Quotes & Sayings About Recitation

We are shut up in school and college recitation rooms for ten to fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse or a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider. Far better was the Roman rule to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I started reciting my own poems in public, I worried that it would seem too theatrical, but now I find recitation very natural, because it allows me to address audiences directly. — James Arthur

No matter how you are taught by your teacher about how to recite a poem, it is impossible to wear your teacher's smiling face to the stage. You got to change your own face into a smiling one! — Israelmore Ayivor

Recitation of the Qur'an without contemplation and thought is futile. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

The function of Theology? The recitation of the incomprehensible by the unspeakable to pick the pockets of the unthinking. — Robert Anton Wilson

Sitting there, I remembered two things about going to mass with my father: he never took Communion because of his and my mother's divorce, and he always tapped his heart three times, with solemn insistence, after the recitation of the Apostles' Creed. I asked him about his ritual once. His eyes filled with such alarm that I instantly knew his heart tapping had something to do with a loss or devastation: his parents' early death, his divorce, his wounding in Vietnam. There was no reason for me to invade that space. Maybe that was the best simple explanation for religion: it filled our spaces. — Tom Bissell

I heard that Mayor Rivers' speeches are absolutely riveting," Ethan joked, winking.
"Oh, definitely." My words were drenched in sarcasm. "I believe he called us strong, clever, and capable. There may even have been some irreplaceable, brilliant, and extraordinary thrown in there as well. Most of the speech was one big, fake thesaurus recitation. — Ada Adams

Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality. — Octavio Paz

Palestinian society is filled with poetry, but not experimental poetry. The Palestinian poetry that people know is not the modernist experimentations, it's certain kinds of poetry that lends itself to recitation and song and things like that. — Elliott Colla

Ageing destroys youth, sickness destroys health, degeneration of life destroys all excellent qualities and death destroys life. Even if you are a great runner, you cannot run away from death. you cannot stop death with your wealth, through your magic performances or recitation of mantras or even medicines. Therefore, it is wise to prepare for your death. — Dalai Lama

here's a very worthwhile question to meditate on: How are we, in our own way, going to express and live out the meaning contained in the prayer? Simply by rote recitation? It'll be nothing more than an exercise in futility and hypocrisy unless we seek to understand it and make it real in our lives." To — Monks Of New Skete

There is no surer means of calling down God's blessing upon the family than the daily recitation of the Rosary. — Pope Pius XII

Do good works or commission an opera house or just take it out and gaze at it longingly when you think of the handsome prince you might have made your own. For the record, I favor the latter option, preferably paired with copious tears and the recitation of bad poetry. — Leigh Bardugo

Foul language will earn you a recitation that will grow your vocabulary. — Rachel A. Marks

The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read. — Lascelles Abercrombie

The recitation of grievances was strange balm. — Regina O'Melveny

Question to ask them. I asked half the students to write down whether, hypothetically, they would be willing to pay me $10 for a 10-minute poetry recitation. I asked the other half to write down whether, hypothetically, they would be willing to listen to me recite poetry for ten minutes if I paid them $10. — Dan Ariely

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Suppose you recite the Prajna Paramita Sutra only once. It might be a very good recitation. But what would happen to you if you recited it twice, three times, four times, or more? You might easily lose your original attitude towards it. The same thing will happen in your other Zen practices. For a while you will keep your beginner's mind, but if you continue to practice one, two, three years or more, although you may improve some, you are liable to lose the limitless meaning of original mind. — Shunryu Suzuki

Have you not often met poor old women who are most faithful to the pious recitation of the Rosary? You also must do all that you can to recite it with fervour. Get right down, at the feet of Jesus: it is a good thing to make oneself small in the presence of so great a God. — Columba Marmion

Akhmed summoned the arborist with small declarative memories, and Sonja let him go on longer than she otherwise would because she, too, had tried to resurrect by recitation, had tried to recreate the thing by drawing its shape in cinders, and hoped that by compiling lists of Natasha's favorite foods and songs and annoying habits, her sister might spontaneously materialize under the pressure of the particularities. — Anthony Marra

With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause. — Francine Prose

Do you believe in God?' Grace asked him. The question was not strange. They were past strangeness.
'Of course' he replied. It was easier than the truth, simpler.
'Why?'
'Because without God' he started, his voice slipping easily into the lilting rhythm of recitation, 'we have no reason to believe in reason. Without God, our reason is an accident of the cosmos, as ultimately inconsequential as the spinning of the planet or the pulling of the tides. Reason becomes unimportant, and hence untenable. Without God we have only belief, and yet we are left with nothing to believe in'. — Bernard Beckett

There are many reasons our prayers may lack power. Sometimes they become routine. Our prayers become hollow when we say similar words in similar ways over and over so often that the words become more of a recitation than a communication. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

You, Celaena Sardothien, are charged with the deaths of the following people ...
And then he began a long recitation of all those lives she'd taken. The brutal story of a girl who was now gone. — Sarah J. Maas

Breath control is crucial to most of the contemplative traditions... Qur'anic reciters chant long phrases for meditation. It is natural for the audience to adjust their breathing too and find that this has a calming, therapeutic effect, which enables them to grasp the more elusive teachings of the text. — Karen Armstrong

Prayer is not simply a soliloquy, a mere exercise in therapeutic self-analysis, or a religious recitation. Prayer is discourse with the personal God Himself. — R.C. Sproul

Poetry comes alive to me through recitation. — Natalie Merchant

During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. — Douglas Adams

The speaker was good, I liked what he had to say. I had expected a dry recitation on how women should change their gender if they expected to advance in a man's world, since I wasn't about to grow a cock and balls this man gave me hope and inspiration. Women dominated the audience, not surprising since the average African man wouldn't support a speaker preaching gender equality. Africa was a continent with generational precedent for the alpha male, it was part of their culture, learned at an early age. This led to abuse on many levels. Women were expected to do the physical work, produce male babies and satisfy the sexual urgings of men. Urgings that in other societies would be called rape but in Africa were accepted as common practice. I understood this better than most. Pictures of the Kony boy-soldiers and their adult commander were burned into my memory. — Nick Hahn

He forced himself not to break down as he remembered Dumbledore's funeral, and the rows and rows of golden chairs, and the Minister of Magic in the front row, the recitation of Dumbledore's achievements, the stateliness of the white marble tomb. He felt that Dobby deserved just as grand a funeral, and yet here the elf lay between bushes in a roughly dug hole. — J.K. Rowling

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell. — Lascelles Abercrombie

A heart-felt prayer is not recitation with the lips. It is a yearning from within which expresses itself in every word, every act, nay every thought of people. — Mahatma Gandhi

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't they feed you at Navarre house?"
"They throw out some gruel between the indoctrination sessions and propaganda films. Then we're off marching around the grounds and the recitation of sonnets to Celina's loveliness. — Chloe Neill

Don't go into Ramadan having hurt anyone without seeking their forgiveness. The last thing you'd want on the day of judgment is to find that your entire Ramadan with all of its quran recitation, fasting, taraweeh prayers, laylatul qadr, etc. went completely to waste because your pride stopped you from saying "I'm sorry". With that being said, I'm sorry if I've written, said, or done anything to offend you. Please find it in your heart to forgive and make dua that Allah grants me guidance and sincerity. — Omar Suleiman

Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe.
The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison. — Douglas Adams

Eloise," Penelope said, somewhat breathless from trying to shake off
Hyacinth.
"Penelope." But Eloise's voice sounded curious. Which did not
surprise Penelope; Eloise was no fool, and she was well aware that her
brother's normal modes of behavior did not include beatific smiles in her
direction.
"Eloise," Hyacinth said, for no reason Penelope could deduce.
"Hyacinth."
Penelope turned to her husband. "Colin."
He looked amused. "Penelope. Hyacinth."
Hyacinth grinned. "Colin." And then: "Sir Phillip."
"Ladies." Sir Phillip, it seemed, favored brevity.
"Stop!" Eloise burst out. "What is going on?"
"A recitation of our Christian names, apparently," Hyacinth said. — Julia Quinn

A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth. — Frank Luntz

Like the monks chanting their Pali mantras, learning by rote was the accepted method of education just as in English schools of the time. 'In geography,' Sokheang recalled, 'we would have to learn the size of a country, the population, the agricultural produce, etcetera. And we would get called up to recite it to the rest of the class.' The accuracy of this recitation was the measure of a successful student. 'Knowledge,' said Sokheang, 'was the storage of facts. — Nic Dunlop

I've translated two of Bae's novels, A Greater Music and Recitation, which are coming from Open Letter and Deep Vellum in October and January respectively. A Greater Music is a semi-autobiographical book centred on a Korean writer moving to Berlin, learning to live and even write in a foreign language. — Deborah Smith

Comedy is grievances. It's a recitation of grievances - whether they're inconsequential, superficial - like "my wife shops too much", or "kids today", all those old-fashioned themes - or, if it's deeper, and somewhat more thoughtful, about social imbalance and inequities, and the folly of human behavior. It's usually a complaint. — George Carlin

To-day, when the crisis calls you, will you go off and display your recitation and harp on, 'How cleverly I compose dialogues'? Nay, fellow man, make this your object, 'Look how I fail not to get what I will. Look how I escape what I will to avoid. Let death come and you shall know; bring me pains, prison, dishonour, condemnation.' This is the true field of display for a young man come from school. Leave those other trifles to other men; let no one ever hear you say a word on them, do not tolerate any compliments upon them; assume the air of being no one and of knowing nothing. Show that you know this only, how not to fail and how not to fall. — Epictetus

The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs. — David Guterson

I am tired of reading about God's visitations of yesteryear. I want God to break out somewhere in my lifetime so that in the future my children can say, "I was there. I know; it's true." God has no grandchildren. Each generation must experience His presence. Recitation was never meant to take the place of visitation. — Tommy Tenney

A twinge at the edge of her lips and she continued, the soft, slow lilt of recitation: Ancient walls that sing the distant hours. — Kate Morton