Form quotes
1.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside form — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"[Buckminster] Fuller said that everything at the time was basically a horse and buggy in the form of an automobile and it had that boxiness and basically aeronautics hadn't been invented."
"Tragedy is the highest form of art."
"How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?"
"Architecture ... the adaptation of form to resist force."
"The finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it; and it is a law of this universe that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their best form."
"Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient?"
"Cubism ('multi-locationalism') is one of the painterly forms of acoustic space."
"You cannot defect form an insight. You cannot unsee what you have seen."
"Every form of strength is also a form of weakness."
"Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer."
"Librarianship is a form of heroism. It’s just not as flashy as swords and dragons."
"If money is a form of speech, as the Supreme Court has regrettably found, rich donors will always be the loudest speakers."
"I want to understand how best to create and preserve a form of higher education that we value but that is in jeopardy for many reasons."
"Smiles form the channels of a future tear."
"Never to talk to ones self is a form of hypocrisy"
"Whatever we send out mentally or verbally will come back to us in like form."
"What has to be accepted, the given, is - so one could say - forms of life ."
"When I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel."
"We feel an affinity with a certain thinker because we agree with him; or because he shows us what we were already thinking; or because he shows us in a more articulate form what we were already thinking; or because he shows us what we were on the point of thinking; or what we would sooner or later have thought; or what we would have thought much later if we hadn’t read it now; or what we would have been likely to think but never would have thought if we hadn’t read it now; or what we would have liked to think but never would have thought if we hadn’t read it now."
"I started with small-press publishers, who were willing to publish all sorts of forms. I didn't move to the larger presses until they knew what they were getting in for."
