Michael Dirda Quotes
In Madame Bovary Flaubert never allows anything to go on too long; he can suggest years of boredom in a paragraph, capture the essence of a character in a single conversational exchange, or show us the gulf between his soulful heroine and her dull-witted husband in a sentence (and one that, moreover, presages all Emma's later experience of men). (...) This is one of the summits of prose art, and not to know such a masterpiece is to live a diminished life.
Quotes to Explore
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Even before it opened its retail arm, Beigh was renowned among pashmina cognoscenti for the quality and complexity of the work produced in its workshop, a large, airy, sunlit rectangle of a room directly across from its second-floor shop.
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Jesus Christ was a patriot! His country was the world. His laws were the eternal principles of liberty, and his followers, in every age, have been the chosen champions of freedom!
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I've said some things about other religions that I regret now. I think they were incorrect.
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Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.
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I love showing my scar on my tummy - it is shaped like a question mark.
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It wasn't until after I was reelected in 1982 that I thought of myself as a long-term member of Congress.
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When the Securities & Exchange Commission settled securities-fraud charges against Richard Harriton, former chairman of the clearing subsidiary of Bear, Stearns & Co., there were smiles all around. The SEC was happy. Harriton was happy. Bear Stearns was happy.
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I can create for others.
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The people in New York want to achieve something; the people in L.A., they just want to achieve success.
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I was quite happy with the way I went, I think.
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All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
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I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.
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As for 'taste' as a criterion of painting I find that it is most frequently applied to work that is essentially insensitive, brutal or vulgar beyond question. Could it now be a term with political undertones to seduce, or cover profounder motives of exploitation? I propose it be kept to the wine cellar. There it deceives no one but him who over-indulges.
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What I've learned is you don't have to strive for perfection, but you do have to strive to be a very hard worker.
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I love commuting between languages just like I love commuting between cultures and cities.
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My life at the moment is a bit like my wardrobe. Organized chaos.
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I think any time anybody sees the bad guy show emotion and you're not hitting the audience over the head, there's always a tinge of empathy for that individual.
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Until I was about 13, Manhattan had been a world seen from its edges.
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Alcohol make you drunk, man. It don't make you meditate, it just make you drunk. Herb is more a consciousness.
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Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway.
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Every day, I get up, and I fill the bird feeders and put out fruit and other food for both the birds and any passing mammals. Is that pointless long-term? I have no idea. All I know is that on this day, in this moment, it makes a difference.
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Nantucket is a place where some kind of magic happens, it's where I met my husband 32 years ago, and we've been together since the day we met. It's the kind of place that when people come here, they think they'll be happy. I see people falling in love or recovering from some conflict here, and I wanted to capture that.
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In Madame Bovary Flaubert never allows anything to go on too long; he can suggest years of boredom in a paragraph, capture the essence of a character in a single conversational exchange, or show us the gulf between his soulful heroine and her dull-witted husband in a sentence (and one that, moreover, presages all Emma's later experience of men). (...) This is one of the summits of prose art, and not to know such a masterpiece is to live a diminished life.
