Conceits Quotes & Sayings

I'm very open to any visual conceits and any possibilities at my disposal to be better explain to people the ideas I'm exploring. — Tim Hetherington

History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats. — Elvis Costello

One does not escape that easily from the seduction of an effete way of life. You cannot arbitrarily say to yourself, I will now continue my life as it was before this thing, Success, happened to me. But once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation. Once you know this is true, that the heart of man, his body and his brain, are forged in a white-hot furnace for the purpose of conflict (the struggle of creation) and that with the conflict removed, man is a sword cutting daisies, that not privation but luxury is the wolf at the door and that the fangs of this wolf are all little vanities and conceits and laxities that Success is heir to - why, then with this knowledge you are at least in a position to know where danger lies. — Tennessee Williams

Do, soul, do; abuse and contemn thyself; yet a while and the time for thee to respect thyself, will be at an end. Every man's happiness depends from himself, but behold thy life is almost at an end, whiles affording thyself no respect, thou dost make thy happiness to consist in the souls, and conceits of other men. — Marcus Aurelius

We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit. We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone. — Dan Simmons

Thus when we fondly flatter our desires, Our best conceits do prove the greatest liars. — Michael Drayton

The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. — F Scott Fitzgerald

There were Palladian windows and a number of roof peaks and an assortment of architectural conceits, all overlooking a vast lawn devoid of ornamentation. — Robert B. Parker

For when I trace back the years I have liv'd, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer'd Work Of Nature my life has been. If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it), I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them, but I cannot help their Unbelief; and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse. — Peter Ackroyd

We must not, by any whimsical conceits supposed to be adapted to the altering fashions of the times, overturn the established law of the land: it descended to us as a sacred charge, and it is our duty to preserve it. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Opinionum enim commenta delet dies; naturae judicia confirmat.
Time destroys the groundless conceits of men; it confirms decisions founded on reality. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

When I say that we must establish values with originate in sisterhood, I mean to say that we must not accept, even for a moment, male notions of what non-violence is. These notions have never condemned the systematic violence against us. The men who hold these notions have never renounced the male behaviours, privileges, values and conceits which are in and of themselves acts of violence against us. — Andrea Dworkin

How many thorns of human nature - hard, sharp, lifeless protuberances that tear and wound us, narrow prejudices, bristling conceits that repel and disgust us - are arrested developments, calcified tendencies, buds of promise that should have lifted a branch up into the sunny day with fruit; and flowers to delight the heart of men, but now all grown hard, petrified, for want of culture and a congenial soil and climate. — John Burroughs

Just as the ocean wears away the rocks and bends the contour of the shoreline to it's will, so it washes over a man's mind, smoothing the sharp edges, knocking off the conceits, flattening the prejudices so that he is left with a different instrument with which to govern his life. — Frank Mulville

Every society produces its own cultural conceits, a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrive in the face of all contrary evidence. — Jack Weatherford

conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my — Herman Melville

Lets say from the first moment of my life, everything's always been about me and nothing else, including apocalypse and chaos; let's say even apocalypse and chaos have been conceits of my psyche and bad faith
this assumes I ever kept any kind of faith at all, bad or otherwise ... Let's say I'm faithlessness made flesh, the modern age's leap of faith stopped dead in its tracks, fucking around with apocalypse and chaos only because in some broken part of me, among any wreckage of honor or altruism or commitment of compassion, or the bits and pieces of moral vanity, I really believed the abyss was always just the playground of my imagination, and I was its bully. — Steve Erickson

For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that. — Carl Sagan

Some people', Miss R. said,'run to conceits or wisdom but I hold to the hard, brown, nutlike word. I might point out that there is enough aesthetic excitement here to satisfy anyone but a damned fool. — Donald Barthelme

But there is another realm where we can always find something true, the fireside of a friend, where we shed our little conceits and find warmth and understanding, where small selfishnesses are impossible and where wine and books and talk give a different meaning to existence.
There we have made something that no falseness can touch. We are at home. — Kressman Taylor

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is. — Tennessee Williams

He felt the slowly healing polarization of his mind, matching his to hers, the alignment of all his prejudices and conceits to the lodestone of the image she represented for him. — Iain M. Banks

Those who set up a fictitious worship, merely worship and adore their own delirious fancies; indeed, they would never dare so to trifle with God, had they not previously fashioned him after their own childish conceits. — John Calvin

I try hard to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one's heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion we can ever know. — Bill W.

It was easy to laugh at such conceits in full daylight. But night had a way of lending weight to phantasms. — Scott Lynch

It's one of the great gifts of having so little money that you are able to make these kinds of radical conceits that you could never afford to do had you had a reasonable budget,. — Todd Solondz

Wit invents; inspiration reveals. The inventions of wit are conceits - metaphors and paradoxes - that discover the secret correspondences that unite beings and things among and with themselves; inspiration is condemned to dissipate its revelations - unless a form can be found to contain them. — Octavio Paz

Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political - satirical - conceits expressed in one figure or a few. — Paul Klee

I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. — Thomas Browne

Choosing a director is like choosing a therapist - you want somebody who is going to be a step or two ahead of you, who can interpret and articulate your intentions better than you can, with the benefit of objectivity. I look for a collaborator who is going to help bring to life, on stage, in three dimensions, what is on the page. I wouldn't want a director who imposes conceits or distrusts the text or who has prejudged the characters. — Donald Margulies

In the end, it doesn't matter a damn bit. We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit. We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone. Goddamn it hurts. — Dan Simmons

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? — Carl Sagan

There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. — Carl Sagan

From jygging vaines of riming mother wits,
And such conceits as clownage keepes in pay,
Weele leade you to the stately tent of War:
Where you shall heare the Scythian Tamburlaine,
Threatning the world with high astounding tearms
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.
View but his picture in this tragicke glasse,
And then applaud his fortunes if you please. — Christopher Marlowe

The prose," Robespierre said. "It's so clean, no conceits, no show, no wit. He means every word. Formerly, you see, he meant every other word. That was his style. — Hilary Mantel

I don't think I understand that," Meg insisted. "How can you lust yourself into oblivion. "
"Oh, easily," Ekaterina answered. "The lust is for things, possessions. The weapon turns on the nature of possessions, the fact that every possession you own consumes a part of you. Tools, instruments, if they are more than conceits, these things do not defy the rule but they are exceptional enough they don't activate the weapon.
Consequently, the mission of these alleged scientists is to create generalized lust, a frenzied lust for things unconnected to any sense of utility. — Robert Stikmanz

Christ came down from heaven, and emptied himself of majesty in tender love to souls; shall we not come down from our high conceits to do any poor soul good? Shall man be proud after God hath been humble? — Richard Sibbes

In a fit of pique, I said to my agent, 'I'm going to write something you can sell.' The idea was to write a straight page-turner, with no literary conceits. — Glen Duncan