Portraits are to daily
Portraits are to daily faces As an evening west To a fine, pedantic sunshine In a satin vest. Emily Dickinson
Pedantic
It looks to me
It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. Edmund Burke
We think that play
We think that play and fairytales belong to childhood – how shortsighted that is! As though we would want at any time in our life to live without play and fairytales! We give these things other names, to be sure, and feel differently about them, but precisely this is the evidence that they are the … Read more
The perpetual charm of
The perpetual charm of Arabia is that the traveler finds his level there simply as a human being; the people’s directness, deadly to the sentimental or pedantic, likes the less complicated virtues. Freya Stark
Television turned out to
Television turned out to be exactly as bad as the most irritating and pedantic intellectuals of the ’50s said it was going to be. Fran Lebowitz
Devising a vocabulary for
Devising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most people invent euphemisms. Those who refer to plants by Latin name are considered more expert, if a little pedantic. Diane Ackerman
Nothing is as peevish
Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men’s judgments of one another. Desiderius Erasmus
People formerly seemed unable
People formerly seemed unable to evaluate a woman’s c.v. or to accept a range of personal and communicative styles from the exuberant and confident to the sober and pedantic. It’s much better than it was, and a number of male philosophers have been extraordinarily helpful in detecting and criticising everyday sexism in the profession. Catherine … Read more
Why is it that
Why is it that the less one has to say the more one says it in the most pompous and pedantic way possible?… Is it to fool the world or just to fool themselves? Carlos Ruiz Zafon
We do not need
We do not need French post-structuralism, whose pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions have spread throughout academe and the arts and are now blighting the most promising minds of the next generation. This is a major crisis if there ever was one, and every sensible person must help bring it to an end. Camille … Read more