Famous quotes containing the word abstract:
“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“What a cheerful rhyme! Clean not mean!
Been not seen! Not tired—expired!
We must now decide about place.
We decide that place is the big weeping face
And the other abstract lace of the race.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Somebody once said that I am incapable of drawing a man, but that I draw abstract things like despair, disillusion, despondency, sorrow, lapse of memory, exile, and that these things are sometimes in a shape that might be called Man or Woman.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)