#grandeur

The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when John Lanchester wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, The Heather Blazing. He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about the aftermath of Irish independence. I simply hadn't known that – and I loved the grandeur of the word "diptych". I went around quite snooty for a few days, thinking: "I wrote a diptych." [Colm Tóibín, Novelist – Portrait of the Artist, The Guardian, 19 February 2013] ↗

— Colm Tóibín

#conceit #critique #diptychs #grandeur #novelists

Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose grandeur of architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its precincts, surrounded by a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hundred families. ↗

— Hernando Cortes

#among #architectural #describe #details #enough

There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul. ↗

— Simone Weil

#baseness #because #degree #grandeur #laws

Stars wide of belt often cultivated a gentlemanly grandeur, a groomed refinement that filtered through their fingertips - the dainty fidgets of Hardy's plump digits, Orson Welles performing magic tricks with nimble dexterity, Jackie Gleason lofting a teacup to his lips as if he were Lady Bracknell - or through a fine set of twinkle-toes. ↗

— James Wolcott

#cultivated #dainty #filtered #fine #fingertips

There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#avoid #both #come #ear #enter

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man. ↗

— Charles Sumner

#elevation #enlightened #grandeur #humanity #intellect

I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee. Not now, but when I'm 50, when music dies down a little bit. I know lots of artists and actors have those delusions of grandeur, but ever since I was a kid, it's been of interest to me. ↗

— Tim McGraw

#been #bit #delusions #dies #down

I went to India and met some people who had been involved in this guerrilla business, middle-class people who were rather vain and foolish. There was no revolutionary grandeur to it. Nothing. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#business #foolish #grandeur #guerrilla #had

The Dark Side of the Moon is a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement. There is a certain grandeur. ↗

— Alan Parsons

#certain #conceptual #dark #dark side #demands

Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm. ↗

— Blaise Pascal

#agreeable #appreciated #cold #continuity #continuous