Whet Quotes

The work of the painter, the poet or the musician, like the myths and symbols of the savage, ought to be seen by us, if not as a superior form of knowledge, at least as the most fundamental and the only one really common to us all; scientific thought is merely the sharp point more penetrating because it has been whetted on the stone of fact, but at the cost of some loss of substance and its effectiveness is to be explained by its power to pierce sufficiently deeply for the main body of the tool to follow the head. (Claude Lévi-Strauss)

Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.

Quintilian

The one rule for pleasing: whet the appetite, keep people hungry.

Baltasar Gracián

I was never capable of being an average pupil. I would either seem refractory to any teaching and give the impression of being completely dumb or I would fling myself on my work with a frenzy, a patience, and a willingness to learn that astonished everybody. But to awaken my zeal, it was necessary to offer me something I liked. Once my appetite had been whetted, I became ravenously hungry.

Salvador Dalí

Verily, the star of Azrael hovers over the birth of a beautiful woman, the King of the Dead laughs aloud, and ravens whet their black beaks.

Robert E. Howard

Fear not, nor be dismayed at the appearance that is darkness, at the disguise that is evil, at the empty cloak that is death, for you have picked these for your challenges. They are stones on which you choose to whet the keen edge of your spirit.

Richard Bach

We will stay because a just nation cannot leave to the cruelties of its enemies a people who have staked their lives and independence on America's solemn pledge-a pledge which has grown through the commitments of three American Presidents. We will stay because in Asia and around the world are countries whose independence rests, in large measure, on confidence in America's word and in America's protection. To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that confidence, would undermine the independence of many lands, and would whet the appetite of aggression. We would have to fight in one land, and then we would have to fight in another-or abandon much of Asia to the domination of Communists. And we do not intend to abandon Asia to conquest.

Lyndon B. Johnson

I grew up down in Florida, and in the Keys, there's this place called Sea Camp which was not unlike Space Camp, except you explored the sea. And so that kind of whetted my appetite for that. But then I ended up swimming in a lagoon full of Cassiopeia jellyfish, and that quickly quashed that desire to be a marine biologist.

Joe Lo Truglio

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice.

Henry David Thoreau

While superfluity engenders disgust, appetite is but whetted when fruit is forbidden.

Giovanni Boccaccio

I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly. (Jeremy Irons)

Eloquence smooth and cutting, is like a razor whetted with oil.

Jonathan Swift