Category Archives: Quotes

As every second post on this site is a quote. You’ll find a deep and broad variety of quotes under this category, which overlap with several other tags and categories. Many of the quotes are larded with links for deeper reading on the subject of the quote, or connections between the subject of the quotes and other people, things, or ideas. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Posted on August 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A fantasy novel (1964) by Roald Dahl (1916-90), in which Charlie Buckett wins a ticket that allows him to visit a chocolate factory owned by Mr Willy Wonka and manned by tiny men called Oompa-Loompas. It was filmed as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Dahl’s sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was published in 1971.”

[A second filmed version of this book, starring Johnny Depp, appeared in 2005 as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.]

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Mannerism

Posted on August 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Style of art and architecture that emerged in the period from ca. 1520 to ca. 1590, characterized by a reaction to the harmony of the High Renaissance, an ideal of virtuosity for its own sake, and a concomitant preoccupation with the ambiguous and discordant. Exemplified in the works of El Greco, Pontormo, Parmigianino, and (late) Michelangelo.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Book of Answers: The Tenth Muse

Posted on August 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

“‘Whom did some classical writers call the ‘tenth muse?’ Sappho (b. 612 B.C.), a lyric poet whose work exists only in fragments. Married, she lived in Lesbos and led a group of women who were devoted to music and poetry.”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

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The Algonquin Wits: Robert Benchley Reflects on His Career

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”

Robert Benchley

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

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Term of Art: Grapheme

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A minimal unit of grammar into which a sentence or a word within a sentence can be divided. E.g. Come inside can be divided into the minimal units come, in, and side; distasteful into dis, taste, and ful.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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The Septuagint

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The Septuagint is the name for the Greek translation of the Hebrew Testament made in Alexandria in Egypt in the fourth century BC. Believed to be either a miraculous harmony of scholars working separately to produce an identical textual translation, or a body of seventy scholars working together to produce a single agreed text—which is arguably an even more miraculous occurrence.”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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Rotten Rejections: The Dragon of Wantley

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

[This refers to the novel by Owen Wister, which is available as a free e-book from Project Gutenberg.]

“A burlesque and grotesque piece of nonsense…it is mere fooling and does not have the bite and lasting quality of satire.”

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Egyptian Revival Style

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“In American architecture, this style occurred twice: ca. 1830-1850 and 1920-1930. Used mostly for public monuments and commercial buildings, the forms are heavy, often pylon-like. Reeded columns, palm capitals, and other ornaments are distinctively Egyptian.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Anachronism (n)

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A term used to distinguish anything out of its proper time. Shakespeare’s references to cannons in King John, a play which takes place before cannons came into use, to clocks in Julius Caesar, and to billiards in Antony and Cleopatra, are examples of anachronisms. In literature, anachronisms are sometimes used deliberately as comic devices to emphasized universal timelessness.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A satirical novel (1980) by the US novelist John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969). Thanks to the efforts of his mother it was published more than ten years after he committed suicide, and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It is set in New Orleans, and the central character, Ignatius Reilly, is an overweight, argumentative layabout who interrelates with a cast of equally eccentric and accident-prone characters. The title comes from Jonathan Swift:

‘When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in a confederacy against him.

Swift: Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting (1711)'”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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