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Description Quotes

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Description Quotes

“To take a journey of a thousand miles, you have to begin with the first step from the place where you stand; the romantic description of the journey and the things the body sees on the way and the description of the scenery are of no use unless you lift your foot and take the first step.”

WayFirstsUseBodyStepsJourneyFeetThousandTravelMilesLiftsDescriptionFirst StepsSceneryThousand MilesWhere You StandJourney Of A Thousand Miles
Book:Blossoms of Friendship
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“Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life.”

ThinkingMenLongReasonForceActingStruggleFunctionContraryPreservesFeaturesAppropriateDescriptionExtinctionAdverse
Book:Human action: a treatise on economics
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“There is in the universe something for the description and analysis of which the natural sciences cannot contribute anything. There are events beyond the range of those events that the procedures of the natural sciences are fit to observe and describe. There is human action.”

HumansActionUniverseNaturalSocietyEventsFitRangeAnalysisDescriptionProceduresNatural ScienceHuman Actions
Book:The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method
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“If you are deaf, you need captions for spoken elements. If you are blind, you need voiced descriptions of Web contents and spoken renderings of e-mail. The range of physical disabilities is very large, and we need many different tools to overcome the consequential barriers to Internet use. Let us commit ourselves to truly assuring that the Internet really is for everyone.”

IfsNeedsDifferentUseInternetElementsToolsOvercomingBlindCommitRangeDescriptionBarriersDisabilityMailBlindnessDeafRenderingCaptionWeb Content
Author:Vinton Cerf
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“We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage - almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.”

IfsThinkingHumansWarEnoughMomentsPainGraceCircumstancesBlessedSavedNarrativeDescriptionCatastropheAdequateSequenceOutrageInexplicable
Book:Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World
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“We're starting to realize that magicians have a lot of implicit know-ledge about how we perceive the world around us because they have to deceive us in terms of controlling attention, exploiting the assumptions we make when we do and don't notice a change in our environment. There is an enormous amount of really detailed instruction on how to perform magic. People are always blown away by how detailed a description you'll have.”

PeopleKnowsWorldTermRealizingAttentionEnvironmentMagicAmountStartingEnormousPerceiveAssumptionDescriptionInstructionDeceivingMagicianOur EnvironmentImplicitBlown AwayLedges
Author:Richard Wiseman
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“A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of Poe's will impress upon the mind a more vivid notion of powerful and correct description and narration than will ten dry chapters of a bulky textbook.”

WritingMindWholeStoriesPowerfulTeachStyleTenPagesNotionDryDescriptionChaptersImpressVividTextbooksManualsNarration
Book:H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ Ultimate Collection: 120+ Works ALL in One Volume: Complete Novellas & Short Stories, Juvenilia, Poetry, Essays & Collaborations: The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Out of Time, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, Dagon, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Outsider, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Cats of Ultharäó_
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“Men are suppressing woman politically, philosophically, socially, through denying them education, equal rights, equal employment, and just by setting up a description of the world in which a woman views herself as a vessel, as someone who's only there to have children, as someone who can't succeed, even spiritually.”

MenWorldChildrenWomenViewsRightsSucceedEqualEnlightenmentSettingSettingsEmploymentDescriptionVesselEqual RightsSuppressing
Author:Frederick Lenz
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“Attention spans are changing. It's very noticeable. I am very aware that the kind of books I read in my childhood kids now won't be able to read. I was reading Kipling and PG Wodehouse and Shakespeare at the age of 11. The kind of description and detail I read I would not put in my books. I don't know how much you can fight that because you want children to read. So I pack in excitement and plot and illustrations and have a cliffhanger every chapter. Charles Dickens was doing cliffhangers way back when. But even with all the excitement you have to make children care about the characters.”

KnowsWayWantKindChildrenBookCharacterCareKidsAgeAbleFightingReadingAttentionKnow HowChildhoodDetailsExcitementDescriptionPlotChaptersPacksBack WhenIllustrationDickensAttention SpanChild CareCliffhangerKiplingWay Back When
Author:Cressida Cowell
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“It takes talent to please the people in a sermon by a flowery style, a cheerful ethic, brilliant sallies and lively descriptions; but such a talent is inadequate. A better sort of talent neglects these extraneous ornaments, unworthy to be used in the service of the Gospel: such a preacher's sermon will be simple, strong and Christian.”

PeopleIfsChristianQualityToo MuchStyleFiguresMoralitySpeechBrilliantCharmDescriptionNeglectPossessedPreacherRepetitionVividRemarksUnworthyOrnamentsExhilaratingFigures Of Speech
Author:Jean de la Bruyere
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“A dream inspiring a story is different than placing a description of a dream in a story. When you describe a character's dream, it has to be sharper than reality in some way, and more meaningful. It has to somehow speak to plot, character, and all the rest. If you're writing something fantastical, it can be a really deadly choice because your story already has elements that can seem dreamlike.”

IfsWayWritingDifferentCharacterStoriesDreamRealitySeemsChoicesSpeakElementsMeaningfulDescriptionPlot
Author:Jeff VanderMeer
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“One night, a group of moths gathered on a shelf watching a burning candle. Puzzled by the nature of the light, they sent one of their members to go and check on it. The scouting moth circled the candle several times and came back with a description: The light was bright. Then a second moth went to examine it. He, too, came back with an observation: The light was hot. Finally a third moth volunteered to go. When he approached the candle he didn't stop like his friends had done, but flew straight into the flame. He was consumed there and then, and only he understood the nature of the light.”

DoneLightNightGroupsMembersUnderstoodThirdsHotChecksObservationBurningFlamesDescriptionCandleShelvesConsumedOne NightFlewMothsPuzzledScouting
Author:Elif Safak
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“Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word. Perhaps our gut feeling that it cannot be so reflects only our hopes and prejudices, our desperate striving to make sense of a complex and confusing world, and not the ways of nature.”

WorldWayFeelingsCausesEventsPrejudiceComplexesStriveMake SenseDesperateGutsDescriptionConventionalConfusingAdequateRandomnessGut Feelings
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is negative. This low quality is not just a vague, woolly-headed, crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an experience. It is not a judgment about an experience. It is not a description of experience. The value itself is an experience. As such it is completely predictable. It is verifiable by anyone who cares to do so.”

PersonsCareValuesReligiousQualitySituationJudgmentIntellectualLowsNegativeArgumentHotDescriptionVaguePersuasionMetaphysicalWho CaresAbstractionPredictablePredicamentsPhilosophicStovesVerify
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one's living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.”

WantTryingMayRunningDesireExpressionTasteMachinesAimVanityManifestationDescriptionSpecificationsAdequacyTrying To Be Happy
Author:J. Robert Oppenheimer
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“There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter if not a paragraph or a name in the history of philosophy.”

IfsYearsPhilosophyUniverseNamesExercisePhilosophicalMereFinalsIntellectDoctrineUselessAnalysisDescriptionPassagesChaptersParagraphPlausible
Book:Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings
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“When I illustrate a cover or a book, I draw upon what the author tells me; that's how I see my responsibility as an illustrator. J.K. Rowling is very descriptive in her writing — she gives an illustrator a lot to work with. Each story is packed full of rich visual descriptions of the atmosphere, the mood, the setting, and all the different creatures and people. She makes it easy for me. The images just develop as I sketch and retrace until it feels right and matches her vision.”

PeopleGivingFeelsWritingBookDifferentStoriesEasyResponsibilityVisionRichCreaturesDrawsMoodSettingSettingsAtmosphereVisualsDescriptionFeels RightIllustrators
Author:Mary GrandPre
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“Psychology is the description of the reflection of the terrestial world in the heavenly plane, or, more correctly, the description of a reflection such as we, soaked as we are in our terrestial nature, imagine it, for no reflection actually occurs, only we see earth wherever we turn.”

WorldEarthTurnsPsychologyImagineReflectionPlanesDescriptionHeavenly
Book:Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod
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