Prosaic Quotes

“Mundane education is regrettably prosaic," - Jace Lightwood-Herondale”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire

“25. Flowering trees
The blossom of the pear tree is the most prosaic, vulgar thing in the world. The less one sees this particular blossom the better...”
― Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book

“..from timid touching of gloved fingers
to frantic laceration of naked breasts”
― Robert Graves, Collected Poems

“It is easy for an academic to claim at a round table that we live in a post-ideological universe - the moment he visits the restroom after the heated discussion, he is again deep-knee in ideology.”
― Slavoj Žižek, How to Read Lacan

“L'acier, l'airain plus fortement s'allume
que les roseaux qu'un feu léger consume.”
― Voltaire, La Pucelle; Or, the Maid of Orléans: A Poem, in XXI Cantos. Volume 1 of 2.

“Un beau carré de gruyère, apporté dans un journal, gardait imprimé: 'faits divers' sur sa pâte onctueuse”
― Guy de Maupassant, Boule de Suif

“Среди русских интеллигентов, как уже многими замечен, есть порядочное количество диковинных людей,..которые сумеют героически, не дрогнув ни одним мускулом, глядеть прямо в лицо смерти, которые способны ради идеи терпеливо переносить невообразимые лишения и страдания, равные пытке, но зато эти люди теряются от высокомерности швейцара, съёживаются от окрика прачки, а в полицейский участок входят с томительной и робкой тоской”
― Aleksandr Kuprin, Yama: The Pit

“And after the second year was over, the Soul said to the young Fisherman at night-time, and as he sat in the wattled house alone, "Lo! now I have tempted thee with evil, and I have tempted thee with good, and thy love is stronger than I am. Wherefore will I tempt thee no longer, but I pray thee to suffer me to enter thy heart, that I may be with thee even as before."
"Surely thou mayest enter," said the young Fisherman, "for in the days when with no heart thou didst go through the world thou must have suffered."
"Alas!" cried his Soul, "I can find no place of entrance, so compassed about with love is this heart of thine.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The Empress Dowager, the man continued, was much distressed, and had given orders to stop the fighting; the Boxers were fools...
Then the soldier waved a farewell, and retreated cautiously, picking his way back through the ruins and débris. Several times he stopped no raised the head of some dead man that lay there, victim to our rifles, and peered at the face to see if it was recognisable. In five days we have accounted for very many killed and wounded, and numbers still lie in the exposed positions where they fell.
The disappearing figure of that man was the end to the last clue we came across regarding the meaning of this sudden quiet. The shadows gradually lengthened and night suddenly fell, and around us there was nothing but these strangely silent ruins. There was barricade for barricade, loophole for loophole, and sandbag for sandbag. What has been levelled to the ground by fire has been heaped up once more so that the ruins themselves may bring more ruin!
But although we exhausted ourselves with questions, and many of us hoped against hope, the hours sped slowly by and no message came. The Palace, enclosed in its pink walls, had sunk to sleep, or forgotten us - or, perhaps, had even found that there could be no truce. Then midnight came, and as we were preparing, half incredulously, to go to sleep, we truly knew. Crack, crack, went the first shots from some distant barricade, and bang went an answering rifle on our side. Awakened by these echoes, the firing grew naturally and mechanically to the storm of sound we have become so accustomed to, and the short truce was forgotten. It is no use; we must go through to the end.”
― Putnam Weale, B. L. (Bertram Lenox)

“Мальчик поливал из лейки прохладную глубину магазина и пел песню, которую прилично петь только взрослым.”
― Исаак Бабель, Одесские рассказы

“Как хирург, так и фотограф режут и запускают.”
― Henri Van Lier, Philosophy of Photography

“..et tamen nihil est sciens vel quiescens, nisi actualiter sit sciens vel quiescens.”
― William of Ockham, Philosophical Writings

“Насилие, учиняемое над людьми массовой музыкой, продолжает жить и на другом социальном полюсе, в музыке, избегающей людей”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music

“Сегодня вам придёт в голову улыбнуться в общественном месте, а завтра вы выйдете на улицу голыми!”
― Сигизмунд Кржижановский, Воспоминания о будущем. Избранное из неизданного

“Сколько гривенников, столько миросозерцаний”
― Сигизмунд Кржижановский, Воспоминания о будущем. Избранное из неизданного

“..and there's growing up a scientific church, wherein knowledge, and not humility, labour, and not penance and fasting, are considered essentials”
― Heckethorn Charles William, The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries; a Comprehensive Account of Upwards of one Hundred An

“Thus a poetical word is a thing conceived in itself and includes all its meanings; a prosaic word is flat and useful and might have been used differently.”
― William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity

“From the geyser ventilators
autumn winds are blowing down
on a thousand business women
having baths in Camden Town.

Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,
steam's escaping here and there,
morning trains through Camden cutting
shake the Crescent and the Square.

Early nip of changeful autumn,
dahlias glimpsed through garden doves,
at the back precarious bathrooms
jutting out from upper floors;

and behind their frail partitions
business women lie and soak,
seeing through the draughty skylight
flying clouds and railway smoke.

Rest you there, poor unbeloved ones,
lap your loneliness in heat.
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
trolley-bus and windy street!”
― John Betjeman, Few Late Chrysanthemums

“You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation..”
― Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

“And he is an owl
He is an owl, "Man" tattooed in his armpit
Under the broken wing
(Stunned by the wall of glare, he fell here)
Under the broken wing of huge shadow that twitches across the floor.

He is a man in hopeless feathers.”
― Ted Hughes, Wodwo

“I am bored in France, especially as every one resembles Voltaire.

Emerson forgot Voltaire in his "Representative Men." He could have made a fine chapter entitled Voltaire or The Antipoet, the king of boobies, the prince of the shallow, the anti-artist, the preacher of innkeepers, the father who "lived in a shoe" of the editors of the century.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Baudelaire, His Prose and Poetry