"Gnomical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cared to follow the argument, but only to take pleasure in beautiful, isolated thoughts and images; in reading a play of Sophocles, he had cared little about the character-drawing or the development of the dramatic situation; he had only striven to discover and recollect extracts of gnomic quality, sonorous flights of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sinner must repent. But why? Simply because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done. The moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. More than that: it is the means by which one alters one's past. The Greeks thought that impossible. They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, 'Even the Gods cannot alter the past.' Christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do. Christ, had he been asked, would have said—I feel quite certain about it—that the moment the prodigal son fell on his knees ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... measure of grave content in the ninth prelude in E. It is rather gnomic, and contains hints of both Brahms and Beethoven. It has an ethical quality, but that may be because of ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... rich; the drawing, particularly in the arms, indifferent; the expression of the faces good. It was upon this picture that witnesses took the oaths before the revolution; and it is the only one of the six formerly in this situation that escaped destruction[105]. Round the apartment are gnomic sentences in letters of gold, reminding judges, juries, witnesses, and suitors, of their duties. The room itself is said to be the most beautiful in France for its proportions and quantity of light. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner |
