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Differences Quotes

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Differences Quotes

“The issue of comparative performances can be regarded as settled to-day, both scientifically and practically. Though differences in attitudes between men and women still form a favorite topic of drawing-room conversation ... women's abilities are no longer seriously in doubt. These discussions rather seem to be a kind of rearguard action carried on after the main battle has been decided.”

“A convention is a social pattern we have chosen to prefer over whatever the raw world simply proffers. It is a sign of the operation of the mind, drawing the assent of a sufficient number of other minds so that the agreement will be widely operative. A convention is not a custom; a custom is a habit in which a sufficient number acquiesce. A custom can appear as a convention, but it is really a lesser act, the result of passive acceptance rather than of the imposition of design. It is the difference between learning to live by the annual flooding of the river or by a calendar.”

“In comparing these two writers, he [Samuel Johnson] used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and a figurative statement of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners, but I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial plates are brighter.”

“People don't live their lives in a series of scenes that form a dramatic narrative, they don't speak in dialogue, they're not lit by a cinematographer or scored by a composer. The properties of real life and the properties of drama have almost nothing to do with each other. The difference between writing about reporters and being a reporter is the same as the difference between drawing a building and building a building.”

“The difference between what we see and a sheet of white paper with a few thin lines on it is very great. Yet this abstraction is one which we seem to have adopted almost instinctively at an early stage in our development, not only in Neolithic graffiti but in early Egyptian drawings. And in spite of its abstract character, the outline is responsive to the least tremor of sensibility.”