Tracing

Famous quotes containing the word tracing:

    Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.
    Annie Dillard (b. 1945)

    And if anyone should think I am tracing this matter too curiously, I, who have considered it in various shapes, can only answer with Hamlet ... “Not a jot”; it being no more than the natural result of examining and considering the subject.
    Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)

    Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)