Quotations about:
    familiarity


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Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in light out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us. When the world seems familiar, when one has got used to existence, one has become adult. The brave new world, the wonderland has grown trite and commonplace.
 
[L’enfance c’est le monde du miracle ou du merveilleux: c’est comme si la creation surgissait, lumineuse, de la nuit, toute neuve et toute fraîche, et tout étonnante. Il n’y a plus d’enfance à partir du moment où les choses ne sont plus étonnantes. Lorsque le monde vous semble «déja vu», lorsqu’on s’est habitué à l’existence, on devient adulte. Le monde de la féerie, la merveille neuve se fait banalité, cliché.]

Eugene Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco (1912-1994) Romanian-French dramatist
Fragments of a Journal [Journal en Miettes], “The Crisis of Language” (1967) [tr. Stewart (1968)]
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Added on 6-Mar-24 | Last updated 6-Mar-24
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If a book read when young is a lover, that same book, reread later on, is a friend. […] This may sound like a demotion, but after all, it is old friends, not lovers, to whom you are most likely to turn when you need comfort. Fatigue, grief, and illness call for familiarity, not innovation.

Anne Fadiman
Anne Fadiman (b. 1953) American essayist, journalist, literary critic, teacher
Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love, Foreword (2005)
 
Added on 15-Jan-24 | Last updated 15-Jan-24
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And now I understand
something so frightening, and wonderful —
how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing
through crossroads, sticking
like lint to the familiar.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Robert Schumann,” ll. 7-11, Dream Work (1986)
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Added on 6-Dec-23 | Last updated 6-Dec-23
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It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) Catalan-Cuban-French author, diarist
The Novel of the Future, ch. 2 “Abstraction” (1968)
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Added on 29-Nov-23 | Last updated 29-Nov-23
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          And now I understand
something so frightening, and wonderful —
how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing
through crossroads, sticking
like lint to the familiar.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Robert Schumann,” Dream Work, Part 1 (1986)
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Added on 16-Nov-22 | Last updated 14-Nov-22
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JUBA: Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover,
Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 1, sc. 4 (1713)
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Added on 7-Feb-22 | Last updated 26-Feb-24
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What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of strangers!

Lucy Maud Montgomery
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) Canadian author
Anne of the Island, ch. 3 (1915)
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Added on 21-Oct-21 | Last updated 21-Oct-21
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An old belief is like an old shoe. We so value its comfort that we fail to notice the hole in it.

Robert Brault (b. c. 1945) American aphorist, programmer
(Attributed)
 
Added on 10-Nov-20 | Last updated 10-Nov-20
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The first impression is readily received. We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to efface them.

[Der erste Eindruck findet uns willig, und der Mensch ist gemacht, daß man ihn das Abenteuerlichste überreden kann; das haftet aber auch gleich so fest, und wehe dem, der es wieder auskratzen und austilgen will!]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Book 1, “August 15” (1774) [tr. Boylan]
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Alt. trans.:
  • "... woe to him who would endeavor to erase them!" [tr. Lange, Ryan]
  • "The first impression finds us receptive, and man is so made that he can be persuaded by the most outlandish things; but it strikes root so immediately that woe to him who tries to scratch it out and eradicate it!" [tr. Pike (2004)]
  • Original German.
 
Added on 22-Sep-20 | Last updated 22-Sep-20
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Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration.

[Parit enim conversatio contemptum; raritas conciliat admirationem.]

Apuleius (AD c. 124 - c. 170) Numidian Roman writer, philosopher, rhetorician [Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis]
On the God of Socrates [De Deo Socratis]
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First recorded passage with this phrase. Discussing why the gods do not mingle with humanity. Alternate translations:

  • "Familiarity produces contempt, but infrequency conciliates admiration."
    [tr. Taylor (1822)]
  • "Familiarity breeds contempt, but privacy gains admiration." [
    Works of Apuleius
    (1853)]
  • "Familiarity breeds contempt, but concealment excites interest."
    [National Review (1858-04)]
The first part of the phrase is also used as the modern moral the English translation of Aesop's "The Fox and the Lion." Applying this proverb to Aesop seems to have first happened in 1820; in classic Greek sources, the moral was more along the line that "acquaintance overcomes fear."
 
Added on 8-Jul-20 | Last updated 31-Jan-24
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Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

[Pour qu’une chose soit intéressante, il suffit de la regarder longtemps.]

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French writer, novelist
Letter to Alfred Le Poittevin (16 Sep 1845)
    (Source)

Alt. trans.: "To make something interesting, just look at it for a long time."
 
Added on 20-Feb-20 | Last updated 20-Feb-20
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ENOBARBUS: Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, sc. 2, l. 276ff (2.2.276-279) (1607)
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Added on 10-Nov-17 | Last updated 17-Jan-24
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Ever since I had dinner with Lou Reed I’ve tried to avoid meeting the people who would make me feel starstruck. It was a great dinner but by the end of it Lou Reed was no longer my hero, and I don’t have many heroes. I resolutely avoided meeting David Bowie, which became harder when I became friends with Duncan Jones, his son, and then got even harder when I moved to Woodstock and he lived around the corner. But I love the fact that the Bowie that I have is the Bowie in my head: a strange, evolving, absolutely fictional Bowie who became my hero when I was 11.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
“This Much I Know,” The Guardian (5 Aug 2017)
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Added on 18-Sep-17 | Last updated 18-Sep-17
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Sit at the feet of the masters long enough, and they’ll start to smell.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Sauget’s Law of Education
    (Source)

Attributed to John Sauget of Urbana, Ill., in Paul Dickson, The Official Rules, "Revised Proverbs" (1978).
 
Added on 21-Jul-17 | Last updated 21-Jul-17
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No man is a hero to his valet.

Anne-Marie Bigot de Cornuel (1605-1694) French wit and aphorist
Lettres de Mlle Aïssé, 12.13 (1728)

See Goethe.
 
Added on 18-Sep-15 | Last updated 18-Sep-15
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Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Spectator #256 (24 Dec 1711)
 
Added on 8-Apr-13 | Last updated 10-Dec-14
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“Familiarity breeds kontempt.” This only applies tew men, not tew hot bukwheat slapkakes, well buttered and sugared.

[“Familiarity breeds contempt.” This only applies to men, not to hot buckwheat slapcakes, well buttered and sugared.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

See Apuleius.
 
Added on 18-Jun-12 | Last updated 31-Jan-24
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All the works of Nature are Miracles, and nothing makes them appear otherwise but our Familiarity with them.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
Prose Observations. “Nature” [ed. de Quehen (1979)]
 
Added on 20-Sep-11 | Last updated 13-Apr-15
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Choose the best life; for habit will make it pleasant.

Epictetus (c.55-c.135) Greek (Phrygian) Stoic philosopher
Fragment 144

Sometimes attributed to Francis Bacon.
 
Added on 19-Apr-10 | Last updated 20-May-16
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Familiarity breeds contempt — and children.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Mark Twain’s Notebook (1894-02-02) [ed. Paine (1935)]
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See Apuleius.
 
Added on 18-Feb-10 | Last updated 31-Jan-24
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He who carves the Buddha never worships him.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Chinese proverb
 
Added on 12-May-04 | Last updated 11-Feb-20
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HAL: If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work,
But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry IV, Part 1, Act 1, sc. 2, l. 211ff (1.2.211-212) (1597)
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 29-Jan-24
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