William Empson Quotes

The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

William Empson

• People
• Different
• Moral
• Literature

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Quotes to Explore

• I joined the Army at 19 as a soldier and spent about four and a half years with them. Then I broke my back in a freefall parachuting accident and spent a year in rehabilitation back in the U.K.

  

  Bear Grylls
  • Army
  • Year
  • Soldier

• I am very much a girly girl as well as being this tough, athletic fighter. I grew up a tomboy. I got my first four wheeler when I was eight. I got my first dirt bike shortly after. So, I have a lot of these manly qualities, I guess you would say. But, I also like to go get dressed up every weekend.

  

  Paige VanZant
  • Girl
  • Bike
  • Qualities

• When you run the marathon, you run against the distance, not against the other runners and not against the time.

  

  Haile Gebrselassie
  • Time
  • Distance
  • Run

• When I'm in my 50s, I kind of think I'll want to be in a garden.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Think
  • Want
  • Garden

• My mom says that when I was a little kid, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I don't remember that.

  

  Aaron Douglas
  • Remember
  • Mom
  • Always

• I am going to change the world, and I'm talking to everybody in the possible world that I can get to that can help me to do that.

  

  Abby Wambach
  • World
  • Change
  • Possible

• All I suggest is to make K-12 like higher education. Higher education in the United States is the best in the world because these institutions compete with each other for your tuition dollar. Let's just bring competition to public education.

  

  Gary Johnson
  • World
  • Education
  • Best

• You might think the thinner version of yourself is going to be the most positive or confident, but that's not how it is for me. When I'm over 200 pounds, that's when I'm the most confident version of myself.

  

  Garrett Hedlund
  • Myself
  • Positive
  • Yourself

• You just have to re-wire your brain when you're shifting from the stage to the screen or the silver screen or the HD flat screen.

  

  Beau Willimon
  • You
  • Brain
  • Silver

• You can talk about and think about Muslims as you want, but you can't stop Muslims from building a mosque. You can hate Muslims from the comfort of your house or publicly, but when that becomes stopping Muslims from building a mosque or worshipping, then we are crossing the line into something else.

  

  Aasif Mandvi
  • Think
  • House
  • Hate

• Sure, 'Les Miserables' can be melodramatic. And seeing the musical instead of reading the novel will save you some time and spare you the long part where Hugo goes on and on about the Parisian sewer system. But I would hate for the novel to lose that.

  

  Garth Risk Hallberg
  • Time
  • Long
  • Hate

• The men and women of my generation are heirs to that great collective success which has been admired worldwide and of which we are so proud. It is now up to us to pass it on to the coming generations.

  

  Felipe VI of Spain
  • Up
  • Great
  • Men

• Communicating with teenage girls is easy unless you're an adult, and then it's like having someone take a pair of pliers and, one-by-one, yank off your fingernails through your ears.

  

  W. Bruce Cameron
  • You
  • Easy
  • Ears

• I'm privileged to have had some success, but I've never forgotten what it was like to queue for a half-crown gallery seat for 'Oliver!' which is why I ensure that there are £20 day tickets for 'Miss Saigon' and that the balconies in my theatres are as comfortable as I can possibly make them.

  

  Cameron Mackintosh
  • Why
  • Success
  • Day

• Unlike many Californians or New Yorkers, college football is a religion down south.

  

  Omari Hardwick
  • College
  • Football
  • Religion

• We grew up as kids watching those movies and we were exposed to themes of civil rights, unfairness, bigotry and fathers struggling against the kind of mob of the town, so you remember how you felt as a kid being taken seriously, that you are part of the human drama.

  

  Rachel Griffiths
  • Up
  • Kids
  • Remember

• Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Kids
  • You
  • Exercise

• A man notices a woman's figure when she walks in a room. Women have eight million words for blue; a man says dark blue or light blue.

  

  Hallie Ephron
  • Women
  • Man
  • Words

• Television is a pretty great job, to begin with, and I wouldn't have anything, if it weren't for the jobs that I've had in the past that have built up to that

  

  Zachary Levi
  • Up
  • Great
  • Job

• Amazing, the poisons I used to put in my body. I used to love it.

  

  Ronnie Wood The Rolling Stones
  • Amazing
  • Body
  • Used

• I've seen people that don't treat their animals well and yet their animals are still just as loving to them even though they're not treated that well. It's very hard to find that kind of loyalty and love and affection in human beings.

  

  Dick Van Patten
  • People
  • Loyalty

• The Germans are called brutal, the Spanish cruel, the Americans superficial, and so on; but we are perfide Albion, the island of hypocrites, the people who have built up an Empire with a Bible in one hand, a pistol in the other, and financial concessions in both pockets. Is the charge true? I think it is.

  

  E. M. Forster
  • People
  • Up
  • Thinking

• Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali.

  

  Salvador Dali
  • Experience
  • Morning
  • Again

• The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

  

  William Empson
  • People
  • Different
  • Moral