Spell Quotes - page 12
There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present.
Washington Irving
There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt.
Margaret Atwood
When we observe a thing, we see too much in it, we fall under the spell of the wealth of empirical detail which prevents us from clearly perceiving the notional determination which forms the core of the thing. The problem is thus not that of how to grasp the multiplicity of determinations, but rather to abstract from them, how to constrain our gaze and teach it to grasp only the notional determinism.
Slavoj Žižek
There are lone figures armed only with ideas, sometimes with just one idea, who blast away whole epochs in which we are enwrapped like mummies. Some are powerful enough to resurrect the dead. Some steal on us unawares and put a spell over us which it takes centuries to throw off. Some put a curse on us, for our stupidity and inertia, and then it seems as if God himself were unable to lift it.
Henry Miller
One day I saw the combative Giants shortstop Billy Jurges confront umpire George Magerkurth, on a call Jurges violently objected to, the two men standing jaw to jaw, raging invective at each other. A faint spray of saliva emitted from Magerkurth's mouth; Jurges stepped back and uncorked his own oyster of spittle, right in the umpire's face. Magerkurth slugged Jurges, who slugged him back, and the two men rolled on the infield grass, clawing at each other until they were pried apart. Jurges, of course, was tossed out of the game and suspended for a spell, his place at shortstop taken over by the mild-mannered prematurely gray utility infielder, Lou Chiozza. The very next day, Chiozza ran out to short left field, chasing a pop fly, while in rushed Joe Moore, from his left field post. The result was a noisy collision, which sent Chiozza to the hospital, marking the first and only time one player's spittle had broken another player's leg.
Arnold Hano
A word is an arbitrary label - that's the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don't snicker: Would you ever say, 'Nothing has gone wrong yet' without looking for wood to knock?
Steven Pinker
