Cliche refers to words, commonplace to ideas. Cliche describes the form or the letter, commonplace the substance or spirit. To con...fuse them is to confuse the thought with the expression of the thought. The cliche is immediately perceivable; the commonplace very often escapes notice if decked out in original dress. There are few examples, in any literature, of new ideas expressed in original form. The most critical mind must often be content with one or the other of these pleasures, only too happy when it is not deprived of both at once, which is not too rarely the case.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this ...reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have expressed some ideas that point to the center; I have saluted the dawn in my way, from my point of view. He who knows the w...ay should do the same, in his way, and from his point of view.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our Sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our Senses. It fills the Mind with the largest Variety of Ideas, converse...s with its Objects at the greatest Distance, and continues the longest in Action without being tired or satiated with its proper Enjoyments. The Sense of Feeling can indeed give us a Notion of Extension, Shape, and all other Ideas that enter at the Eye, except Colours; but at the same time it is very much straightened and confined in its Operations, to the Number, Bulk, and Distance of its particular Objects. Our Sight seems designed to supply all these Defects, and may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive kind of Touch, that spreads its self over an infinite Multitude of Bodies, comprehends the largest Figures, and brings into our reach some of the most remote Parts of the Universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alvy Singer: You look like a really happy couple. Are you? Woman on Street: Yeah.... Alvy Singer: Yeah? So how do you account for it? Woman on Street: I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say. Man on Street: And I'm exactly the same way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Three characteristics mark all confirmed expatriates: (1) slowness on the up-take, (2) the tendency to personalize the impersonal-...-interpreting in terms of politeness or of policy what should be kept clearly in terms of ideas, (3) the tendency to orientalize one's attitude toward women.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have always fought for ideas--until I learned that it isn't ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »