist outside culture, so we must make the best of our ineluctable embedding.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle

Source: Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (1987), pp. 6–7

Nature, Success

“It was in reading Tristam Shandy that I noticed how it is primarily men who gravitate towards the game-playing self-reflexive style. There is an alienation from emotion in it, a Nervous Nelly fear of letting go and being “exposed.” As an attitude towards life, it betrays a perpetual adolescence. Those who hurled themselves after Derrida were not the most sophisticated but the most pretentious, and least creative members of my generation of academics.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 231

Life, Men, Fear, Game

“Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

The Toronto Star Weekly (4 March 1922)

Country

“When I asked Sergio Mendes why he still called his group Brasil '66 in 1967, he said "'66 was a very good year!" That's his group and the French song from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It's not one of their better tracks. Some of the things they've done I have enjoyed tremendously, though it's getting to the point where he's had commercial success doing what he's doing, so it's now somewhere in between strong Brazilian music and quasi-rock. Joao Palma is an excellent drummer. Here they have John Pisano of the Tijuana Brass playing an amplified guitar. He is one of the few people who, on the regular amplified guitar, has really got the Brazilian thing down. He can play in the Baden Powell style, which is so compelling and so dynamic. Sergio is usually a much more melodic pianist, but here he's trying to give a hardness and vitality to the over-all commercial sound, and he comes out lacking what he usually has—his lines are usually very smoothly melodic. This has nothing to do with jazz, but I find it pleasant; on the other hand, some of the things they do, like O Pato [from Mendes' previous album], or some of the faster things, I enjoy much more. Two stars.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing Mendes' recording of Michel Legrand's '"Watch What Happens," from the album Equinox; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#2nmgk677qzm4cnu

People, Music, Star, Strong

“Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs
He turns revolt into a style, prolongs
The impulse to a habit of the time.”

Thom Gunn (1929–2004) English poet

"Elvis Presley,", in The Sense of Movement (1957).
Other

Time

“A fashion always has some meaning. The fashion, or style, of renunciation really meant something then. It was inspired by the war, or it ran parallel to the war, and could not have been conceived without the war… It stood for the will to sacrifice — if the unlimited will to throw away can be called the will to sacrifice. It was arrogant and elegantly cynical — because it is arrogant and elegantly cynical when the symbol of the élite becomes hunger. The superfluous here threw away the necessary quite simply. In its inner essence it was the disdain of death.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (1979) This has also been abbreviated and quoted as "The will to sacrifice . . . was the disdain of death."

Death, Hunger, War, Fashion

“I alternate my aims; at one time, I concentrate on poetry, on a more expressionist kind of sculpture; at other times on form – I mean on a kind of sculpture that concerns itself with formal relations rather than emotions or ideas. I suppose that this principle of alternating my aims leads to a kind of oscillation in the evolution of my own particular style as a sculptor, but I feel that it prevents me from repeating myself.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, p. 154

Feeling, Idea, Time

“I was never interested in being just modern – I mean in creating a new style. I simply painted in whatever style seemed to suit me best. But Kandinsky was a thinker and had to express his ideas in words, so he constantly formulated new theories of art which he liked to discuss with Kubín, who was also a thinker..”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 118

Art, Idea, Painting

“This enabled me to understand the need to abandon myself totally to my instinct, trusting my own energy and forgetting any preconceived style while I work.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

in Autobiografia, G. Morandi (1928); as quoted in Morandi 1894 – 1964, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco, Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2008; p. 31
1925 - 1945

Understanding, Forgetting

“I don't think traders can follow rules for very long unless they reflect their own trading style. Eventually, a breaking point is reached and the trader has to quit or change, or find a new set of rules he can follow. This seems to be part of the process of evolution and growth of a trader.”

Ed Seykota (1946) American commodities trader

Source: Schwager, Market Wizards, page 166

Thinking, Change, Parting

“Playboy: Then for now, aren't you asking home-computer buyers to invest $3000 in what is essentially an act of faith?
Jobs: In the future, it won't be an act of faith. The hard part of what we're up against now is that people ask you about specifics and you can't tell them. A hundred years ago, if somebody had asked Alexander Graham Bell, "What are you going to be able to do with a telephone?" he wouldn't have been able to tell him the ways the telephone would affect the world. He didn't know that people would use the telephone to call up and find out what movies were playing that night or to order some groceries or call a relative on the other side of the globe. But remember that first the public telegraph was inaugurated, in 1844. It was an amazing breakthrough in communications. You could actually send messages from New York to San Francisco in an afternoon. People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve productivity. But it wouldn't have worked. It required that people learn this whole sequence of strange incantations, Morse code, dots and dashes, to use the telegraph. It took about 40 hours to learn. The majority of people would never learn how to use it. So, fortunately, in the 1870s, Bell filed the patents for the telephone. It performed basically the same function as the telegraph, but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing.
Playboy: Meaning what?
Jobs: It allowed you to intone your words with meaning beyond the simple linguistics. And we're in the same situation today. Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won't work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are "slash q-zs" and things like that. The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel—one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about. It's the first "telephone" of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. You don't simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs, Playboy, Feb 1985, as quoted in “Steve Jobs Imagines 'Nationwide' Internet in 1985 Interview” https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/steve-jobs-imagines-nationwide-internet-in-1985-intervi-1671246589, Matt Novak, 12/15/14 2:20pm Paleofuture, Gizmodo. 1980s

People, World, Faith, Way

“Who am I supporting? I am Dutch but I support the football that Spain is playing. Spain's style is the style of Barcelona. Spain, a replica of Barça, is the best publicity for football.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

Cruyff wrote in his weekly column for the Barcelona-based newspaper El Periodico, prior to the 2010 FIFA World Cup final match ( Goal.com, 11 July 2010 http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2890/world-cup-2010/2010/07/11/2018367/from-ajax-to-barcelona-holland-vs-spain-world-cup-2010-final).

Support, Football

“To be or not to be" Aryan? That is the question! And nothing more! All the doctrines concerning the absence of Race, concerning the vast racial confusion, all the spreading of racial jumbling at full pace, the esperanto-ism of the anus "Romain Rolland style," resulting in the greatest fornicating Babel are no more than destructive foul tricks, all emerging from the same Talmudic shop: "To the destruction of the Whites.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

Question

“It’s not meant to be flirtatious. Listen, I don’t have a presenting style, I’m just me. I don’t have the talent to adopt a different persona. It’s intimate, not flirtatious.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

60 Seconds: Nigella Lawson (2006)

“The gay rights movement is not a party. It is not a lifestyle. It is not a hair style. It is not a fad or a fringe or a sickness. It is not about sin or salvation. The gay rights movement is an integral part of the American promise of freedom.”

Urvashi Vaid (1958) Indian writer

At the March on Washington, 4/25/93

Freedom, Parting

“It ['The Great Masturbator', 1929] represented a large head, yellow like wax, with very red cheeks, long eyelashes and an imposing nose compressed against the ground. This face had no mouth, and in place of the mouth an enormous lobster was hooked. The lobster's belly was decomposing and full of ants. Some of these ants were scurrying through the space that would have been occupied by the non-existent mouth of the great anguished face, whose head ended in 1900-style architecture and ornamentation. The title of the painting was The Great Masturbator.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from La vida secreta de Salvador Dalí. In: Complete Works, Autobiographical Articles 1. Ediciones Destino / Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Barcelona / Figueres, 2003, p. 648
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1941 - 1950

Painting

“Prokofiev’s creative path traversed many countries and was affected by wars and revolutions. Life brought him into contact with some of the most prominent and influential artistic figures of his time. Observing the magnificent panorama of Prokofiev’s oeuvre, one sees that the composer’s musical style evolved significantly over the course of his creative life. The reasons for the changes of direction have been much discussed and debated.”

Boris Berman (1948) Russian/American musician

Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Prokofiev: His Life and the Evolution of His Musical Language

Life, War, Music, Change

“I have pledged loyalty to the Constitution of India…it is the constitution of a new state, enacted by independent citizens for the first time in the history of the country. Ours is a young and new state, though it represents an ancient community that has sought to attain eternal, constant values over the centuries with the help and cooperation of other communities and its own unique style… Our past is neither static nor dead. Rather, it is a living and dynamic entity. It has its bearings upon our present and helps us in constructing our future…I perceive it clearly that education should play an important role in the renewing our past. I firmly adhere to the truth that education is the real means for realizing national objectives. The essential features of a nation are determined by its educational plans”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

In his a first address on 13 May 1967 as as President of India delivered in the central hall of the Parliament, in: p. 337.
Quest for Truth (1999)

Truth, Education, History, Communication

“If it's some style, especially some shrink-wrapped thing hanging on a wall at Toys 'R' Us, then it won't live, it won't be dynamic … It becomes exactly what the marketing people want — a genre, something to make their job easier. But if it's something like, "Everybody's telling me the wall's over there, but I'm going to push against it and see if it's really there"”

Mike Watt (1957) musician, songwriter

to me, that's what punk is. An idealistic attitude.
watt bio (2005)

People

“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Source: (zh-CN) 百花齐放、百家争鸣的方针，是促进艺术发展和科学进步的方针，是促进我国的社会主义文化繁荣的方针。艺术上不同的形式和风格可以自由发展，科学上不同的学派可以自由争论。利用行政力量，强制推行一种风格，一种学派，禁止另一种风格，另一种学派，我们认为会有害于艺术和科学的发展。艺术和科学中的是非问题，应当通过艺术界科学界的自由讨论去解决，通过艺术和科学的实践去解决，而不应当采取简单的方法去解决。

School, Art, Flowers, Fashion

“Since I was trying to teach "style" of thinking in science and engineering, and "style" is an art, I should therefore copy the methods of teaching used for the other arts—once the fundamentals have been learned. How to become a great painter cannot be taught in words… Art teachers usually let the advanced student paint, and then make suggestions… more or less as the points arise in the student's head—which is where learning is supposed to occur!”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Art, Thinking, Learning, Teachers

“A preacher must have some intelligence to charm the people by his florid style, by his exhilarating system of morality, by the repetition of his figures of speech, his brilliant remarks and vivid descriptions; but, after all, he has not too much of it, for if he possessed some of the right quality he would neglect these extraneous ornaments, unworthy of the Gospel, and preach naturally, forcibly, and like a Christian.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Of The Pulpit (8)
Les Caractères (1688)

People, Intelligence, Nature

“The message from the tropics is unambiguous: To be a successful big land animal, you must cope with mammals, and to cope with mammals you must be a mammal yourself, or at least have metabolism as high as a mammal's. And big mammals have suppressed big reptiles in our tropics for the last sixty-five million years. So how can the dinosaurs' success over mammals' be explained? By assuming that dinosaurs had low-energy metabolic styles? Not very likely.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 101
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Success, Animals

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
…
One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
…
First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.
…
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
…
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
…
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
…
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
…
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
…
Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
…
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
…
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.
…
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
…
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.
…
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
…
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
…
From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.
…
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.
…
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
…
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

Love, Life, War, Lie

“He had developed his own limited, or very simple style. He was never very keen on improving himself as a bass player and half the time I would play bass on the records because I would tend to do it quicker. Right back to those early records; I mean, at least half the bass on all recorded output is me anyway. … Rog used to come in and say, "Thank you very much" to me once in a while for winning him bass-playing polls.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

On Roger Waters, as quoted in Rock Compact Disc (September 1992)

Time

“I married. I became a wife. I acquired a husband. I had a ceremonial wedding in style. Whichever way you say it -- it was bound to end badly.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Nagiko's journal for Feb 12 1990
The Pillow Book

Way, Wedding

“It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.”

William Pfaff (1928–2015) American journalist

Source: Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends (1989), Chapter 5, Nationalism, p. 147.

People, Motivation, Universe

“The idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.”

Richard Hofstadter The Paranoid Style in American Politics

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)

Men, People, Idea

“You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement; only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style. And refrain from insult as much as you are able. Having levelled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home. If I imagined you really wished me to marry Isabel, I'd cut my throat!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XI).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Death, Home, Imagination

“As far as I am concerned, I learned this technique [the use of flat areas, painted in bright color - sometimes in contrasting juxtaposition, sometimes like pieces of colored glass in heavy dark outlines] from Kandinsky and, at the same time, from the glass paintings of the Bavarian peasants of the Murneau area, who had painted for centuries in this style.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 117

Color, Learning, Time, Painting

“Sometimes I look at the battered exteriors of apartment buildings in New York and think how these sorry shells have housed such a long procession of styles. The money! The effort! One tenant mirrors everything, the next panels the walls, the third lines them with mylar, the fourth turns to toile de Jouy, the fifth to pegboard or handblocked rice paper. The expensive if often shoddy interiors installed only to be dismantled, the exterior left untouched as it turns yet another shade sootier — this transience seems a fitting emblem for the way we stay up-to-date without ever changing.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

New York City (p. 260).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

Money, Way, Thinking, Effort

“Is xXx a threat to the Bond franchise? Not a threat so much as a salute. I don't want James Bond to turn crude and muscular on me; I like the suave style. But I like Xander, too, especially since he seems to have studied Bond so very carefully.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/xxx-2002 of xXx (9 August 2002) Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Study

“Since I have talked with many self-styled * atheists, I have come to believe that the true species does not exist, and that atheism, so-called, is either an emotional deviation in the same category as neurotic illness and with a similar causation, or else the denial of the existence of a mythical figure who certainly does not exist.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Preface, p. 15, sentence 4.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

“Nowadays, when an artist discovers 'the sky,' it's like a bride who has never done any housework raving about her first vacuum cleaner. It's just not news." (Yet she confessed that the experience prompted her to deviate from a more controlled linear style and work freely with lively, confrontational colors directly influenced by the Southwest)”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

as quoted on Portrait of the Art world - A Century of art News, Photographs http://www.npg.si.edu/cexh/artnews/edekooning.htm], referring to the photo of w:Rudolph Burckhardt's Gelatin silver print, 1960 (printed 2002), Published December 1960; Estate of Rudolph Burckhardt; courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York City Quote, after Elaine de Kooning was returned to New York from her teaching at the University of New Mexico [her studio was full of energetic paintings of bullfights in Juárez, Mexico, and of the expansive western landscape when Burckhardt portrayed her there.] 1972 - 1989

Color

“The house - a substantial but essentially modest suburban villa - was furnished with voluptuous grandeur in approximations of various styles, predominantly those of several Louis, with late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century additions. Heavy coloured glass ashtrays of monstrous size and weight rested in inlaid marquetry tables of vaguely Pompadour associations. At dinner we drank champagne from ruby Bohemian glasses: the meat was carved at a Boulle-type sideboard. ‘Regency’ wallpaper of dark green and lighter green stripes was partially covered by gilt-framed landscapes of no style whatsoever.”

Anita Brookner (1928–2016) British novelist and art historian.

A Friend From England (1987)

Housing

“With respect to excellence of Style and Composition, it may perhaps be said that to practised ears the most pleasing Music is such as has the merit of novelty, added to refinement, and ingenious contrivance; and to the ignorant, such as is most familiar and common.”

Charles Burney (1726–1814) English music historian

A General History of Music ([1776-89] 1935) vol. 1, page 22

Music

“The attempt to revive styles that have existed in former ages, may for a time appear to be successful, but experience may now surely teach us its impossibility. I might put on a suit of Claude Lorraine's clothes and walk into the street, and the many who knew Claude but slightly would pull off their hats to me, but I should at last meet with some one, more intimately acquainted with him, who would expose me to the contempt I merited.It is thus in all the fine arts. A new Gothic building, or a new missal, is in reality little less absurd than a new ruin.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's Lecture at the Literary and Scientific Institution, Hampstead, (25 July 1836), from notes, taken by C.R. Leslie
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Age, Art, Reality, Appearance

“Futurists and common sense concur that a substantial change, worldwide, in life-style and moral guidelines will soon become an absolute necessity.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

Statement (1981), as quoted in the first pages of a special tribute issue of Humankind Advancing, Vol.5, No.1 (21 January 1994) http://humankindadvancing.humanists.net/05/05-01.html

Life, Sense, Change

“Do not believe for an instant that the world's conspiring elite in every nation have so much as a serious quarrel among them. They have just one object: control through tribute. Your slavery, through tribute, and mine… Behind this attack are the self-styled elite, secure in their own power and riches… To be effective we must direct our attacks on the real criminals, the wealthy, and powerful and secret elite of all the world - the conspirators laboring day and night to enslave us.”

Taylor Caldwell book Captains and the Kings

Captains and the Kings (1974)
1970s-

Secret, World, Night

“Sadly, they played very dirty. This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style… If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they lost.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

Criticising the Dutch team's play in the 2010 World Cup final, in BBC Sport (12 July 2010) http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8812484.stm.

Football

“My style was to absorb all the data I could to make the best-informed decision possible, sometimes to the point of over-analysis.”

Paul Allen (1953–2018) American inventor, investor and philanthropist

Idea Man (2012)

Decision

“Sheer bitchiness can be a sort of style.”

Erica Jong book Fear of Flying

Fear of Flying (1973)

“I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are. But both are sensitive.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 1 “A Parade in Ehrenrang” (p. 1; opening paragraph)

Truth, Imagination, Sea

“Roger: I don't pay much attention to what is popular to be honest. It's a never ending cycle - style comes in and out of style - I try not to get caught up in all of that, and just listen to stuff i like, and play what I like; popularity is overrated.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“Style is the dress of thoughts.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

24 November 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“He'd learned that the object of a school fight was not to gain points for style but to force your enemy to give in, which meant hurting him more than he was hurting you. He knew that you had to be willing to hurt someone else, too, and he'd found out that not many people were, when it came to it; but he knew that he was.
So this wasn't unfamiliar to him, but he hadn't fought against a nearly grown man armed with a knife before, and at all costs he must keep the man from picking it up now that he'd dropped it.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

People, School, Learning, Fight

“Muhammad took the fort [of Rawar] and stayed there for two or three days. He put six thousand fighting men, who were in the fort, to the sword, and shot some with arrows. The other dependents and servants were taken prisoners, with their wives and children… When the number of the prisoners was calculated, it was found to amount to thirty thousand persons, amongst whom thirty were the daughters of chiefs, and one of them was Rai Dahir's sister's daughter, whose name was Jaisiya. They were sent to Hajjaj. The head of Dahir and the fifth part of the prisoners were forwarded in charge of Ka'ab, son of Mharak. When the head of Dahir, the women, and the property all reached Hajjaj, he prostrated himself before Allah, offered thanksgivings and praises… Hajjaj then forwarded the head, the umbrellas, and wealth, and the prisoners to Walid the Khalifa. When the Khalifa of the time had read the letter, he praised Almighty Allah. He sold some of those daughters of the chiefs, and some he granted as rewards. When he saw the daughter of Rai Dahir’s sister he was much struck with her beauty and charms, and began to bite his finger with astonishment…. It is said that after the conquest was effected and the affairs of the country were settled and the report of the conquest had reached Hajjaj, he sent a reply to the following effect. 'O my cousin! I received your life-inspiring letter. I was much pleased and overjoyed when it reached me. The events were recounted in an excellent and beautiful style, and I learnt that the ways and rules you follow are conformable to the Law. Except that you give protection to all, great and small alike, and make no difference between enemy and friend. God says, - Give no quarter to Infidels, but cut their throats. Then know that this is the command of the great God [Allah]. You shall not be too ready to grant protection, because it will prolong your work. After this, give no quarter to any enemy except to those who are of rank.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

The Chach Nama, in: Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume I, p. 172-173. Also partially quoted in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Life, Women, Men, God

“We may observe, that, notwithstanding the dogmatical, imperious style of all superstition, the conviction of the religionists, in all ages, is more affected than real, and scarcely ever approaches, in any degree, to that solid belief and persuasion, which governs us in the common affairs of life. Men dare not avow, even to their own hearts, the doubts which they entertain on such subjects: They make a merit of implicit faith; and disguise to themselves their real infidelity, by the strongest asseverations and most positive bigotry. But nature is too hard for all their endeavours, and suffers not the obscure, glimmering light, afforded in those shadowy regions, to equal the strong impressions, made by common sense and by experience. The usual course of men's conduct belies their words, and shows, that their assent in these matters is some unaccountable operation of the mind between disbelief and conviction, but approaching much nearer to the former than to the latter.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Part XII - With regard to doubt or conviction
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Life, Men, Age, Faith

“Whereas materialistic historians and philosophers neglect psychic realities, Freud is inclined to overstress their importance. I am not a psychologist, but it seems to me fairly evident that physiological factors, especially our endocrines, control our destiny … I am not able to venture a judgment on so important a phase of modern thought. However, it seems to me that psychoanalysis is not always salutary. It may not always be helpful to delve into the subconscious. The machinery of our legs is controlled by a hundred different muscles. Do you think it would help us to walk if we analyzed our legs and knew exactly which one of the little muscles must be employed in locomotion and the order in which they work? … I am not prepared to accept all his [Freud's] conclusions, but I consider his work an immensely valuable contribution to the science of human behavior. I think he is even greater as a writer than as a psychologist. Freud's brilliant style is unsurpassed by anyone since Schopenhauer.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Behavior, Thinking, Reality, Science

“Five years ago I spent two and a half months in Berlin, and every day I visited the museum to have at least a brief look at this divine masterpiece [a portrait of the soldier of fortune, Alessandro del Borro, then attributed to Diego Velazquez, and later to an unknown master], and every day my soul sang in response to it stronger and stronger. I was very sick then, and that genius alone reconciled me to my life when there was so much suffering in it. Looking at his creation, at these lines, at these half-tones (remember that shadowed jaw against the background or the column against the dress), at all this charm of the art, at this grand style, I started to want to live again, to see it again and again, to live on by painting and perhaps by painting alone.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Quote in Werefkin's Letter to Igor Grabar on August 10, 1895; Department of Manuscripts of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Fund 106. Item 3242
1895 - 1905

Life, Art, Soul, Suffering

“We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

"The Energy Crisis — Why Our World Will Never Again Be the Same", in Redbook (1974); later in Progress As If Survival Mattered : A Handbook For A Conserver Society (1977) by Hugh Nash, p. 166
1970s

Life, Children, People, World

“We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. … If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Criticism" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Men, Books, World, Beauty

“A man’s style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

A Man's Style
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Art

“Hey, that's not a bug, that's a feature! You know what the most complex piece of engineering known to man in the whole solar system is? Guess what – it's not Linux, it's not Solaris, and it's not your car. It's you. And me. And think about how you and me actually came about – not through any complex design. Right. "Sheer luck". Well, sheer luck, and:
• Free availability and crosspollination through sharing of "source code", although biologists call it DNA.
• A rather unforgiving user environment, that happily replaces bad versions of us with better working versions and thus culls the herd (biologists often call this "survival of the fittest").
• Massive undirected parallel development ("trial and error").
I'm deadly serious: we humans have never been able to replicate something more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural selection did it without even thinking. Don't underestimate the power of survival of the fittest. And don't ever make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit. Quite frankly, Sun is doomed. And it has nothing to do with their engineering practices or their coding style.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

2000s, 2000-04

Cars, Error, Intelligence, Nature

“I have noticed in observing and debating him [Moore] that he is an addict of crowd-pleasing and demagogy, and also an addict of "secret financial government" rhetoric. He also affects a certain plebeian and blue-collar style. When he thinks it will work, he will pretend to believe that "American jobs" are migrating to Mexico, or that "American boys" are being duped into war by hidden cabals. This combination of nativism and populism (stirred in with a nauseating dose of sentimentality and an absolutely breath-taking contempt for objective truth) reminds me very much of the dolts who joined the SA. But then, those guys were probably as surprised as their dumb Stalinist counterparts when the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed. By the way, that was the only treaty he signed that Stalin didn't break. With much of the remaining Left, I have to say, there is a certain immunity from Moore's gruesome posturing, if only because they don't think it was a good idea to have General Motors, or the city of Flint, Michigan, in the first place. And some of them are genuine pacifists, while Moore is an open supporter of the Islamist death-squads in Iraq.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Love, Poverty and War" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C78DC231-4599-4745-9CA5-A398398916A0, FrontPageMagazine.com (2004-12-29): On Michael Moore 2000s, 2004

Death, War, Truth, Secret

“David Galin, among other researchers, has pointed out that teachers have three main tasks: first, to train both hemispheres — not only the verbal, symbolic, logical left hemisphere, which has always been trained in the traditional education, but also the relational, holistic right hemisphere, which is largely neglected in today's schools; second, to train students to use the cognitive style suited to the tasks at hand; and third, to train students to be able to bring both styles — both hemispheres — to bear on a problem in an integrated manner.
When teachers can pair the complementary modes or fit one mode to the appropriate task, teaching and learning will become a much more precise process. Ultimately, the goal will be to develop both halves of the brain. Both modes are necessary for full human functioning and both are necessary for creative work of all kinds, whether writing or painting, developing a new theory in physics, or dealing with environmental problems.”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.196

Education, School, Problem, Learning

“Thousands of people with good qualities are displeasing; thousands pleasing with far less abilities, and why? Because the first wish to appear to be what they are not, the second are what they appear. Some of the advantages or disadvantages that we have received from nature please in proportion as we know the air, the style, the manner, the sentiments that coincide with our condition and our appearance, and displease in the proportion they are removed from that point.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), VII. On Air and Manner

People, Nature, Appearance

Quotes about styling page 9

Quotes about styling
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