Famous quotes containing the words action, figure and/or lines:
“Without our being especially conscious of the transition, the word parent has gradually come to be used as much as a verb as a noun. Whereas we formerly thought mainly about being a parent, we now find ourselves talking about learning how to parent. . . . It suggests that we may now be concentrating on action rather than status, on what we do rather than what or who we are.”
—Bettye M. Caldwell (20th century)
“I can see that figure nowpallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.”
—Herman Melville (18191891)
“To understand
The signs that stars compose, we need depend
Only on stars that are entirely there
And the apparent space between them. There
Never need be lines between them, puzzling
Our sense of what is what.”
—John Hollander (b. 1929)