Famous quotes containing the words opera, composition, history, paris and/or version:
“The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk
For passing round the bottle with girls in rags or silk,
In country shawl or Paris cloak, had put my wits astray,
And what’s the good of women for all that they can say
Is fol de rol de rolly O.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Truth cannot be defined or tested by agreement with ‘the world’; for not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature of agreement between a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous. Rather—speaking loosely and without trying to answer either Pilate’s question or Tarski’s—a version is to be taken to be true when it offends no unyielding beliefs and none of its own precepts.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)