Quotes & Sayings About Sui Generis

I think every election is sui generis. I think it starts with where we are in the country at this time, with what Americans are thinking, feeling and hoping, and it proceeds from there. And it is always about the future. — Hillary Clinton

The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. "I am no such thing," it would say; "I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone. — William James

I was in the habit of calling a kiss a peck. Bulkaen had said "a smack." As erotic language, such as we use in dalliance, is a kind of secretion, a concentrated juice that flows from the lips only in moments of the most intense emotion, of plaint, as this language is, in other words, the essential expression of passion, each pair of lovers has its own peculiar language, a language which has a perfume, an odor sui generis which belongs only to that couple ... intimacy ... the secret rites of a deep love. — Jean Genet

Conservatives won't want to hear this, but the Republican who maneuvered his way into the most impressive victory of the election was California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Okay, he's sui generis. But he won a landslide victory after moving to the center, while holding onto conservatives by not hiking taxes. — Fred Barnes

Given AC as a rival to naturalism, there is an additional burden of proof for a naturalist ontology that quantifies over sui generis emergent properties such as those constitutive of consciousness. After — William Lane Craig

Deep down, there is in the substance of the cosmos a primordial disposition, sui generis, for self-arrangement and self-involution. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Libertarianism is neither of the left nor of the right. It is unique. It is sui generis. It is apart from left and right. The left right political spectrum simply has no room for libertarianism. Think of an equilateral triangle, with libertarianism at one corner, the left at a second corner and the right at the third corner. We are equally distant from both of those misbegotten political economic philosophies. No, better yet, think in terms of an isosceles triangle, with us at the top and the two of them at the bottom, indicating they have more in common with each other than with us. — Walter Block

Life is a phenomenon sui generis, a primal fact in its own right, like energy. Cut flesh or wood how you like, hack at them in a baffled fury - you cannot find life itself, you can only see what it built out of the lifeless dust. — Donald C. Peattie

he is sui generis, a scholar and a wit. — Hilary Mantel

I consider it a shame that most contemporary American writing seems informed more by Hemingway, the hero of adolescent boys of all ages and genders, than by the sui generis genius of letters, Faulkner. A phalanx of books about boredom in the Midwest is lauded (where the Midwest lies is a source of constant puzzlement to me, somewhere near Iowa, I presume), as are books about unexplored angst in New Jersey or couples unable to communicate in Connecticut. It was Camus who asserted that American novelists are the only ones who think they need not be intellectuals. — Rabih Alameddine

It is true that we instinctively recoil from seeing
an object to which our emotions and affections are committed
handled by the intellect as any other object is handled. The first
thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with
something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and
awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and
unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal
outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a
crustacean, and thus dispose of it. "I am no such thing," it would
say; "I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone."
The next thing the intellect does is to lay bare the causes in
which the thing originates. Spinoza says: "I will analyze the actions
and appetites of men as if it were a question of lines, of planes,
and of solids. — William James

High-impact 21st century fiction is built on unique voices, uncommon characters, and tales that can only be told by a particular author. They're sui generis. — Donald Maass

Life must be considered sui generis; it is not a form of energy, nor can it be expressed in terms of something else. — Oliver Joseph Lodge

Omni is not a science magazine. It is a magazine about the future ... Omni was sui generis. Although there were plenty of science magazines over the years ... Omni was the first magazine to slant all its pieces toward the future. It was fun to read and gorgeous to look at. — Ben Bova