Quotes: Olive trees. Opera. Oppression. Orator. Order. Organization. Oriental Spirit. Originality. Owls. Oxymoron.

A collection of quotes on various topics. The sentence in bold face is a plain statement of the quote that follows.

Olive Trees
Olive trees are humorists with twisted trunks and boughs.
Olive trees 1095 …those old humorists with gnarled trunks and twisted boughs, the olives. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

Opera
When churches lost fashion, opera houses took their place.
Opera 242 Opera houses came in when churches went out. Clark, Civilization.

Sparrows fly all over the opera house, causing concern by the audience about their heads and disrupting the scenes.
Opera 19 But to return to the sparrows: There have been so many flights of them let loose in this opera, that it is feared the House will never get rid of them; and that in other plays they may make their entrance in very wrong and improper scenes, so as to be seen flying in a lady’s bed chamber or perching upon a king’s throne; besides the inconveniences which the heads of the audience may sometimes suffer from them. Addison, 3/6/1711. The Spectator.

Oppression
The oppressed shape themselves in the image of their oppressors.
Oppression 101 It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors. Hoffer, The True Believer

Orator
With regard to Webster, wrong looked right and right, wrong.
Orator 292 Hawthorne on Daniel Webster: “So wonderfully eloquent was he…that whatever he might choose to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked right, and right looked wrong. [orator]. Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

Preparation is a necessity. A fine oration does not make great warriors, just as a musician does not become good from hearing a fine song.
Oratory 431 Cyrus: “That men are not made valiant and warlike all of a sudden by a fine oration, any more than a man becomes at once a good musician by hearing a fine song” …apprenticeships… have to be served beforehand by a long and continued education. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Order
National Socialism promised to establish order and stability.
Order 229 …a new regime that promised to substitute order, stability, efficiency, and “national values….” Bracher, The German Dictatorship

The power and apparent success of National Socialism gave the impression of order and unity and overcame any reservations.
Order 245 Stronger than any reservations was the pull of power and apparent success, the impression of order and unity, the recollection of the pre-democratic authoritarian state, and the belief in the unlimited promises of the regime. Bracher, The German Dictatorship

Organization
The movement was so organized that it had perfected itself before becoming the institution in power.
Organization 139 The movement was to be so organized that not only would it “in itself contain the germ of the future state” but “also have it in readiness as the perfected embodiment of its own state.” Bracher, The German Dictatorship

Order is a requirement for successful activity.
Organization 99 …the prime condition of successful activity is order…. Tolstoi, War and Peace.

Form and procedure of the deliberations were perfect, thus avoiding substance.
Organizations 547 He remembered the conscientious and prolonged deliberations that took place at those meetings on every point relating to form and procedure, and how sedulously and promptly all that touched the substance of the business was evaded. Tolstoi, War and Peace.

The belief that totalitarian organization is perfect is a myth.
Organized 236 …widespread idea about the better organized and more effective “order” of totalitarian one-man rule is a myth all too easily believed in crisis-ridden democracies. Bracher, The German Dictatorship

The organization of animal and plant metabolism is so remarkable that we take it for granted.
Organizing 142 …the sheer organizing power of animal and plant metabolism is…most remarkable, but, as in the case of most everyday marvels, we take it for granted. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Not everything in the world should be perfectly organized.
Organizing 51 We acquired the organizing habit with a vengeance and have not since had time to reflect that there may be things in the world that it would be a profanation to organize—courtship for example—or things not worth organizing…or things that cannot be organized, or if organizable, better left as they are—scientific research perhaps. W M Wheeler. 1920. A Random Walk in Science.

Oriental Spirit
The oriental spirit: apathy and resignation.
Oriental spirit 94 …the Oriental spirit of apathy and resignation…. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon.

Originality
Originality is relative.
Originality 715 Thus, all originality is relative. Emerson, Representative Men: Shakespeare, or the Poet.

Originality is like morning, springtime and other renewals.
Originality 217 …showing such originality as we all share with the morning and the spring-time and other endless renewals. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

Owls
Owls drift across the night.
Owls 104 Owls…drift silently as smoke across the night air. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.


Oxymoron
Oxymoron 314 “Civilized warfare.” Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.