Quotessence
Home / Topics / Quaint Quotes

Quaint Quotes

Browse 95 quotes about Quaint.

Related topics

SeemsThinkingNotion

Quaint Quotes

“But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods, asking of course every moment for introspective data, but eliminating their uncertainty by operating on a large scale and taking statistical means. This method taxes patience to the utmost, and could hardly have arisen in a country whose natives could be bored. Such Germans as Weber, Fechner, Vierordt, and Wundt obviously cannot ; and their success has brought into the field an array of younger experimental psychologists, bent on studying the elements of the mental life, dissecting them out from the gross results in which they are embedded, and as far as possible reducing them to quantitative scales. The simple and open method of attack having done what it can, the method of patience, starving out, and harassing to death is tried ; the Mind must submit to a regular siege, in which minute advantages gained night and day by the forces that hem her in must sum themselves up at last into her overthrow. There is little of the grand style about these new prism, pendulum, and chronograph-philosophers. They mean business, not chivalry. What generous divination, and that superiority in virtue which was thought by Cicero to give a man the best insight into nature, have failed to do, their spying and scraping, their deadly tenacity and almost diabolic cunning, will doubtless some day bring about. No general description of the methods of experimental psychology would be instructive to one unfamiliar with the instances of their application, so we will waste no words upon the attempt.”

LolQuaintExperimental PsychologyBlame The GermansPolitical Incorrectness
Book:The Principles of Psychology: Volume 1
Create image

“Over and over again we find the Church councils complaining that the peasants (and sometimes the priests too) were singing 'wicked songs with a chorus of dancing women,' or holding 'ballads and dancings and evil and wanton songs and such-like lures of the devil'; over and over again the bishops forbade these songs and dances; but in vain. In every country in Europe, right through the Middle Ages to the time of the Reformation, and after it, country folk continued to sing and dance in the churchyard. Two hundred years after Charlemagne's death there grew up the legend of the dancers of Kölbigk, who danced on Christmas Eve in the churchyard, in spite of the warning of the priest, and all got rooted to the spot for a year, till the Archbishop of Cologne released them. Some men say that they were not rooted standing to the spot, but that they had to go on dancing for the whole year; and that before they were released they had danced themselves waist-deep into the ground. People used to repeat the little Latin verse which they were singing: ... Through the leafy forest, Bovo went a-riding And his pretty Merswind trotted on beside him-- Why are we standing still? Why can't we go away?”

FunHistoryDancingMischiefQuaintMedieval ChurchMedieval Culture
Book:Medieval People
Create image

“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.”

ThinkingMindMayEyeAbleMovingViewsJourneyFrontsConversationReflectionFlowTrainShipsLandscapePlanesInternalsNew ThoughtReluctantIntrospectiveLiableCorrelationNew PlacesQuaintMidwife
Book:The Art of Travel
Create image

“American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself.”

CountryMightHappenedGroupsCenturyParticularCommittedMissionaryTribesOutlookStatesmenNineteenth CenturyResemblanceQuaintAfrican Tribes
Author:A. J. P. Taylor
Create image

“Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery, trains, automobiles, the telegraph have played important parts in his own colossal life! Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily with practical details and harsh realities in the political world, have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle.”

WorldYearsHumansDoeImportantReasonRealityPoliticalSoundProgressEconomicModernIndustryBalanceHumorousPrisonTrainDetailsAppreciationPracticalsFiftyWrestlingSanityHarshMachineryRevivalAutomobilePublic ServiceOpen MindednessCottagesColossalQuaintTelegraphHarsh Reality
Author:Paramahansa Yogananda
Create image

“As for comics, one has only to turn to the characteristic output of Marvel Comics, for the period from about 1961 to about 1975, to find not an expression of base and cynical impulses but of good, old-fashioned liberal humanism of a kind that may strike us today, God help us, as quaint, but which nevertheless appealed, in story after story, to ideals such as tolerance, technological optimism, and self-sacrifice for the benefit of others.”

KindMaySelfHelpingStoriesTodayTurnsSacrificeExpressionPeriodsBenefitsIdealsOptimismHumanismStrikesToleranceImpulseCharacteristicsCynicalNeverthelessTechnologicalOld FashionedSelf SacrificeOutputGod HelpQuaintGod Help UsMarvel Comics
Author:Michael Chabon
Create image

“I realize that after decades of positive thinking the notion of realism, of things as they are, may seem a little quaint. ... When the stakes are high enough and the risks obvious, we still turn to people who can be counted on to understand those risks and prepare for worst-case scenarios. A chief of state does not want to hear a general in the field say that he 'hopes' to win tomorrow's battle or that he's 'visualizing victory'.”

PeopleThinkingWantMayLittlesDoeStillsStatesEnoughRealitySeemsTurnsWinningRealizingCasesRiskWorstFieldsPositive ThinkingVictoryTomorrowBattleNotionObviousDecadesChiefsStakesRealismScenariosWishful ThinkingQuaintVisualizingWorst Case Scenario
Book:Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Create image

“The days when the words Hollywood actor framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate, consultant, pundit, and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now, a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.”

RealitySeemsActorsPartyHollywoodSeriesFingersCrowdsTeaExtrasCandidatesInsultTea PartyTagFramedHamBunniesShamelessConsultantsImpliedPunditsQuaint
Author:James Wolcott
Create image

“Here is the mistake of the cut-and-dried man of culture. He goes about with the secret of having learned to appreciate the "grandstyle." He has lived in Homer till he can recall the roll of that many-sounding sea. He has pored over the lofty and pictorial thought of Plato till he begins to pique himself upon its grandeur. His fancy has been fed on the quaint old-world genius of Herodotus, his judgment on the melancholy wisdom of Tacitus and the complacent cynicism of Gibbon--and of all this he is conscious and proud.”

MenWorldHas BeensCultureSecretMistakeCuttingSeaProudGeniusJudgmentConsciousAppreciateFancyFedsMelancholyCynicismRecallsPlatoGrandeurLoftyComplacentOld WorldQuaintPictorialPique
Author:Richard Holt Hutton
Create image

“If Jeff Mogil and Ron Melzack are right about genetics and pain, fifty years from now, generic Tylenol tablets will seem as quaint to us as a bottle of sarsaparilla tonic. Instead, we'll take our genotype ID bracely to the local genopharmacologist to order some bespoke pharmaceuticals. Or we may rise at four A.M. to meditate on the part of our nature that is painful and feel better for it. Along with social insurance, we'll carry geno-cards that list our predispositions: photosensitivity, osteoporosis, and poor response to codeine.”

IfsFeelsYearsMaySeemsPainOrderSocialPoorFourResponsePainfulListsLocalsCardsTherapyFiftyInjuryBottlesFeel BetterGeneticsTabletsGenericQuaintOsteoporosisTylenolCodeine
Author:Marni Jackson
Create image

“The problem is that those of us sympathetic with the plight of indigenous people view them as quaint and colorful, but somehow reduced to margins of history as the real world [(our world)] moves on We will be known as an era in which we stood by and either actively endorsed or passively accepted the massive destruction of both biological and cultural diversity on the planet.”

PeopleWorldRealProblemMovingViewsKnownPlanetsDiversityDestructionAcceptedErasMassiveOur WorldReal WorldIndigenousMarginsSympatheticColorfulCultural DiversityPlightIndigenous PeopleQuaint
Author:Wade Davis
Create image

“Seek out some retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth century would sound far-off and faint.”

WorldDreamSoundHalfWeekCenturyForgottenWaveCrowdsSpotsFairyRetiredCliffsSunnyLanesNineteenth CenturyNoisyOld WorldQuaintDrowsy
Book:Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel
Create image

“But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long preserv'd virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave's a fine and private place, But none I think do there embrace.”

ThinkingTryingLongLyingSongTurnsFoundSoundFineEternityEmbraceGravesLustDustDesertHonourAshesWormsMarbleVirginityHurryingChariotsVaultsQuaint
Author:Andrew Marvell
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingWritingKindBookRealitySeemsFacesLanguageReligiousFictionMeditationModernEnlightenmentFinalsPlotShiftingModern LifeAmbiguityTextureNeatQuaint
Author:Don DeLillo
Create image

“We have a number of very powerful women in the world now - Mrs. [Angela] Merkel, who the Germans call Mutti. What did we call Mrs. [Margaret] Thatcher? When she was minister of education, she stopped the children's free school milk. This may sound quaint, but after the war we were such a malnourished nation that part of the founding of the welfare state were public health initiatives. Every little schoolchild got milk. Mrs. Thatcher stopped it. They called her "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher."”

WorldMayChildrenLittlesWarStatesSchoolNationsSoundPowerfulNumbersMinistersWelfareMilkInitiativeFoundingVery PowerfulPublic HealthPowerful WomenWelfare StateAngelaQuaintMaggieMrs Thatcher
Author:Hilary Mantel
Create image