Literalness Quotes & Sayings

The talk of pale, burning-eyed students, anarchists and utopians all, over tea and cigarettes in a locked room long past midnight, is next morning translated, with the literalness of utter innocence, into the throwing of the bomb, the shouting of the proud slogan, the dragging away of the young dreamer-doer, still smiling, to the dungeon and the firing squad. — Christopher Isherwood

All my stories take place on the West Coast - not the beach, but smaller inland towns. I feel homesick, and I find inspiration in capturing that. — Adrian Tomine

For the Word, realizing that in no other way would the corruption of human beings be undone except, simply, by dying, yet being immortal and the Son of the Father of the Word was not able to die, for this reason he takes to himself a body capable of death, in order that it, participating in the Word who is above all, might be sufficient for death on behalf of all, and through the indwelling Word would remain incorruptible, and so corruption might henceforth cease from all by the grace of the resurrection. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

Rachel read what she chose, reading with the curious literalness of one to whom written sentences are unfamiliar, and handling words as though they were made of wood, separately of great importance, and possessed of shapes like tables or chairs. In this way she came to conclusions, which had to be remodelled according to the adventures of the day, and were indeed recast as liberally as any one could desire, leaving always a small grain of belief behind them. — Virginia Woolf

I'm not confused, baby, you are. — Kristen Ashley

I don't understand computers. I don't even understand people who understand computers. — Juliana Of The Netherlands

Ben hid a wince behind his hand, trying very hard not to think of seventy-year-old Ellie Verstgard rolling around with Mr. Wenner. Despite his best resistance, the image scrolled across his brain and took some of his love for the world with it. — Victoria Dahl

Once the tyranny of literalness is rejected, all relevant considerations for giving a rational content to the words become operative. — Felix Frankfurter

Anyone who knows the history of the Pete Best Band or the Combo, we were on the verge of breaking in in America. In the mid-'60s, I had great songwriters; we wrote some great stuff. — Pete Best

Most of the scientists I have known well have felt - just as deeply as the non-scientists I have known well - that the individual condition of each is tragic. Each of us is alone: sometimes we escape from solitariness, through love or affection or perhaps creative moments, but those triumphs of life are pools of light we make for ourselves while the edge of the road is black: each of us dies alone. — C.P. Snow

Literalness, however, is not the substance from which human culture is made. — Begona Aretxaga

Why can't we have patience and expect good things to take time? — John Wooden

Of course, when you shut off your brain from rational analysis, any book is dangerous. Taking literally ancient parables from thousands of years ago is much more dangerous than playing with a loaded gun. Ancient scrawls, written by different authors in different centuries with different agendas
yeah, let's get mad literal about that.
The literalness problem is compounded in religion by the circular logic of not being allowed to question anything, or else you're lacking faith. — Bill Maher

The news of the days it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. — Walter Lippmann

As far as my experience goes one is automatically in touch with the higher spiritual, it is connected to a certain level that interpenetrates our total physical and psychic existence. We are always in touch with it. — Paul Caponigro

Something I've always known about the screen is that if it's anything in the world, it's literal. It's so literal that there's a whole lot you can't do because you're stuck with the literalness of the screen. The stage is not literal. — Joan Didion

Everyone should eat hashish, but only once. — Salvador Dali

There is such a thing as crazy-mother bonding ... It happens when one realizes the other also has had a crazy mother, and it is both painful and pleasurable. There are more crazy mothers than you might think. — Minrose Gwin

What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight. — Jeanette Winterson

For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day. — Walter Lippmann

For all the textbook reasons - any individual's reading of a photograph is preceded by the evidential authority of the medium. You have the literalness of a glass on a table - and at the same time of that evidential authority that you can't get around, there is the possibility of universalizing the subject - of getting the whole world into the picture. — Bill Henson

I do not bring forgiveness with me, nor forgetfulness. The only ones who can forgive are dead; the living have no right to forget. — Chaim Herzog