Best modern & language Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“The new painters do not propose, any more than did their predecessors, to be geometers. But it may be said that geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer. Today, scholars no longer limit themselves to the three dimensions of Euclid. The painters have been lead quite naturally, one might say by intuition, to preoccupy themselves with the new possibilities of spatial measurement which, in the language of the modern studios, are designated by the term fourth dimension.”

Source: Power Through Constructive Thinking

“Ancient and modern languages teem with happily expressed sentiments of more or less force and beauty, sufficiently individualized and excellent to warrant their reproduction and classification.”

Language Force Modern Ancient Excellent Sentiments Reproduction Warrants Classification Modern Languages

Book:Edge-tools of speech

Source: Edge-tools of speech

“It's more than usually possible that I won't do a play again. But Skylight is one of the great plays in the English language. I was lucky enough to be a part of it at one point in its life, and it's a timely thing to deliver it again in the modern world.”

World Enough Play Language Modern Lucky Modern World English Language Timely Skylights

Author:Bill Nighy

“It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. ...But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.”

“Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association.”

Source: Vamps & Tramps: New Essays

“I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike.”

Giving Writing Use Seems Language Poverty Modern Kings Give Me Sentences Awful Prose Vow Use Of Language

Author:Martin Amis

“Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.”

Able Mother Speak Language Women Modern Media Style Bed Seven Supposed To Be Cooks Being The Best Modeling Derivatives Best Mother Bombarded Modern Woman Bombarded By

Author:Jamie Lee Curtis

“A language not based on universal symbols or sensations is gibberish, a pitfall of modern art, no longer modern.”

Art Language Modern Universal Symbols Sensations Modern Art Pitfalls

Author:Nelson Shanks

“"Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.”

People Writing Language Sound Modern Video Our Time Latin Modern Languages

Author:Lawrence Lessig

“Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now.”

Source: Life & Letters: The Spectator Columns

“The language of theism which was familiar to the people, gave Gandhi the advantage of easy communication with the people, but it is atheistic in principle. It could have been the starting point for the atheistic movement in the modern age.”

“over and over again I am struck by the wordiness of modern poetry, as if language had replaced experience and must be more and more extreme, intricate and in a way divorced from life itself. It seems as if what we all need is a great purification - but how will that come about?”

Ifs Way Needs Seems Language Modern Extremes Replaced Divorced Intricate Purification Modern Poetry

Author:May Sarton

“The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you've blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won't let you go. Read this book, savor the language-it's the last-and the most compelling word in thrillers.”

Ifs Feels Book Lasts Language Novel Modern Crime Demon Compelling Mars Thrillers Letting You Go Milieu Crime Novels

Author:James Ellroy

“I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming.”

People Thinking Way Needs Giving Book Different Enough Stories Literature Language Religious Modern Fit Conversation Structure West Different Ways

Author:William P. Young

“In the modern languages there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books.”

Years Book Literature Language Modern Six Hundred Years Ago Profound Library Latin Scholar Volume Modern Languages

Author:Thomas B. Macaulay

“I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country [England], that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great many words of two dead languages, which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are of no use in the common intercourse of life. Useful knowledge, in my opinion, consists of modern languages, history, and geography; some Latin may be thrown into the bargain, in compliance with custom, and for closet amusement.”

“The soul is something which contains the body. The body doesn't contain the soul. The soul, if we put it into modern language, is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists.”

Ifs Soul Body Language Modern Complexes Organisms Modern Languages

Author:Alan Watts

“I started by saying that one of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that the problem of production has been solved. This illusion, I suggested, is mainly due to our inability to recognize that the modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which is has been erected. To use the language of the economist, it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income.”

Source: SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

“I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England. And though the main of it was compiled considerably more than two hundred years ago, yet is the language of it, not only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree.”

Source: John Wesley's The Book of Common Prayer

“For being able to use language was a critical skill that could carry one far. One could use it professionally, as a crafter of everything from political speeches to modern novels. One could use it personally, as a tool of discovery or a means of staying connected to others. One could use it as an outlet that would feed the artistic spirit of the creator, which existed in everyone.”

Mean Use Able Political Spirit Language Novel Modern Skills Speech Discovery Tools Creator Connected Critical Artistic Staying Outlets Political Speeches Modern Novel Crafters

Author:Elizabeth George

“In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.”

Two Would Be Language Modern Ancient Greek Hebrew Modern Languages

Author:W. H. Auden

“[Georg Cantor was the first to prove that there could be a series of infinities; that infinities come in an infinite number of sizes.] Thus Cantor's Absolute is a perfect image for what we experience of God. When I speak of a Big Enough God I am not merely thinking of an Infinite God, but the God of infinities, the Absolute, which either chooses to reveal itself or remains veiled in mystery. Modern mathematics does begin to feel like the language that God talks.”

Thinking Feels Firsts Doe Enough Bigs Speak Language Perfect Numbers Mystery Modern Prove Absolutes Infinite Mathematics Remains Series Size Infinity

Author:Sara Maitland

“Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.”

Men Language Modern Educated Foreigners Modern Man Foreign Language

Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.”

Way Writing Use Language Simple Modern Flower Sticks Sentences Best Way Writing Advice Creeps Adjectives Writing By Writers Fluff Short Words Plain Language

Book:The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

Source: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“You know I very much respect Yvonne Rainer, she is very important - in American dance, the entire development of modern dance, and creating a wonderful physical language.”

Knows Important Language Wonderful Modern Development Creating Modern Dance

Author:Marina Abramovic

“I think all experience is, in some way, shape or form, filtered down to help you, in your present moment. With Shakespeare, you're trying to act with a fairly archaic language, although in certain aspects, it's deeply modern.”

Thinking Way Trying Moments Helping Form Certain Language Modern Shapes Aspect Present Moment

Author:Joseph Fiennes

“Traditional society was more like a set of concentric circles of meaningful structures, while modern man must learn how to find meaning in many structures to which he is only marginally related. In the village, language and architecture and religion and work and family customs were consistent with one another, mutually explanatory and reinforcing. To grow into one implied a growth into others.”

Men Language Grows Growth Modern Structure Architecture Meaningful Circles Traditional Related Consistent Customs Village Find Me Modern Man Implied

Book:Tradition and Revolution

Source: Tradition and Revolution

“For me, wellbehaved books with neat plots and worked-out endings seem somewhat quaint in the face of the largely incoherent reality of modern life; and then again fiction, at least as I write it and think of it, is a kind of religious meditation in which language is the final enlightenment, and it is language, in its beauty, its ambiguity and its shifting textures, that drives my work.”

Thinking Writing Kind Book Reality Seems Faces Language Religious Fiction Meditation Modern Enlightenment Finals Plot Shifting Modern Life Ambiguity Texture Neat Quaint

Author:Don DeLillo

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Modern Quotes