#objects

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren't present. ↗

— P. J. O'Rourke

#flattery #gossip #objects #present #say

I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation. ↗

— Siegfried Sassoon

#been #believe #change #clearly #done

Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as technical objects when they're being written. Or at least they do for me. They're the result of thousands of decisions made at speed during revision. ↗

— George Saunders

#being #decisions #during #intention #least

The question of the composition of perceptible objects is one which already occupied the mind of the ancient Greeks. ↗

— Johannes Stark

#ancient #ancient greeks #composition #greeks #mind

My conviction of the necessity of further legislative provisions for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public moneys and my opinion in regard to the measures best adapted to the accomplishment of those objects have been already submitted to you. ↗

— Martin Van Buren

#adapted #already #been #best #conviction

To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects. ↗

— Raoul Vaneigem

#large number #means #merely #nowadays #number

She was a woman still controlled by the traumas of her girlhood. It made more sense to put her three-year-old self in the dock. As Dr Byford explained, she was really the victim of a vicious, peculiarly female psycological disorder: she felt one thing and did another. She was a stranger to herself. And were they still like that, she wondered - these new girls, this new generation? Did they still feel one thing and do another? Did they still only want to be wanted? Were they still objects of desire instead of - as Howard might put it - desiring subjects? No, she could see no serious change. Still starving themselves, still reading women's magazines that explicitly hate women, still cutting themselves with little knives in places they think can't be seen, still faking their orgasms with men they dislike, still lying to everybody about everything. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#generation #objects #women #beauty

[He] had insisted that inanimate objects couldn't have malignant motivations, but Emma had extensive proof to the contrary. ↗

— Lauren Willig

#inanimate-objects #motivational

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory. ↗

— Francis Bacon

#memory #objects #only #pictures #please

If you'd rather live surrounded by pristine objects than by the traces of happy memories, stay focused on tangible things. Otherwise, stop fixating on stuff you can touch and start caring about stuff that touches you. ↗

— Martha Beck

#caring #focused #happy #live #memories