A Quote by Jack Gilbert

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.

Jack Gilbert

Quote Topics

Almost Astonishing Does Frightening How Language Mean Quite

Quote Author

Jack Gilbert
American - Poet
February 18, 1925 - November 13, 2012

The words are frightening - how you're going to build a wall, how you're going to have Mexico pay for it. What does this mean?

Asa Hutchinson

What does fighting crime mean, exactly? Does it mean upholding the law when a woman shoplifts to feed her children, or does it mean struggling to uncover the ones who, quite legally, have brought about her poverty?

Alan Moore

It is the gift of all poets to find the commonplace astonishing, and the astonishing quite natural.

Margery Sharp

Audiences are quite happy to be astonished, and they don't care who does that astonishing.

Harold Prince

It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do?

Hanif Kureishi

I have almost no memory of them [St. Trinian's films]. I don't think I've seen them since I was quite young. I was a bit frightened of the girls. I fancied them. Even though I was young, I found them attractive and rather frightening. I've always been attracted to frightening girls! I'm married to one!

Colin Firth

I mean, I'm an artist by nature; no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does - it is astonishing.

Junot Diaz

I mean, I’m an artist by nature, no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does - it is astonishing.

Junot Diaz

It is astonishing just how much of what we are can be tied to the beds we wake up in in the morning, and it is astonishing how fragile that can be.

Neil Gaiman

It's quite astonishing how much money people make in the hedge fund business and in the private equity field, and how well-off affluent families really are.

Kenneth Rogoff

Religion is much more than language, but to be Christian does mean speaking Christian for most people. The language many of us use has contributed to the crisis in Christianity in North America. Traditional Christian language is becoming less familiar to millions of people. The language is frequently misunderstood by people.

Marcus Borg

It is rather astonishing how little practical value scientific knowledge has for ordinary men, how dull and commonplace such of it as has value is, and how its value seems almost to vary inversely to its reputed utility.

G. H. Hardy

ASTONISHING, said Death. REALLY ASTONISHING. LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS.

Terry Pratchett

The writer, the poet, the novelist, are all creators. This does not mean that they invent language; it means that they use language to create beauty, ideas, images. This is why we cannot do without them.

J. M. G. Le Clezio

It is not astonishing that there are many journalists who have become human failures and worthless men. Rather, it is astonishing that, despite all this, this very stratum includes such a great number of valuable and quite genuine men, a fact that outsiders would not so easily guess.