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Wonder Quotes

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Wonder Quotes

“You know we're constantly taking. We don't make most of the food we eat, we don't grow it, anyway. We wear clothes other people make, we speak a language other people developed, we use a mathematics other people evolved and spent their lives building. I mean we're constantly taking things. It's a wonderful ecstatic feeling to create something and put it into the pool of human experience and knowledge.”

People Knows Humans Mean Use Feelings Science Speak Language Grows Wonder Knowledge Wonderful Building Clothes Mathematics Pool Human Experience Ecstatic

Author:Steve Jobs

“A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.”

Ifs Should Mind Kind Children Soul Play Form Lost Language Born Wonder Spring Weak Sick Wit Lust Conception Pits Transitory Jargon Diseased Babel

Book:The Works of of the Rev. Jonathan Swift

Source: The Works of of the Rev. Jonathan Swift

“People only speak to get something. If I say, Let me tell you a few things about myself, already your defenses go up; you go, Look, I wonder what he wants from me, because no one ever speaks except to obtain an objective. That's the only reason anyone ever opens their mouth, onstage or offstage. They may use a language that seems revealing, but if so, it's just coincidence, because what they're trying to do is accomplish an objective.”

People Ifs Want Trying Looks May Reason Use Seems Speak Language Wonder Mouths Let Me Accomplish Defense Objectives Coincidence Revealing

Author:David Mamet

“The very serpents bite their tails; the bees forget to sting, For a language so celestial setteth up a wondering. And the touch of absent mindedness is more than any line, Since direction counts for nothing when the gods set up a sign.”

Language Lines Forget Wonder Bites Bees Tails Absent Celestial Serpent Absent Minded Absent Mindedness

Book:The Janitor's Boy and Other Poems

Source: The Janitor's Boy and Other Poems

“I wonder whether our adoption of Shrink-ese as a second language, the move from religious phrases of judgment to secular words of acceptance, hasn't also produced a moral lobotomy. In the reluctance, the aversion to being judgmental, are we disabled from making any judgments at all?”

Moving Language Religious Wonder Moral Acceptance Judgment Phrases Adoption Secular Shrinks Disabled Judgmental Aversion Reluctance Lobotomy Being Judgmental

Author:Ellen Goodman

“I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.”

Would Be Language Wonder Learning Minutes Personality Twenties Ridiculous Acquire Excess Conventions Twelve Fifteen Minimum Maximum Etiquette Inadequate Sanctity Oratory

Author:Agnes Repplier

“Language both reflects and shapes society. Culture shapes language and then language shapes culture. Little wonder that the words we use to talk to each other, and about each other, are the most important words in our language: they tell us who I am, they tell us who you are, they tell us who 'they' are.”

Littles Important Use Culture Language Wonder Shapes Who You Are Who I Am Important Words

Book:Unspinning the Spin: The Women's Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language

Source: Unspinning the Spin: The Women's Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language

“I found cause to wonder upon what ground the English accuse Americans of corrupting the language by introducing slang words. I think I heard more and more different kinds of slang during my few weeks' stay in London than in my whole "tenderloin" life in New York. But I suppose the English feel that the language is theirs, and that they may do with it as they please without at the same time allowing that privilege to others.”

Thinking Feels Kind May Different Whole Found Language Causes Wonder Heard Week New York Please Privilege London Allowing Different Kinds Introducing Slang

Book:The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson

Source: The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson

“The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms connecting them. Words, or their inscriptions, unlike points, miles, classes and the rest, are tangible objects of the size so popular in the marketplace, where men of unlike conceptual schemes communicate at their best. The strategy is one of ascending to a common part of two fundamentally disparate conceptual schemes, the better to discuss the disparate foundations. No wonder it helps in philosophy.”

“You also wonder if a restaurant placed an ad that read, "Only homeless need apply," would they get fined? Probably not. But if they said, "No homeless apply," they would be transient bigots. For as bureaucrats use language to punish the lawful, they use tolerance to coddle the troubled.”

Ifs Needs Said Use Would Be Language Wonder Tolerance Restaurants Ads Homeless They Said Transient Bureaucrats Bigots

Author:Greg Gutfeld

“Creating the characters is the most creative part of the novel except for the language itself. There I am, sitting in front of my computer in right-brain mode, typing the things that come to mind - which become the seeds of plot. It's scary, though, because I always wonder: Is it going to be there this time?”

Mind Character Language Brain Wonder Novel Creative Fronts Computer Creating Sitting Scary Seeds Plot Typing

Author:Elizabeth George

“The variety of shape, pattern, and color found in the languages of the world is a testament to the wonder of nature, to the breathtaking array of possibilities that can emerge, tangled and wild, from the fertile human endowments of brain and larynx, intelligence and social skills.”

Source: In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language

“I do feel that scripts get developed now to a point where they're sort of actor-proof. If the actor is not very good, the narrative still survives because it's all in the dialogue. Not to say there aren't great performances in English-language films, because there are every year, but the 1970s were awash with great performances, and I was wondering whether it had to do with the amount of space and the amount of responsibility given to the actors.”

Ifs Feels Years Stills Film Actors Language Given Space Responsibility Wonder Amount Performances Very Good Scripts Proof Dialogue Narrative English Language Great Performance

Author:Paul Bettany

“One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild-into its ancestral sea-its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths, seeing strange fish and tasting new waters, not even having a concept of depth, not knowing the language of any whale pods it might meet. It was my fear of a world that would expand suddenly, violently, and without rules or laws: bubbles and seaweed and storms and frightening volumes of dark blue that never end.”

“I want language to help us live in a world of wonder/terror/change. I want it to be about "becoming" rather than "being." I think that being and nouns are part of our hopeless dream that time will stop and we will not die. but it's not that way. So, why not celebrate verbs and the beloved's metamorphosis into other people or creatures or places - the same spirit but moving through things, not static.”

People Thinking World Way Want Helping Dream Moving Spirit Dies Language Wonder Becoming Creatures Terror Celebrate Beloved Hopeless Why Not Static Verbs Metamorphosis Nouns

Author:Gregory Orr

“I'm very interested in the materiality of language. I wonder if, perhaps, this comes from my background in the visual arts. I was a potter for a number of years and earned a BFA in art before going to graduate school for creative writing.”

Ifs Writing Years Art School Language Numbers Wonder Creative Art Is Backgrounds Visuals Graduates Creative Writing Potters Visual Art Graduate School Materiality

Author:Anna Journey