The Splendid Thing Quotes

#1. The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war.

Charles Babbage

#2. Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity

Vladimir Nabokov

#3. Having been the discoverer of many splendid things, he is said to have asked his friends and relations that, after his death, they should place on his tomb a cylinder enclosing a sphere, writing on it the proportion of the containing solid to that which is contained.

Archimedes

#4. A Dilemma with a flat tire was a reminder that no matter how splendid and shiny the world might be, it could be spoiled by something you didn't notice until the damage had been done.

Lemony Snicket

#5. What a splendid thing is literature, what a splendid thing! It strengthens and instructs the heart of man. Literature is a sort of picture. It connotes at once passion, expression, fine criticism, good learning, and a document.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#6. To marry and have children is the ideal life for a woman. What career could ever be as fine? To give the world splendid men and women-isn't that the noblest thing a woman could possibly do?

Jessie Willcox Smith

#7. Thank the Lord for a mother who was a general as well as a Latter-day Saint; who realized that it was a remarkable and splendid thing to encourage a boy to do something besides perhaps milking cows if he was on a farm, if he had ambitions along athletic lines.

Heber J. Grant

#8. As the boy looked at it, my thing moved and he whispered "It is splendid! Do let me try its love-making" ...
And I was too polite to disobey.

Henry M. Christman

#9. The recovery of freedom is so splendid a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#10. The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?

Pablo Casals

#11. You are still young enough to think that torment of the spirit is a splendid thing, a sign of a superior nature. But you are no longer a young man; you are a youngish middle aged man, and it is time you found out that these spiritual athletics do not lead to wisdom.

Robertson Davies

#12. It is a splendid thing to have the use of any gift of God. It isn't for us to choose again, or wonder and dispute, but just work in our own places, and leave the rest to God.

Sarah Orne Jewett

#13. What a splendid thing watercolour is to express atmosphere and distance, so that the figure is surrounded by air and can breathe in it.

Vincent Van Gogh

#14. The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.

Evelyn Waugh

#15. Well, that's splendid!" Mr. Goat said. "As long as we preserve our friendship - that's the important thing." "Yes!" Olivia said. "Exactly!" There was a pause. "Can I kiss you?" Mr. Goat said. Olivia groaned. "I just want to be friends," she said firmly. "That's all." "I

Simon Rich

#16. This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by

Gustave Flaubert

#17. Holly Black is the Real Thing: a gifted writer with a solid grounding in what matters. Her stories are dark and splendid blooms rising from roots sunk deep in myth and tradition.

Ellen Kushner

#18. You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope you never have to long for a child as I did, but oh, what a splendid thing it has been that you came finally, and what a blessing to enjoy you now for almost seven years.

Marilynne Robinson

#19. I'm not in the depths of despair this morning. I never can be in the morning. Isn't it a splendid thing that there are mornings?

L.M. Montgomery

#20. The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended between its position in the eternal world, with all its corruption and evils and cruelties, and the splendid world of our imagination.

Richard Hofstadter

#21. Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled.

Immanuel Kant

#22. I think the nicest thing about days is their unexpectedness. It's jolly to wake up like this on a golden-fine morning and day-dream for ten minutes before I get up, imagining heaps of splendid things that might happen.

L.M. Montgomery

#23. By the bold and running use of metaphor he will amplify and give us, not the thing itself, but the reverberation and reflection which, taken into his mind, the thing has made; close enough to the original to illustrate it, remote enough to heighten, enlarge, and make splendid.

Virginia Woolf

#24. I like the unreality of your mind; the whole thing is very splendid and voluptuous and absurd.

Virginia Woolf

#25. Nothing is more evident than that Nature hates mind. Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity.

Oscar Wilde

#26. I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.

Bruce Grocott, Baron Grocott