A Quote by William Rounseville Alger

A fretful fancy is constantly flinging its possessor into gratuitous tophets. — © William Rounseville Alger
A fretful fancy is constantly flinging its possessor into gratuitous tophets.
And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.
Nick hasn't seen me naked - I'm not a person who's constantly flinging my clothes aside and strutting about.
I'm a pragmatist, and I don't like gratuitous fashion - in fact, there's not that much gratuitous anything in my life.
Some people with Tourette's have flinging tics- sudden, seemingly motiveless urges or compulsions to throw objects..... (I see somewhat similar flinging behaviors- though not tics- in my two year old godson, now in a stage of primal antinomianism and anarchy)
There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.
There should always be something gratuitous about art, just as there seems to be, according to the new-wave cosmologists, something gratuitous about the universe.
I don't ever want to be gratuitous, for the sake of being gratuitous, but when it serves the stories and the characters, it's nice to be able to do that, realistically and with credibility. You don't want to do it for the sake of it, or shoe-horn it in. But, it's a good tool to have in the toolbox.
Every time I do anything, I have to ask myself: Is it a good role, and is it right to do it? There may be sex or nudity or violence in the script, and then you have to say: Is it gratuitous just out to shock people? Or is it there because it has to be? If a role demands it, and it isn't gratuitous, I'll do it. It's my job, after all. I'm an actress.
Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain, th' way I see it. For too many years, I ate fancy, I dressed fancy, I talked fancy. A while back, I decided to start talkin' th' way I was raised t' talk, and for th' first time in forty years, I can understand what I'm sayin'.
I really like gratuitous nudity. I hate when people go, 'I'll only do it if it makes sense for the movie'. It never makes sense. So I like it - the more gratuitous the better.
A man hath riches. Whence came they, and whither go they? for this is the way to form a judgment of the esteem which they and their possessor deserve. If they have been acquired by fraud or violence, if they make him proud and vain, if they minister to luxury and intemperance, if they are avariciously hoarded up and applied to no proper use, the possessor becomes odious and contemptible.
I don't like things about serial killers. There's so much serial killer information out there in documentaries constantly. A lot of it's just sort of gratuitous or it's almost like pornographic, really. There's no reason for it being shown.
Fancy and humour, early and constantly indulged in, may expect an old age overrun with follies.
Don't be overwhelmed by a man's fancy car, fancy house or fancy clothes. It's really the person inside the care, house and clothes that matters. By the same token, don't be underwhelmed by a less-than-fancy car, house or clohtes. Women can earn the car and house themselves, and you can always buy your man nice clothes, too.
I quite fancy having a hover car, but I don't fancy everyone having one. Because I feel like I spend quite a lot of time stuck in traffic on the 405 but if everybody had one then they'd be scared and we'd crash, but if it was just me, then I think I would zoom home quite fast. I also quite fancy a phone attached to my hand but then I don't know if I fancy it being stuck to my body.
When you have all the bells and whistles - you've got the big, fancy catering, you've got the big, fancy car service and the big, fancy trailer - it makes it very comfortable and everybody's making a lot of money. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to end up with a great film.
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