Rarity Quotes

“Everyone marries the Duke of Westminster. There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel.”
― Coco Chanel

“There are those who know and those who don't know. And for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time--the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“Give me one man
from among ten thousand
if he is the best”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“Art is the conscious making of numinous phenomena. Many objects are just objects - inert, merely utilitarian. Many events are inconsequential, too banal to add anything to our experience of life. This is unfortunate, as one cannot grow except by having one’s spirit greatly stirred; and the spirit cannot be greatly stirred by spiritless things. Much of our very life is dead. For primitive man, this was not so. He made his own possessions, and shaped and decorated them with the aim of making them not merely useful, but powerful. He tried to infuse his weapons with the nature of the tiger, his cooking pots with the life of growing things; and he succeeded. Appearance, material, history, context, rarity - perhaps rarity most of all - combine to create, magically, the quality of soul. But we modern demiurges are prolific copyists; we give few things souls of their own. Locomotives, with their close resemblance to beasts, may be the great exception; but in nearly all else with which today’s poor humans are filling the world, I see a quelling of the numinous, an ashening of the fire of life. We are making an inert world; we are building a cemetery. And on the tombs, to remind us of life, we lay wreaths of poetry and bouquets of painting. You expressed this very condition, when you said that art beautifies life. No longer integral, the numinous has become optional, a luxury - one of which you, my dear friend, are fond, however unconsciously. You adorn yourself with the same instincts as the primitive who puts a frightening mask of clay and feathers on his head, and you comport yourself in an uncommonly calculated way - as do I. We thus make numinous phenomena of ourselves. No mean trick - to make oneself a rarity, in this overpopulated age.”
― K.J. Bishop, The Etched City

“Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa Fortuna."


["Generally common sense is rare in that (higher) rank."]”
― Juvenal, Satires, Book I

“No man can see over his own height. Let me explain what I mean. You cannot see in another man any more than you have in yourself. Your own level strictly determines the extent to which he comes within your understanding. If your intelligence is unawakened, mental qualities in another, even though they be of the highest kind, will have no effect on you at all… his higher mental qualities will no more exist for you than colors exist for those who cannot see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Tis often the rarity that makes something so precious, wouldn't you say? If I were to have such extravagance daily then I might begin to think the jewels and the praise are ordinary rather than treasure them as I do.”
― Jody Hedlund, An Uncertain Choice

“The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There's little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss?”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“Pay to go inside Neruda's home
A body lies there with no dome.
But right there in the front hall
Lean a fairy against the icy wall.
Oh Endless enigmas had the bard!

Nice and large and calm backyard
Ends In the middle of a rare room
Rare portrait of revelishing gloom.
Up climbing at the weird snail stair
Does make you grasp for some air.
And there's a room with bric-a-brac:

Old and precious books all in a pack.
Dare saying what I liked most of all?
Enjoyed seeing visitors having a ball!”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, ACross Tic

“She could see why men and women through the ages had become besotted with opals. It was as though an almighty hand had scooped a palmful of emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, and pearls and mixed their radiant hues. Fit for a queen. Such a noble stone.”
― Tea Cooper, The Woman in the Green Dress

“The blush peach, silk dress was layered with cream lace over the bodice and hemline. Most arresting was the stunning cape that Harper imagined to be from the 1940's.
They just didn't make dresses like that anymore.
Actually, they didn't make dresses like it back then, either.
It was exquisite. One of a kind.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Rare is not synonymous with valuable.”
― Clifford Cohen

“They have a special confidence in Christ, plus thoughtfulness plus faithfulness plus humility: for there are no things, in all creation, more beautiful, more rare than the so very disciplined and free, joyful and principled daughters of God.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“In real life, the truth is a rarity, while lies are common place.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“The sun, still shy and submissive to winter, peeped in now and then between days of mean wind and bitter rain. Then one afternoon, just like that, spring elbowed her way in for good. The day warmed, and the sky shone as if polished. Kya spoke quietly, as she and Tate walked along the grassy bank of a deep creek, overhung with tall sweetgum trees. Suddenly he grabbed her hand, shushing her. Her eyes followed his to the water's edge, where a bullfrog, six inches wide, hunkered under foliage. A common enough sight, except this frog was completely and brilliantly white.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Della sank down beside the creek, waiting for the flash of white fur that would herald Tidda's arrival. The first time she'd come across Tidda she'd been no more than a joey hardly big enough to be out of her mother's pouch. Perhaps because she was different, with her strange lack of color and red eyes, the mob had rejected her. Charity reckoned it was the sign of the devil, a punishment or a curse from the Darkinjung ancestral spirits. That was nothing but a load of rubbish. Tidda was more beautiful than most because of the strange trick natures had played upon her.”
― Tea Cooper, The Woman in the Green Dress

“True friendship is the greatest wealth man can possess and one of his rarest and most valuable assets.”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“The greatest things that have ever happened in this world, had their genesis in the wake of special relationships of rare destiny.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“A beer doesn't have to be difficult to acquire, but damned if that doesn't make everything taste better.”
― Patrick Dawson, The Beer Geek Handbook: Living a Life Ruled by Beer

“In Science don't confound
Normal static electricity
To ecstatic eccentricity.
Here is what I found:
Electric charges
As they rise up your hair
In contrast with a discharge,
Rarity leaves you up in the air!”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, ACross Tic

“Then she spotted in the corner, glowing wonderfully, a Wurlitzer jukebox. ' Holy shit!' It was like being on a commuter train through the Bronx and seeing among the piles of crushed cars a pasture with a lone white horse.”
― Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire

“It's so rare to meet a person who actually lives up to their reputation.”
― Paul Krueger, Steel Crow Saga

“RJ is standing there, and in his arms is a wriggling French bulldog puppy of the most inexplicable color, almost pale honeyed yellow tinged with a sort of peachy pink.
"Oh my goodness! Who are you?"
RJ hands me the pup, who immediately starts licking all over my face and biting my ponytail. Dumpling tries to stand on his one leg to see what is going on, and falls over at my feet. RJ scoops him up and puts him face-to-face with the puppy.
"Dumpling, there is someone we want you to meet. We thought you might want a little sister."
Dumpling looks at the puppy, who leans forward and licks his face. Dumpling licks back. The puppy sniffs his ear and then with one move, snatches the eye patch right off his head and starts to chew it. Dumpling looks at me with his one good eye, head cocked as if to say, "We're going to have our hands full with this one," and then turns and licks RJ under his chin.
"I can't believe you did this! You are so sneaky."
"Well, we did talk about wanting to do it, and a guy at work breeds them for showing, but this one is off the allowable color charts."
"She does have a certain, um... Well, she's kind of, um..."
"Pink? Yeah. Some weird anomaly, and apparently, not good for the show circuit."
"But good for us."
"That's what I thought."
"What should we call her?"
RJ smiles. "I was thinking Pamplemousse."
"Of course. What else could she be?”
― Stacey Ballis, Off the Menu

“Belle was an oddity: a peasant who was polite enough to dine with them without catastrophe. She didn't fit with their preconceived notions of how a peasant should behave, so they treated her like a rarity. It was absurd; Belle herself had grown up with many smart and worldly commoners, and met more than a few ignorant and dim nobles in just one night.”
― Emma Theriault, Rebel Rose

“Everything that is rare is expensive: the more you are seen, the more you are heard, and the more ordinary you seem. If you are part of a group, step away for a while and you will be talked about more, and even admired more. Practice absence: scarcity will increase your value.”
― Robert Greene

“Kate still was not used to all the attention, but she was told from those in the know, that from the first whispered rumors of their secret marriage, she had charmed the ton.
The Society pages praised the excellent taste of her enormous wardrobe; the hostesses of the aristocracy were pleased with her French noble blood; and at the ball the Rotherstones had given in her and Rohan's honor a few weeks ago, the ton's haughtiest dandies, the cruelest arbiters of taste, had pronounced her the rarest of finds: a great beauty with a sharp mind, a spirited wit, and a bold sense of style.
In short, she had been proclaimed "all the kick.”
― Gaelen Foley, My Dangerous Duke

“(R)arity is not a quality of notable interest, it is merely a state.”
― John Wright, The Observant Walker: Wild Food, Nature and Hidden Treasures on the Pathways of Britain