"Quiddity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though no doubt it helped him when genius had come, the two things are in his case, as in most, pretty sufficiently distinct. What the genius itself was I must do my best to indicate hereafter, always beseeching the reader to remember that all genius is in its essence and quiddity indefinable. You can no more get close to it than you can get close to the rainbow, and your most scientific explanation of it will always leave as much of the heart of the fact unexplained as the scientific explanation of the rainbow ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... explicit!" And I continued: "As the truthful pen, Father, of thy dear brother wrote of it, Who put with thee Rome into the good way, Faith is the substance of the things we hope for, And evidence of those that are not seen; And this appears to me its quiddity." [66] Then heard I: "Very rightly thou perceivest, If well thou understandest why he placed it With substances and then with evidences." And I thereafterward: "The things profound, That here vouchsafe to me their outward show, Unto all eyes below are so concealed, That they exist there only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... language, and ornamented with armorial bearings, delighted Mr. and Mrs. Mumbles above all things. They now felt a prospect of the realization of their fondest hopes, and began to prepare accordingly. The lawyer's clerk, whose name was Quiddity, also set about publishing the whole of the matter abroad. He soon succeeded in inducing a number of young men and maidens to favour the joke, and to lend themselves to it. He explained the insane folly of this worthy pair with such irresistible drollery that ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... plausibly be so exhibited) he loses his virtue as an author. He thought of himself as a cause, a surprising intruder upon the routine of the world, an original creator. I think that he is right, and that the profitable study of a man is the study which regards him as an oddity, not a quiddity. ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... Herein he resembles THACKERAY, who used to delight in taking the reader behind the scenes, and exhibiting the wires. Not so JAMES PAYN. He comes in front, and comments upon the actions of his puppets, or upon men and morals in general, or he makes a quip, or utters a quirk, or proposes a quiddity, and pauses to laugh with you, before he resumes the story, and says, with the older romancers, "But to our tale." Most companionable writer is JAMES PAYN. Tells his story so clearly. A PAYN to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... quality means to represent it or not. It can DO nothing to the quality beyond resembling it, simply because an abstract quality is a thing to which nothing can be done. Being without context or environment or principium individuationis, a quiddity with no haecceity, a platonic idea, even duplicate editions of such a quality (were they possible), would be indiscernible, and no sign could be given, no result altered, whether the feeling I meant to stand for this edition or for that, or whether ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James |
