Quite Quotes - page 14

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. (Oscar Wilde)
They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. View quote
Oscar Wilde
ALGERNON: Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them. View quote
Oscar Wilde
Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. View quote
Oscar Wilde
Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair. View quote
Oscar Wilde
I am surprised to see that today everything that does not amount to surrender pure and simple to generalized capitalism, let us call it thus, is considered to be archaic or old-fashioned, as though in a way there existed no other definition of what it means to be modern than, quite simply, to be at all times caught in the dominant forms of the moment. View quote
Alain Badiou
It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating properties'), thereof one must be silent. It must on the contrary be named. View quote
Alain Badiou
I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," [Clovis] resumed presently. "They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. View quote
Saki
I don't really know what "intellectual" means, but if it means you've got a desire to learn, you've got a desire to look for things that haven't been presented to you, then, maybe. I think that "intellectual" is quite an exclusive word. I think it's just for anyone that has a thirst or a hunger to improve themselves, or a yearning to escape from somewhere to get to a better place. View quote
Pete Doherty
When I started writing I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way. View quote
John Banville
They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier. (David Foster Wallace)
We have the idea that our hearts, once broken, scar over with an indestructible tissue that prevents their ever breaking again in quite the same place... View quote
Michael Chabon
During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism. View quote
Howard Thurman
We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it. View quote
Gregory Bateson
There has been growing quite a strain of irritating feeling between our government and the Russians and it seems to me that it is a time for me to use all the restraint I can on these other people who have been apparently getting a little more irritated. View quote
Henry L. Stimson
Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to happen, the reader is quite as vital as the author. View quote
Terry Eagleton
Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwards there was one child more in the house. View quote
Georg Brandes
But what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. ... We can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values. View quote
Georg Brandes
We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated. View quote
Walter Lippmann
You never quite know what's going to strike your imagination, or something that won't going to leave you alone, not going to leave alone, and this was one for me. View quote
Peter Shaffer
If you cross the Atlantic with an American lady you invariably fall in love with her before the journey is over. Travel with the same woman in a railway car for twelve hours, and you will have written her down in your own mind in quite other language than that of love. (Anthony Trollope)
Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century. View quote
Anthony Trollope
And what is the reaction of the British political class? Well the Lib Dems, still think that the Euro is a success! I don't quite think where Cleggy gets this from, I don't know. Perhaps he is considering an alternative career as a stand up comedian, once he's out of politics. View quote
Nigel Farage
The human mind is utterly stupid when it carries, quite willingly, the heavy burden of resentment. View quote
Sri Chinmoy
When I see that man on the telly - 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' No! I'm definitely not! I find most of it quite offensive! View quote
John Prescott