"Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not."
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Ideas quotes
Ideas
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Ideas quotes (page 98 of 821)
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"Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profusion of things which are splendid or valuable in themselves is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur."
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"The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them."
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"I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas."
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"In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all."
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"One of the important principles I live by is the idea that you have to contemplate yourself as surrounded by the conditions you intend to produce."
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"He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them."
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"Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete."
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"I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English."
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"When ideas come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't."
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"Truth in our ideas means their power to work."
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"Spirit can go anywhere. In fact, it has to go places so it can change and emerge like in the migrations. That's the whole idea."
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"This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion."
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"The idea of dancing to bad house music is something I could never get behind."
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"I had no idea of the enormous and unquestionably helpful part that humbug plays in the social life of great peoples dwelling in a state of democratic freedom."
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"I myself don't like to speak to the actors at all. I like to hire great people and let them do their thing. I don't like to speak to them. I don't like to have lunch with them. I don't like to socialize with them. I don't like to hear their ideas."
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"If I had my choice in life I would have had the gifts of Tennessee Williams or Eugene O'Neill. Unfortunately my gifts lie in comedy and so comedy comes fairly easy to me and I occasionally have an idea for a very serious piece and I do it, but the ideas don't come that readily to me."
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"There is no cause half so sacred as the cause of the people. There is no idea so uplifting as the idea of the service of humanity."
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"The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit."
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"He doesn't love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms."
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