"The Art Snob will stand back from a picture at some distance, his head cocked slightly to one side. … After a long period of gazing (during which he may occasionally squint his eyes), he will approach to within a few inches of the picture and examine the brushwork; he will then return to his former distant position, give the picture another glance and walk away."

"Mike: What do you mean snob? Tracy: You're the worst kind there is. An intellectual snob. You made up your mind awfully young, it seems to me. Mike: Well, thirty's about time to make up your mind. And I'm nothing of the sort, not Mr. Connor. Tracy: The time to make up your mind about people — is never."

"Always judge your fellow passengers to be the opposite of what they strive to appear to be. For instance, a military man is not quarrelsome, for no man doubts his courage; but a snob is."

"And here's a marvelous one, quoted from Sonia by Stephen Spender. "Auschwitz, oh, dear no! That person was never in Auschwitz. Only in some very minor death camp." The ultimate in English snobbery."

"A man is not more entitled to be "received in good society," or at least to wish to be, because he is more intelligent and cultivated. This is one of those sophisms that the vanity of intelligent people picks up in the arsenal of their intelligence to justify their basest inclinations. In other words, having become more intelligent creates some rights to be less. Very simply, diverse personalities are to be found in the breast of each of us, and often the life of more than one superior man is nothing but the coexistence of a philosopher and a snob. Actually, there are very few philosophers and artists who are absolutely detached from ambition and respect for power, from "people of position." And among those who are more delicate or more sated, snobism replaces ambition and respect for power in the same way superstition arises on the ruins of religious beliefs. Morality gains nothing there. Between a worldly philosopher and a philosopher intimidated by a minister of state, the second is still the more innocent."

"He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob."

"It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob."

"The periodical press is not only a purveyor of news, opinions, and admonitions; it also supplies the greater part of the literature currently read. ...The standards of excellence that govern this periodical literature... must in no way hamper the purposes of the advertisers. ...Taken in the aggregate, the literary output is designed to meet the tastes of that large body of people who are in the habit of buying freely. The successful magazine writers... follow the taste of the class to whom they speak... They must also conform to the fancies and prejudices of this class as regards the ideals—artistic, moral, religious, or social—for which they speak. The class... is that great body of people who are in moderately easy circumstances. ...the respectable middle class ... of various shades of conservatism, affectation, and snobbery."

""Snobbery" is here used without disrespect, as a convenient term to denote the element of strain involved in the quest for gentility on the part of persons whose accustomed social standing is less high or less authentic than their aspirations."

"The poor man’s son ... devotes himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To obtain the conveniencies which these afford, he submits in the first year, nay in the first month of his application, to more fatigue of body, and more uneasiness of mind, than he could have suffered through the whole of his life from the want of them. ... He makes his court to all mankind; he serves those whom he hates, and is obsequious to those whom he despises. Through the whole of his life he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is at all times in his power."

"What has submitted will exhibit resistance."

"The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support."

"Nunc fabularum cur sit inventum genus, Brevi decebo. Servitus obnoxia, Quia, quae volebat, non audebat dicere, Affectus proprios in fabellas transtulit. Aesopi illius semita feci viam."

"If “humility” means nothing more than the capacity to learn from criticism, then it has an undoubted value; but if “humility” means a willingness to submit to authority—to abandon or to modify what one is doing merely because it does not accord with the teachings of the Bible or the thoughts of Chairman Mao—then it is death to the spirit: the proper name for it, indeed, is “servility.”"

"Ascetic ideals reveal so many bridges to independence that a philosopher is bound to rejoice and clap his hands when he hears the story of all those resolute men who one day said No to all servitude and went into some desert."

"Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naïvely, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books."

"Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves."

"The same pride which makes a man treat haughtily his inferiors, makes him cringe servilely to those above him. It is the very nature of this vice, which is neither based on personal merit nor on virtue, but on riches, posts, influence, and useless knowledge, to render a man as supercilious to those who are below him as to over-value those who are above."

"I am as free as Nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran."

"Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

"It is rare that individuals value their freedom more than the comfort that comes with servility."

"Beauty is but skin deep, ugly to the bone. And when beauty fades away, ugly claims its own."

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting … but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive."

"Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent. I'm very sensitive to ugly situations. I'm quick to read people, and I pick up if someone's reacting to me as just a sexy blonde. At times like that, I freeze. I can be very alone at a party, on the set, or in general, if I'm not in harmony with things around me."

"Evil and ugliness are the same thing, and dullness is the mother of both."

"I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful."

"In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness."

"Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil."

"Abraham Lincoln: You think you've been cheated because you are ugly, but I am here to show you otherwise. Come! There is much to see. [walks out] I want you to look in here. [they approach a random house and look inside. A bored woman is playing with a pencil and pebble at her small dining table] This woman is Nancy Pinkerton. As a child she was consistently the most beautiful girl in her entire school. Her life as a youth was filled with praises, and everything being handed to her. Boys told her she was special. She was funny. She was interesting. But that's only because she was hot. It wasn't until she reached age 40, when her looks started to fade, that she learned she was actually about as interesting and special, as a wet carrot. [they leave her as they found her, playing with a pencil, all alone in her dining room. They move on to the next house] This is the home of your new ugly friend, Yamal. [Yamal is shown playing a piano] Because he's ugly, he gets nothing handed to him. He has to work at making something of himself. But that work is gonna pay off when he's an adult. He will have character, something that kids who are hot rarely develop. Like your classmate, Clyde. [they approach Clyde's house. Clyde is all cool laying on his couch talking to someone on the phone] Now that he knows he's good-looking, he doesn't have to make any effort to be special."

"Power can be held in the smallest of things..."

"Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, 'and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!'"

"On a recent Sunday evening, Theo came up with an aphorism: the bigger you think, the crappier it looks. Asked to explain he said, "When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible, with nothing getting better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small, closer in – you know, a girl I've just met, or this song we're going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto – think small.""

"Miniaturization doesn't actually make sense unless you miniaturize the very atoms of which matter is composed. Otherwise a tiny brain in a man the size of an insect, composed of normal atoms, is composed of too few atoms for the miniaturized man to be any more intelligent than the ant. Also, miniaturizing atoms is impossible according to the rules of quantum mechanics."

"In Sorbière's day, European thinkers and intellectuals of widely divergent religious and political affiliations campaigned tirelessly to stamp out the doctrine of indivisibles and to eliminate it from philosophical and scientific consideration. In the very years that Hobbes was fighting Wallis over the indivisible line in England, the Society of Jesus was leading its own campaign against the infinitely small in Catholic lands. In France, Hobbes's acquaintance René Descartes, who had initially shown considerable interest in infinitesimals, changed his mind and banned the concept.. Even as late as the 1730s... George Berkeley mocked mathematicians for their use of infinitesimals... Lined up against these naysayers were some of the most prominent mathematicians and philosophers of that era, who championed the use of the infinitesimally small. These included, in addition to Wallis: Galileo and his followers, Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, and Isaac Newton."

"Yoda: Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship."

"A very small event in the microbial community can have an enormous impact on the environment."

"Frank the Pug: You humans, when're you gonna learn that size doesn't matter? Just 'cause something's important, doesn't mean it's not very, very small."

"All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small too was infinite."

"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."

"Abraham Van Helsing: Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!"

"...flesh...all...monsters...will be...they would arise...lacking in true knowledge...because... the earth grew corrupt...mighty...they were considering...from the angels upon ...in the end it will perish and die...they caused great corruption in the earth...this did not suffice to...they will be..."

"What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."

"Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein: You're a cunning fellow Ygor. Do you think I would put your sly and sinister brain into the body of a giant? That would be a monster indeed. You will do as I tell you or I will not be responsible for the consequences."

"...they defiled...they begot giants and monsters...they begot, and, behold, all the earth was corrupted...with its blood and by the hand of...giant's which did not suffice for them and...and they were seeking to devour many...the monsters attacked it."

"I always enjoyed doing monster books. Monster books gave me the opportunity to draw things out of the ordinary. Monster books were a challenge — what kind of monster would fascinate people? I couldn’t draw anything that was too outlandish or too horrible. I never did that. What I did draw was something intriguing. There was something about this monster that you could live with. If you saw him you wouldn’t faint dead away. There was nothing disgusting in his demeanor. There was nothing about him that repelled you. My monsters were lovable monsters."

"To make the [reader] happy was not my objective, but to make the [reader] say, “Yeah, that’s what would happen” — that was my objective. I knew the [reader] was never happy all the time. You take the Thing, he’d knock out 50 guys at a time and win — then maybe he’d sit down and kind of reflect on it: “Maybe I hurt somebody or maybe we could have done it some other way” like a human being would think, not like a monster. In other books the guy would knock out the gangs and that would be the end of it. You would see the guys in jail, and that’s it. Or it would say, “Wait until next week.”"

"Imagine different ways to overcome a monster other than just fisticuffs and violence. For instance, when the Fantastic Four first met the shape-shifting alien skrulls, the story could have easily been resolved by having the four superheroes tear apart the Skrull's invading spaceship. Instead, the Fantastic Four resorted to deception: By being shown pictures from comic books, the Skrulls were led to believe they would be slaughtered if they dared invade Earth. For good measure, Mr. Fantastic hypnotized the remaining Skrulls into believing they were really cows. Thus, the fantastic Four demonstrated their ingenuity and resourcefulness. Similarly, when Spider-Man created an antidote that turned the Lizard back into Dr. Connors, he demonstrated both his scientific acumen and his compassion for Dr. Connors's situation. Again, the crucial thing to remember is that your superhero embodies several different exceptional qualities, and the manner in which your superhero defeats a monster tells the reader which of these qualities are paramount. And besides, physical strength alone won't work against some monsters, like vampires. Sure, you can drive a stake through a vampire's heart to take him out of commission but most superheroes refrain from resorting to that kind of violence... even against the undead! Again, you must imagine other means of prevailing against the monster."

"Kilaak Queen: Ghidorah is a space monster. The monsters from Earth cannot win. I will get in touch with you, when you feel like giving up."

"Simply put, since the dawn of civilization, our collective imagination has transformed our fears into monsters. Once that happened, it was inevitable for monsters to get incorporated into our stories. Of course, our collective fears changed as human civilization progressed. Humans were no longer afraid of the forest or the seas. Instead, they became afraid of other things, and that meant they created new monsters to replace the ones that no longer frightened them. For instance, Grendel represents the distinct medieval fear of the lower classes rising up against the aristocracy. It's no coincidence that the Transylvanian Count Dracula was created during the victorian era when the English feared an invasion from Europe."