Digression Quotes

1. "For the carpenter's and the geometer's inquiries about the right angle are different also; the carpenter restricts himself to what helps his work, but the geometer inquires into what, or what sort of things, the right angle is, since he studies the truth. We must do the same, then in other areas too, [seeking the proper degree of exactness], so that digressions do not overwhelm our main task."
Author: Aristotle

2. "By my rambling digressions, I perceive myself to be grown old. I used to write more methodically, but one does not dress for private company as for a public ball. Perhaps 'tis only negligence."
Author: Benjamin Franklin

3. "Maybe this all seems like a digression or even a case of protesting too much, but the point is that I have touched a breast and that I liked it."
Author: Bennett Madison

4. "Ancora una volta voglio dunque compiere questo viaggio, e anche ora so che non riuscirò ad andarci direttamente, che viaggio per me non può mai significare altro che digressione, I 'eterno labirinto che il Viaggiatore si costruisce lasciandosi sedurre ogni volta da una deviazione e dalla deviazione della deviazione, dal mistero del nome sconosciuto sulla guida, dal profilo del castello in lontananza cui non porta quasi nessuna strada, da quello che potrebbe esserci da vedere dietro la prossima collina o montagna."
Author: Cees Nooteboom

5. "McLarney laughs, then leaps into the parable of Snot Boogie, who joined the neighborhood crap game, waited for the pot to thicken, then grabbed the cash and bolted down the street only to be shot dead by one of the irate players."So we're interviewing the witnesses down at the office and they're saying how Snot Boogie would always join the crap game, then run away with the pot, and that they'd finally gotten sick of it..."Dave Brown drives in silence, barely tracking this historical digression."And I asked one of them, you know, I asked him why they even let Snot Boogie into the game if he always tried to run away with the money."McLarney pauses for effect."And?" asks Brown."He just looked at me real bizarre," says McLarney. "And then he says, 'you gotta let him play....This is America"
Author: David Simon

6. "Digressions are part of harmony, deviations too."
Author: Dejan Stojanovic

7. "Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology."
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

8. "There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe."
Author: Horace Walpole

9. "Oh, I don't know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all."
Author: J.D. Salinger

10. "Whenever I write first drafts, I like to maximize the possibility of f-ups, mistakes, mis-written words, digressions, crazy changes in tone, etc. This is why I don't use outlining software or even a computer and why I spread pages and images and research materials kinda crazy across the table. Never know what'll happen."
Author: Jeff VanderMeer

11. "Waste not a day in vain digression;with resolute, courageous trustseek every possible impressionand make it firmly your posessionyou'll then work on because you must."
Author: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

12. "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail."
Author: Laurence Sterne

13. "But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better."
Author: Marisha Pessl

14. "(This is not a digression.)"
Author: N.K. Jemisin

15. "Nothing is more to the point than a good digression."
Author: Ralph Caplan

16. "Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones."
Author: Ray Bradbury

17. "A garden path,' write the landscape architects Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell, and William Turnbull, 'can become the thread of a plot, connecting moments and incidents into a narrative. The narrative structure might be a simple chain of events with a beginning, middle, and end. It might be embellished with diversions, digressions, and picaresque twists, be accompanied by parallel ways (subplots), or deceptively fork into blind alleys like the althernative scenerios explored in a detective novel."
Author: Rebecca Solnit

18. "I know that not all my readers like my digressions, but the research that has been done on Caenorhabditis elegans is such a ringing triumph of science that you aren't going to stop me."
Author: Richard Dawkins

19. "A tiger's DNA is also a 'duplicate me' program but it contains an almost fantastically large digression as an essential part of the efficient execution of its fundamental message. That digression is a tiger, complete with fangs, claws, running muscles, stalking and pouncing instincts. The tiger's DNA says, 'Duplicate me by the round-about route of building a tiger first.' At the same time, antelope DNA says, 'Duplicate me by the round-about route of building an antelope first, complete with long legs and fast muscles, complete with timorous instincts and finely honed sense organs tuned to the danger from tigers."
Author: Richard Dawkins

20. "And there begins a lang digression about the lords o' the creation."
Author: Robert Burns

21. "(The subject of Peter Gallagher's eyebrows, I realize, is a digression away from the Oneida Community, and yet, I do feel compelled, indeed almost conspiracy theoretically bound to mention that one of the reasons the Oneida Community broke up and turned itself into a corporate teapot factory is that a faction within the group, led by a lawyer named James William Towner, was miffed that the community's most esteemed elders were bogarting the teenage virgins and left in a huff for none other than Orange County, California, where Towner helped organize the Orange County government, became a judge, and picked the spot where the Santa Ana courthouse would be built, a courthouse where, it is reasonable to assume, Peter Gallagher's attorney on The O.C. might defend his clients.)"
Author: Sarah Vowell

22. "Spleen"Sunday: this satisfied processionOf definite Sunday faces;Bonnets, silk hats, and conscious gracesIn repetition that displacesYour mental self-possessionBy this unwarranted digression.Evening, lights, and tea!Children and cats in the alley;Dejection unable to rallyAgainst this dull conspiracy.And Life, a little bald and gray,Languid, fastidious, and bland,Waits, hat and gloves in hand,Punctilious of tie and suit(Somewhat impatient of delay)On the doorstep of the Absolute."
Author: T.S. Eliot

23. "The reader will pardon us another little digression; foreign to the object of this book but characteristic and useful . . . ."
Author: Victor Hugo

24. "This paper was one of my digressions into abstract economics."
Author: William Vickrey

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