Literally Quotes (page 3)
On July 3, 1968, Chairman Mao issued an order calling for the ruthless suppression of class enemies. He wanted all members of the Five Black Categories to be eliminated, together with TWENTY THREE NEW TYPES of enemy , which included anyone who had ever served as a policeman before the Liberation, or who had been sent to prison or labor camp. And not only them but their family and distant relatives as well.
That’s a lot of people.
Yes. Just think, the literal meaning of the Chinese characters...
Ma Jian
Science attacks our most cherished opinions. Opinions which come straight
from our collective gut. Oh, wait, according to gastroenterologists, the only thing that comes from the gut is waste left from the digestion of food. That’s right, “waste.” I guess that means that scientists literally think our opinions should be flushed down the toilet!
Stephen Colbert
The word he used was not “wallowing,” there being no animals on Anarres to make wallows; it was a compound, meaning literally “coating continually and thickly with excrement.” The flexibility and precision of Pravic lent itself to the creation of vivid metaphors quite unforeseen by its inventors.
Ursula K. Le Guin
In TIME June 7, 2010On the sustainability of the publishing industry, in the Chicago Tribune:"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numbers.... The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $175." - 5/26/10
Garrison Keillor
There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally. ... As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered the words, and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen situation; and, although their words are by far the most decisive evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.
Learned Hand
Arma virumque cano........."*Literally: "I sing of arms and man".__I sing the praises of a man's struggles_? Translation of the opening verses of the first book of Virgils Aeneid, by John Dryden( XVII century)"Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc\'d by fate, And haughty Juno\'s unrelenting hate, Expell\'d and exil\'d, left the Trojan shore. Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore, And in the doubtful war, before he won. The Latian realm, and built the destin\'d town; His banish\'d gods...
Virgil
A bird named Vlad the Impaler, who spent the bulk of his life hissing and looking at himself in a little mirror hanging[...] in the iron cage, a mirror so dull and cloudy with Vlad the Impaler’s bird-spit that Vlad the Impaler could not possibly have seen anything more than a vague yellowish blob behind a pane of mist[...] A bird that not infrequently literally bit the hand that fed it, before returning to dance in front of its own shapeless reflection, straining and contorting always for a...
David Foster Wallace