Famous quotes containing the words yawn and/or contagion:
“Children don’t read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology.... They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don’t expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions.”
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (20th century)
“Who knows but this hill may one day be a Helvellyn, or even a Parnassus, and the Muses haunt here, and other Homers frequent the neighboring plains?... It was a place where gods might wander, so solemn and solitary, and removed from all contagion with the plain.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)