Exposition Quotes

Place in the fall of 1979, with Drs. Geisler, Hoehner, Nicole, and Radmacher in attendance. It was the consensus of those present that we should not undertake to modify a statement that so many people had signed, both at the summit meeting and afterward. But
in order to ward off misunderstandings and to provide an exposition of the position advocated by the ICBI, it was thought desirable to provide a ~ R.C. Sproul

Our religion was the religion of a Book. Man must be educated on Earth for Heaven. John Quincy Adams ~ Paul C. Nagel

Buildings are seldom just buildings in downtown Chicago, they are Examples, and not a city on Earth, I swear, is as knowledgeably preoccupied with architectural meaning. Where else would a department store include in its advertisements the name of the architect who created it, or a newspaper property section throw in a scholarly exposition of theoretical design? ~ Jan Morris

The bad preacher takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out into the traditional language of Christianity. The core of his thought is merely contemporary; only the superficies is traditional. But your teaching must be timeless at its heart and wear modern dress. ~ C.S. Lewis

[After viewing the Palace of Electricity at the 1900 Trocadero Exposition in Paris]
[Saint-Gaudens and Matthew Arnold] felt a railway train as power; yet they, and all other artists, constantly complained that the power embodied in a railway train could never be embodied in art. All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres. ~ Henry Adams

Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. I ~ G.H. Hardy

It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. ~ G.H. Hardy

General Electric rather miraculously came back with a bid of $554,000. But Westinghouse, whose AC system was inherently cheaper and more efficient, bid $399,000. The exposition went with Westinghouse, and helped change the history of electricity. ~ Erik Larson

I believe in characters as vehicles of exposition. Their voices are full of hidden clues, and I like to listen to them. ~ Manuel Puig

This work opens the eyes of the world blinded by ignorance. As the sun dispels darkness, so does Bharata by its exposition of religion, duty, action, contemplation, and so forth. As the full moon by shedding soft light helps the buds of the lotus to open, so this Purana by its exposition expands the human intellect. The lamp of history illumines the 'whole mansion of the womb of Nature.' - Vyasa ~ R.K. Narayan

CS Lewis's humor supported his exposition but never dominated or diminished it. ~ Greg Cootsona

Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration with exposition needs a great push. People ask me: 'What will convert America and save the world?' My answer is prayer. What we need is for every parish to come before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in holy hours of prayer. ~ Mother Teresa

Only those who have tried to understand and expound the Bible, and especially Paul as a man of his own day, only those who have happily escaped the dangers which threaten us on these two sides (exposition and application), are entitled to cast the first stone. ~ N. T. Wright

The first morning I really sat and watched him it was a Tuesday. I know that because Tuesday is trash day for our neighborhood. Unlike me, he leaves gathering up his trash for the morning of pickup instead of doing it the night before. My alarm went off at 6 AM and I went in to start the coffee maker, and as I went about selecting a bit of fruit from the bowl on my kitchen table I looked out the window. It was just a casual glance, and the human eye is attracted to movement. ~ Benjamin R. Smith

They can tell us not only what Shakespeare wrote but what he read. Geoffrey Bullough devoted a lifetime, nearly, to tracking down all possible sources for virtually everything mentioned in Shakespeare, producing eight volumes of devoted exposition revealing not only what Shakespeare knew but precisely how he knew it. ~ Bill Bryson

In 2010, the Priesthood quorums and Relief Society used the same manual (Gospel Principles)… Most lessons consist of a few pages of exposition on various themes… studded with scriptural citations and quotations from leaders of the church. These are followed by points of discussion like "Think about what you can do to keep the purpose of the Sabbath in mind as you prepare for the day each week." Gospel Principles instructs teachers not to substitute outside materials, however interesting they may be. In practice this ensures that a common set of ideas are taught in all Mormon chapels every Sunday. That these ideas are the basic principles of the faith mean that Mormon Sunday schools and other church lessons function quite intentionally as devotional exercises rather than instruction in new concepts. The curriculum encourages teachers to ask questions that encourage catechistic reaffirmation of core beliefs. Further, lessons focus to a great extent on the importance of basic practices like prayer, paying tithing, and reading scripture rather than on doctrinal content… Correlated materials are designed not to promote theological reflection, but to produce Mormons dedicated to living the tenants of their faith. ~ Matthew Bowman

T. S. Eliot and Jean-Paul Sartre, dissimilar enough as thinkers, both tend to undervalue prose and to deny it any imaginative function. Poetry is the creation of linguistic quasi-things; prose is for explanation and exposition, it is essentially didactic, documentary, informative. Prose is ideally transparent; it is only faute de mieux written in words. The influential modern stylist is Hemingway. It would be almost inconceivable now to write like Landor. Most modern English novels indeed are not written. One feels they could slip into some other medium without much loss. It takes a foreigner like Nabokov or an Irishman like Beckett to animate prose language into an imaginative stuff in its own right. ~ Iris Murdoch

Keep everything in context, and try to have each line doing more than one thing - not just giving exposition but also revealing character and history, etc. ~ Richard Bausch

Of the people who cook on television, I have admired people like Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver and a few others because they are free of drama, display good taste and masterful technique, and use clear exposition to bring you up to speed. ~ Steve Albini

Everything bad in the Old Testament (and there's a lot) is there to point out our sin, while everything good in the Old Testament is there to point us to our Savior. ~ Martin Luther

It is worth noting that a wrong folkoric definition of an Inertial Frame in the Popular Science literature (even in text books) reads that 'it is a frame in uniform motion'. We know very well by now that the idea of motion requires a frame of reference, so that such a definition of an Inertial Frame has no meaning whatsoever, confusing the reader because it tacitly reaffirms the idea of absolute motion
when the goal of every didactic exposition of Relativity Theory should be precisely the opposite. ~ Felix Alba-Juez

It is not true that some doctors are only for the initiated. There is NOTHING in Scripture which is ashamed of the light. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

In questions of this sort there are two things to be observed. First, that the truth of the Scriptures be inviolably maintained. Secondly, since Scripture doth admit of diverse interpretations, that no one cling to any particular exposition with such pertinacity that, if what he supposed to be the teaching of Scripture should afterward turn out to be clearly false, he should nevertheless still presume to put it forward, lest thereby the sacred Scriptures should be exposed to the derision of unbelievers and the way of salvation should be closed to them. ~ Thomas Aquinas

I presume that to the uninitiated the formulae will appear cold and cheerless; but let it be remembered that, like other mathematical formulae, they find their origin in the divine source of all geometry. Whether I shall have the satisfaction of taking part in their exposition, or whether that will remain for some more profound expositor, will be seen in the future. ~ Benjamin Peirce

Concerning the content of the message itself, one must determine first whether the preacher has understood the text and grasped his subject. A biblical preacher must not only comprehend the broad purpose of his text, as well as other insights available about the text, but he must also have a sufficient theological comprehension and an above-average grasp of the Bible as a whole to set his text properly in the theological milieu. Great preachers are cognizant of the necessity to be able to do exegesis and exposition within a historical setting of which they are constantly aware. How little actual grasp of scriptural knowledge is present in most North American preachers is reflected in the relative biblical illiteracy and theological misapprehensions of most congregations. ~ David L. Allen

Whenever pastors assume people in their congregation know certain things, they miss opportunities to teach. If a pastor makes assumptions year after year, then a whole generation has never heard [that truth] for the first time. If we assume too much, we communicate too little. ~ Andy Stanley

We see everything from the narrator's point of view, so exposition about the world is limited to what impinges directly on him and the story he's telling. Considering how old the world is, we learn very little about its history, which I think is a good thing. ~ Neal Stephenson

Competence is a big word. It is important. I almost want to nuance it with the idea of giftedness because sometimes you can teach a lot of skills on exposition but a person may not have the competence or the giftedness to do it. Therefore, it is very important to have that. ~ Ravi Zacharias

I cannot be the only reader who has wondered why God, having given him [St. Paul] so many gifts, withheld from him (what would seem so necessary for the first Christian theologian) that of lucidity and orderly exposition. ~ C.S. Lewis

I believe that the clue to his mind is to be found in his unusual powers of continuous concentrated
introspection. A case can be made out, as it also can with Descartes, for regarding him as an accomplished
experimentalist. Nothing can be more charming than the tales of his mechanical contrivances when he was a
boy. There are his telescopes and his optical experiments, These were essential accomplishments, part of his
unequalled all-round technique, but not, I am sure, his peculiar gift, especially amongst his contemporaries.
His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had
seen straight through it. I fancy his pre-eminence is due to his muscles of intuition being the strongest and
most enduring with which a man has ever been gifted. Anyone who has ever attempted pure scientific or
philosophical thought knows how one can hold a problem momentarily in one's mind and apply all one's
powers of concentration to piercing through it, and how it will dissolve and escape and you find that what
you are surveying is a blank. I believe that Newton could hold a problem in his mind for hours and days and
weeks until it surrendered to him its secret. Then being a supreme mathematical technician he could dress it
up, how you will, for purposes of exposition, but it was his intuition which was pre-eminently extraordinary
- 'so happy in his conjectures', said De Morgan, 'as ~ John Maynard Keynes

Remembering his creative exposition on the subject of purple-spotted dingy-dippers, Lillian gave a little huff of amusement. She had always considered Westcliff an utterly humorless man…and in that, she had misjudged him. "I thought you never lied," she said.
His lips twitched. "Given the options of seeing you become ill at the dinner table, or lying to get you out of there quickly, I chose the lesser of two evils. Do you feel better now?"
"Better…yes." Lillian realized that she was resting in the crook of his arm, her skirts draped partially over one of his thighs. His body was solid and warm, perfectly matched to hers. Glancing downward, she saw that the fabric of his trousers had molded firmly around his muscular thighs. Unladylike curiosity awakened inside her, and she clenched her fingers against the urge to slide her palm over his leg. "The part about the dingy-dipper was clever," she said, dragging her gaze up to his face. "But inventing a Latin name for it was positively inspired."
Westcliff grinned. "I always hoped my Latin would be good for something." Shifting her a little, he reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and glanced at his watch. "We'll return to the dining hall in approximately a quarter hour. By that time the calves' heads should be removed."
Lillian made a face. "I hate English food," she exclaimed. "All those jellies and blobs, and wiggly puddings, and the game that is aged until by the time it's served, it is older than I am ~ Lisa Kleypas

Dating is poetry. Marriage is a novel. There are times, maybe years, that are all exposition. ~ Ada Calhoun

If your reader has been given a rousing opening, he will usually then sit still for at least some exposition. But be sure to follow that chunk of telling with one or more dramatized scenes. That's much more effective than being given section after section of telling. ~ Nancy Kress

Let it be understood, in the first place, that a science fiction story must be an exposition of a scientific theme and it must be also a story. ~ Hugo Gernsback

It is (to describe it figuratively) as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far higher sense was an essential part of the whole exposition. It is, then, as if this clerical error were to revolt against the author, out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to correct it, and were to say, No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against thee, that thou art a very poor writer. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

While the Bible is to be applied to the times, it is not to be subservient to the times. Thus unity across economic, cultural, and ethnic lines should be proclaimed not because it is the latest fad but rather because it is the clear teaching of the eternal Word of God. ~ James Cone

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking,I am not confessing Christ. (Martin Luther) ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

When a general examination of the rhyme scheme in the Qur'an is
made, we see that around 80% of the rhymes consist of just three
sounds (n, m, a) consisting of the letters Alif, Mim, Ya and Nun258.
Excluding the letter "Nun," 30% of the verses are rhymed with "Mim,"
"Alif" or "Ya."

The formation of rhymed prose with just two or three sounds in a
poem of 200-300 lines may give that work an important quality, sufficient
for it to be described as a masterpiece by literary critics today.
However, bearing in mind the length of the Qur'an, the information it
contains and its wise exposition, the extraordinary manner in which its
rhymed prose system is used becomes even clearer and more beautiful.
The Qur'an indeed contains an ocean of information relating to a wide
variety of subjects. They include: religious and moral guidance, lessons
from the lives of the peoples of the past, the message of the prophets
and messengers of Allah, the physical sciences and historical accounts
of important events. But all of this, although wonderful in itself, is
delivered with the most fantastic literary rhythm and excellence. It is
simply not possible for so much rhymed prose by use of so few sounds
in the Qur'an, with its varied and knowledgeable subject matter, to be
achieved by human endeavour. From that point of view, it is not surprising
that Arab linguists describe the Qur'an as "very de ~ Harun Yahya

The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage. ~ Terry Pratchett

if you disguise exposition with 'emotional overlay', it's rendered undetectable.5 ~ John Yorke

The Tower of Babel" ...
The undersigned citizens, being artists, painters, sculptors, architects, and others devoted to and desirous preserving the amenities of Paris, wish to protest, in the name of our national good taste, against such an erection in the very heart of our city, as the monstrous and useless Eiffel Tower, already christened ... " The Tower of Babel" ...
How much longer is the City of Paris to be a play-ground for these barbarous and sordid imaginations which disfigure and dishonor her? For the Eiffel Tower, which even commercially minded America rejected, is a public dishonor to our city. All our historic buildings, our monuments of rare and appealing beauty, are dwarfed and humiliated by this monstrous apotheosis of the factory chimney whose odious shadow will lie over the city ...
Plea to the Exposition Director in opposition to the Eiffel Tower, signed by artists and writers and published in Le Temps, 1887 ~ Carol McCleary

A sutra is, so to speak, the bare thread of an exposition, the absolute minimum that is necessary to hold it together, unadorned by a single "bead" of elaboration. Only essential words are used. Often, there is no complete sentence-structure. There was a good reason for this method. Sutras were composed at a period when there were no books. The entire work had to be memorized, and so it had to be expressed as tersely as possible. Patanjali's Sutras, like all others, were intended to be expanded and explained. The ancient teachers would repeat an aphorism by heart and then proceed to amplify it with their own comments, for the benefit of their pupils. In some instances these comments, also, were memorized, transcribed at a later date, and thus preserved for us. ~ Swami Prabhavananda

The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy. ~ P.T. Barnum

The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events, ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As a young filmmaker, I shot a lot of stuff because I wanted to make sure that I got everything, but now I've gotten much more precise with my shooting. Editing is a whole other layer because then, sometimes you realize characters don't even need to say this or that. It becomes an issue of exposition, and over-explaining something. In the script, I'd reinforce certain things about what I wanted people to know two or three times, but in the editing room, I'd be like, "I only need to say this once, maybe twice." ~ Storm Saulter

Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender. ~ Akhil Sharma

He looked at her. That was the first time I had seen him give her a direct and explicit look, and, since she was just off the line from him to me, I had a good view of it. It demolished one detail of his exposition - the claim that a man of his training and temperament couldn't possibly commit a murder. His look at her was perfect for a guy about to put a cord around a neck and pull tight. It was just one swift, ugly flash, and then he returned to Wolfe. ~ Rex Stout

The whole purpose of screenwriting is to convey everything through action and dialogue and not explanation and exposition. To me, there are movies where voiceover works really well because it does something more than exposition; it actually becomes a tonal element of the movie. ~ Jonathan Tropper

Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next. ~ David Mamet

The exposition of Atrocious Torture Instruments could not fail to appeal to a connoisseur of the worst in mankind. But the essence of the worst, the true asafoetida of the human spirit, is not found in the Iron Maiden or the whetted edge; Elemental Ugliness is found in the faces of the crowd. ~ Thomas Harris

A church can wither as surely under the ministry of soulless Bible exposition as it can where no Bible is given. To be effective the preacher's message must be alive; it must alarm, arouse, challenge; it must be God's present voice to a particular people. Then, and not till then, is it the prophetic word and the man himself a prophet. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

[Concerning postmodernism:] The aim of this experimental history is to disturb the ontological security of modern identity and hence to provoke the possibility of otherness through exposition of the cultural difference concealed by, and within, the order of modern rationalism. ~ Nicholas Gane

Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.

The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)

Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.

Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--t ~ David Mitchell

Effective preaching must be biblical preaching, whether it is the exposition of a single word in the Bible, a text, or a chapter. The Word is what the Spirit uses. ~ Billy Graham

Religion is not the hero of the day, but the zero. In any exposition of the products of brains, the Sunday-School takes the booby prize ... Man has asked for truth and the Church has given him miracles. He has asked for knowledge, and the Church has given him theology. He has asked for facts, and the Church has given him the Bible. This foolishness should stop. The Church has nothing to give man that has not been in cold storage for two thousand years. Anything would become stale in that time. ~ Marilla Ricker

Scientific dogmatics must devote itself to the criticism and correction of Church proclamation and not just to a repetitive exposition of it. ~ Karl Barth

I admire writers such as Elmore Leonard who can nail a character in three or four lines of dialogue, so he doesn't need pages of back story or clumsy exposition. ~ Mark Billingham

It is the truth which is assailed in any age which tests our fidelity. It is to confess we are called, not merely to profess. If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point. ~ Elizabeth Rundle Charles

One of the tricks is to have the exposition conveyed in a scene of conflict, so that a character is forced to say things you want the audience to know - as, for example, if he is defending himself against somebody's attack, his words of defense seem Justified even though his words are actually expository words. Something appears to be happening, so the audience believes it is witnessing a scene (which it is), not listening to expository speeches. Humor is another way of getting exposition across. ~ Ernest Lehman

There neither is nor ever will be a treatise of mine on the subject. For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself. ~ Plato

Congress displayed contempt for the city's residents, yet it retained a fondness for buildings and parks. In 1900, the centennial of the federal government's move to Washington, many congressmen expressed frustration that the proud nation did not have a capital to rival London, Paris, and Berlin. The following year, Senator James McMillan of Michigan, chairman of the Senate District Committee, recruited architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to propose a park system. The team, thereafter known as the McMillan Commission, emerged with a bold proposal in the City Beautiful tradition, based on the White City of Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition. Their plan reaffirmed L'Enfant's avenues as the best guide for the city's growth and emphasized the majesty of government by calling for symmetrical compositions of horizontal, neoclassical buildings of marble and white granite sitting amid wide lawns and reflecting pools. Eventually, the plan resulted in the remaking of the Mall as an open lawn, the construction of the Lincoln Memorial and Memorial Bridge across the Potomac, and the building of Burnham's Union Station. Commissioned in 1903, when the state of the art in automobiles and airplanes was represented by the curved-dash Olds and the Wright Flyer, the station served as a vast and gorgeous granite monument to rail transportation. ~ Zachary M. Schrag

Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?. ~ David Ogilvy

Of Nature itself upon the soul; the sunrise, the haze of autumn, the winter starlight seem interlocutors; the prevailing sense is that of an exposition in poetry; a high discourse, the voice of the speaker seems to breathe as much from the landscape as from his own breast; it is Nature communing with the seer. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Historically, American liberals have been idealists, pressing forward toward the goals of greater freedom, social equality, and more meaningful democracy. The articulate exposition of a liberal ideology was necessary to convert others to liberal ideas and to reform existing institutions continuously along liberal lines. Today, however, the greatest need is not so much the creation of more liberal institutions as the successful defense of those which already exist. This defense requires American liberals to lay aside their liberal ideology and to accept the values of conservatism for the duration of the threat. Only by surrendering their liberal ideas for the present can liberals successfully defend their liberal institutions for the future. Liberals should not fear this change. Is a liberal any less liberal because he adjusts his thinking so as to defend most effectively the most liberal institutions in the world? To continue to expound the philosophy of liberalism simply gives the enemy a weapon with which to attack the society of liberalism. The defense of American institutions requires a conscious articulate conservatism which can spring only from liberals deeply concerned with the preservation of those institutions. As Boorstin, Niebuhr, and others have pointed out, the American political genius is manifest not in our ideas but in our institutions. The stimulus to conservatism comes not from the outworn creeds of third-rate thinkers but from the successful performance of ~ Samuel P. Huntington

True knowledge is that which consists in the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution of the Church throughout all the world, and the distinctive manifestation of the body of Christ according to the successions of the bishops, by which they have handed down that Church which exists in every place, and has come even unto us, being guarded and preserved without any forging of Scriptures, by a very complete system of doctrine, and neither receiving addition nor [suffering] curtailment [in the truths which she believes]; and [it consists in] reading [the word of God] without falsification, and a lawful and diligent exposition in harmony with the Scriptures, both without danger and without blasphemy; and [above all] it consists in] the pre-eminent gift of love, which is more precious than knowledge, more glorious than prophecy, and which excels all the other gifts [of God[. ~ Irenaus

Our small group is committed to getting the biblical text under our skin. ~ Jen Pollock Michel

Part of Nietzsche's appeal was that it was easy to read a great deal into his work, and people including socialists, vegetarians, feminists, conservatives and, later, the Nazis did. Sadly, Nietzsche was not available to explain himself; he went mad in 1889 and died in 1900, the year of the Paris Exposition. ~ Margaret MacMillan

No language about God will ever be fully adequate to the burning mystery which it signifies. ~ Elizabeth Johnston

The gross debaucheries and atrocious cruelties are covered with a resplendent mental veil because of the systematic exposition of the philosophic principles in all fields of vice. Its justification by logical method as well as by precepts and examples only makes vice more horrible in effect, both for degenerate and normal beings ~ Iwan Bloch

THE POLICEMAN: I'm a policeman. I'm paid by those in charge to combat dissatisfaction. ~ Bertolt Brecht

A most elaborate theory may be constructed by a devout mind. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To the secular arm, therefore, be delivered any and every book which, catering for the youngsters, throttles the life of the old folktales with coils of explanatory notes, and heaps on their maimed corpses the dead weight of biographical appendices. Nevertheless, that which delighted our childhood may instruct our manhood; and notes, appendices, and all the gear of didactic exposition, have their place elsewhere in helping the student, anxious to reach the seed of fact which is covered by the pulp of fiction. For, to effect this is to make approach to man's thoughts and conceptions of himself and his surroundings, to his way of looking at things and to explanation of his conduct both in work and play. Hence the folk-tale and the game are alike pressed into the service of study of the human mind. Turn where we may, the pastimes of children are seen to mimic the serious pursuits of men. ~ Edward Clodd

Whenever we pride ourselves upon finding a newer, stricter way of thought or exposition ... we lose something of the ability to think new thoughts. And equally, of course, whenever we rebel against the sterile rigidity of formal thought and exposition and let our ideas run wild, we likewise lose. As I see it, the advances in scientific thought come from a combination of lose and strict thinking, and this combination is the most precious tool of science. ~ Gregory Bateson

She holds up a finger. I'm getting to it. Don't rush a girl in the middle of her exposition. ~ Libba Bray

In other times, I could stand here and give this kind of exposition on the beliefs of the Democratic Party and that would be enough. But today that is not enough. People want more. ~ Barbara Jordan

To reason logically is so to link one's propositions that each should contain the reason for the one succeeding it, and should itself be demonstrated by the one preceding it. Or at any rate, whatever the order adopted in the construction of one's own exposition, it is to demonstrate judgments by each other. ~ Jean Piaget

The truth is always the best approach when saying no. Keep it simple. People don't need to hear your sob story. A five-minute exposition about your busy life, your demanding mother, or your clinging children isn't the most effective approach. That may be the truth, but you've given too much information, and your listener tuned out four minutes ago. ~ Glynnis Whitwer

I think you approach a part the same way and just find out in what's making them tick and who they are. In a movie like this you may have a little less time and few dialogue scenes and exposition scenes for your character to really get that across, and so I wanted to be able to convey that she's not somebody who's just punching a clock but she has this weird emotional investment in her job to where she does get quite myopic and that's what makes her relentless. ~ Kate Beckinsale

Early on, I settled on the first-person strategy as a way to deal with exposition and world-description issues. As long as the book is, it could have been far longer had I gone with an omniscient third-person narrator, or multiple point-of-view characters, since either of those would have enabled me to impart much more detailed information about the history and geography of the world. ~ Neal Stephenson

Part of the appeal was that Medawar was not only a Nobel Laureate, but he seemed like a Nobel Laureate; he was everything one thought a Nobel Laureate ought to be. If you have ever wondered why scientists like Popper, try Medawar's exposition. Actually most Popperian scientists have probably never tried reading anything but Medawar's exposition. ~ Richard Dawkins

Ife onye metalu' ['what a man commits'] - a statement unclear and menacing in its very inconclusiveness. What a man commits ... Follows him? Comes back to take its toll? Was that all? No, that was only part of it ... The real burden of that cryptic scripture seemed to turn the matter right around. Whatever we see following a man, whatever fate comes to take its revenge on him, can only be what that man in some way or another, in a previous life if not in this, has committed. That was it! So those three words wrapped in an archaic tongue and tucked away at the tail of the bus turn out to be the opening segment of a full-blooded heathen antiphony offering a primitive and quite deadly exposition of suffering. The guilty suffers; the sufferer is guilty. As for the righteous, those whose arms are straight, they will always prosper! ~ Chinua Achebe

There are vast differences between scripts and stories, of course. Few fiction writers would want to give up the opportunity to explore how the minds of their characters work, or to set aside the opportunity to provide necessary background exposition in a succinct fashion. ~ Les Standiford

Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. ... Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition. ~ Eric Temple Bell

It may be added, that the same change took place in dogmatic teaching, as in the exposition of Scripture. This indeed was still more to be expected, for the issue of controversies and the decrees of Councils had given to the doctrinal statements of the Fathers an authority, or rather prerogative, which was never claimed for their commentaries. Accordingly, S. John Damascene's work on the Orthodox Faith in the viiith century is scarcely more than a careful selection and combination of sentences and phrases from the great theologians who preceded him, principally S. Gregory Nazianzen. A comment or scholia by the same author upon S. Paul's Epistles have come down to us, which are mainly taken from S. Chrysostom, but with some use of other expositors. ~ Thomas Aquinas

All Scripture is profitable first for "doctrine"! The same order is observed throughout the Epistles, particularly in the great doctrinal treatises of the apostle Paul. Read the Epistle of "Romans" and it will be found that there is not a single admonition in the first five chapters. In the Epistle of "Ephesians" there are no exhortations till the fourth chapter is reached. The order is first doctrinal exposition and then admonition or exhortation for the regulation of the daily walk. ~ Arthur W. Pink

Roman Catholics have always been able to appeal to the traditions of holy Mother the Church. But the Church of England, as such, has nothing to appeal to. How can we [Anglicans] pretend to appeal to Church traditions, when we have cut ourselves off from the main stream of it and any exposition of it must needs be a raking up of old dead documents, instead of obedience to a living voice? And how can we pretend to appeal to the Bible, when the Bible is for everyman's private interpretation, and not expounded by authority? ~ Ronald Knox

Fantasy is a product of thought, Imagination of sensibility. If the thinking, discursive mind turns to speculation, the result isFantasy; if, however, the sensitive, intuitive mind turns to speculation, the result is Imagination. Fantasy may be visionary, but it is cold and logical. Imagination is sensuous and instinctive. Both have form, but the form of Fantasy is analogous to Exposition, that of Imagination to Narrative. ~ Herbert Read

The Savior's message was essential to our salvation, but his personal exposition of it was not. President J. Reuben Clark Jr. gave this caution: "Brethren, it is all right to speak of the Savior and the beauty of his doctrines, and the beauty of the truth. But remember, and this is the thing I wish you ... [to] always carry with you, the Savior is to be looked at as the Messiah, the Redeemer of the world. His teachings were ancillary and auxiliary to that great fact."6 ~ Tad R. Callister

Today solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament is the grace and need of our time. Society will be restored and renewed when all its members group themselves around our Emmanuel. ~ Peter Julian Eymard

You sometimes hear people say, with a certain pride in their clerical resistance to the myth, that the nineteenth century really ended not in 1900 but in 1914. But there are different ways of measuring an epoch. 1914 has obvious qualifications; but if you wanted to defend the neater, more mythical date, you could do very well. In 1900 Nietzsche died; Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams; 1900 was the date of Husserl Logic, and of Russell's Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. With an exquisite sense of timing Planck published his quantum hypothesis in the very last days of the century, December 1900. Thus, within a few months, were published works which transformed or transvalued spirituality, the relation of language to knowing, and the very locus of human uncertainty, henceforth to be thought of not as an imperfection of the human apparatus but part of the nature of things, a condition of what we may know. 1900, like 1400 and 1600 and 1000, has the look of a year that ends a saeculum. The mood of fin de siècle is confronted by a harsh historical finis saeculi. There is something satisfying about it, some confirmation of the rightness of the patterns we impose. But as Focillon observed, the anxiety reflected by the fin de siècle is perpetual, and people don't wait for centuries to end before they express it. Any date can be justified on some calculation or other.

And of course we have it now, the sense of an ending. It has not diminished, and ~ Frank Kermode

The high ground of Christ & Him crucified must be claimed in our preaching. Any other footing is a slippery slope that inevitably descends downward into vain rhetoric and mere words. To the contrary, every pulpit must present a towering vision of the unique person and saving work of Jesus Christ. All preaching must point to His sin-bearing, substitutionary death for sinners. All exposition must lift up this Sacrificial Lamb who became a sin-bearing Substitute for all who believe. Every message must exalt this Christ, who was raised from the dead, exalted to the right hand of God the Father, and entrusted with all authority in heaven and earth. ~ Steven J. Lawson

It is for this reason that Aristotle recommends that the writer begin "in the middle of things" and fill in the exposition as he can. But for purposes of discussion it will be useful to treat the three components separately. ~ John Gardner

Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's ~ George Eliot

Theology, Mr. Fortune found, is a more accommodating subject than mathematics; its technique of exposition allows greater latitude. For instance when you are gravelled for matter there is always the moral to fall back upon. Comparisons too may be drawn, leading cases cited, types and antetypes analysed and anecdotes introduced. Except for Archimedes mathematics is singularly naked of anecdotes. ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

My sermon on the meaning of the manna in the wilderness can be adapted to almost any occasion, joyful, or, as in the present case, distressing. [All sigh.] I have preached it at harvest celebrations, christenings, confirmations, on days of humiliation and festal days. ~ Oscar Wilde

Hannah Arendt scorned this preoccupation with death and proposed a new symbolism that emphasized not the inevitability of our dying, but the actuality of our living. She wanted us to think of ourselves, not as mortals, but as natals, as those who are alive; and she wanted us to act for love not hatred of the world ... In her exposition of Arendt, [Jantzen] points out that Christianity's preoccupation with death and salvation worked against a sense of connection to the web of life,'and taught people to be homeless in the world'. ~ Richard Holloway

For complexity does not inevitably heighten a story's verisimilitude, or its power to convince; sometimes simplicity and economy make for a more vigorous exposition, propelling the drama forward. ~ Yan Lianke

[The works of Archimedes] are without exception, monuments of mathematical exposition; the gradual revelation of the plan of attack, the masterly ordering of the propositions, the stern elimination of everything not immediately relevant to the purpose, the finish of the whole, are so impressive in their perfection as to create a feeling akin to awe in the mind of the reader. ~ Thomas Little Heath

Crafty writers ... don't allow Exposition to form Lumps. They break up the information, grind it fine, and make it into bricks to build the story with. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin