Quaint Quotes - page 2

The night room heaves a sigh, yes Heaves, a Sigh - old-fashioned comical room, oh me I'm hopeless, born a joker never change, flirting away through the mirrorframe in something green-striped, pantalooned, and ruffled - meantime though, it is quaint, most rooms today hum you know, have been known also to "breathe," yes even wait in hushed expectancy and that ought to be the rather sinister tradition here, long slender creatures, heavy perfume and capes in rooms assailed by midnight, pierced with spiral stairways, blue-petaled pergolas, an ambience in which no one, however provoked or out of touch, my dear young lady, ever, Heaves, a Sigh. It is not done. (Thomas Pynchon)
Popular art is normally decried as vulgar by the cultivated people of its time; then it loses favour with its original audience as a new generation up; then it begins to merge into the softer lighting of "quaint" and cultivated people become interested in it, and finally it begins to take on the archaic dignity of the primitive. View quote
Northrop Frye
Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honor turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. View quote
Andrew Marvell
A little apish hat, couched fast to the pate, like an oyster; French cambric ruffs, deep with a witness, starched to the purpose: Delicate in speech; quaint in array; conceited in all points; In courtly guiles, a passing singular odd man. View quote
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
It is not easy to write of my good friend, John Muir. The impression of his personality was so strong on those who knew him that all words seem cheap beside it. Those who never knew him can never, through any word of ours, be brought to realize what they have missed. ... He had a quaint, crisp way of talking, his literary style in fact, and none of the nature lovers, the men who know how to feel in the presence of great things and beautiful, have expressed their craft better than he. View quote
John Muir
I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Quaint though this attitude seems now, it was unquestionably the prevalent one in the nineteenth century, and it would be over-bold to say that it will never return to favour, for the range of human folly is infinite. View quote
Robertson Davies
Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.... Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position. View quote
Robertson Davies
What quaint English. They make an unpredictable linguistic duo. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Any opinion writer worth his salt would have rejected the quaint notion that certain eternally aggrieved identity groups have exclusive linguistic rights to words in the English language. View quote
Ilana Mercer
The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders At out quaint spirits. (William Shakespeare)
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes That on the green turf suck the honied showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears. View quote
John Milton
By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manip­ulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms- elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest-will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitari­anism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slo­gans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial-but democracy and free­dom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of sol­diers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Since I first went to India twenty some years ago, there's been a palpable change. There's now pizza everywhere, meat is much more popular than it's ever been. Vegetarianism is "that quaint thing our parents did." View quote
Neal Barnard
An article can be timely, topical, engaged in the issues and personalities of the moment; it is likely to be stale within the month. In five years, it may have acquired the quaint aura of a rotary phone. An article is usually Siamese-twinned to its date of birth. View quote
Cynthia Ozick
Writers such as Richard Powers and the late David Foster Wallace have shown the path to a newer generation of writers for whom all national boundaries are quaint curiosities. View quote
Giles Foden
A miracle is quaint probability of a confluence of circumstances, unrevealed by our mind. View quote
Zafar Mirzo
Mostly, as I said, a desire to do a bit of good, and the quaint notion that this is what we signed up for, this is the business that we have chosen. View quote
Christiane Amanpour
In this age of 24-7 headlines, the term 'newsweekly' seems almost quaint. View quote
Graydon Carter
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. View quote
James Wolcott
Civility is perhaps a quaint notion but civility in Parliament is something we should always strive to uphold. (Jay Weatherill)
I grew up Windlesham in Surrey, which is a beautiful and quaint village. View quote
Kirsty Gallacher
Being briefed only once is a quaint defense. You're either briefed or not briefed. View quote
Mark Davis
I have gone to Niagara-on-the-Lake. You know, Niagara Falls in Canada. It's this cute little quaint town, and it's just warm, and everyone is so nice. View quote
Nicole Anderson
My parents are really conservative. My dad is Muslim, and my mom is the most conservative woman you've ever met. They're very aristocratic in the most quaint suburban way. View quote
SZA