Insisting Quotes - Page 4

• Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.

  David Guterson

  Book, Writing, Player

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• Sometimes, a defeat can be more beautiful and satisfying than certain victories. The English have a point in insisting that it matters not who won or lost, but how you played the game.

  Arthur Ashe

  Beautiful, Games, Victory

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• Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Crush, Mistake, Believe

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• The problems that exist on Wall Street today go to the center of a debate in this country about wealth and democracy. We cannot keep our democracy if those who are in charge of handling the engines of our economy are not honest with their shareholders. That's why there is a role for government regulation here. That role for government is breaking up the monopolies, insisting on public disclosure, insisting on public audits, insisting on restitution whenever someone has been cheated.

  Dennis Kucinich

  Country, Wall, Government

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• The only indication of the passage of time lies in the heavens, the subtle shift of the moon. So Peeta begins pointing it out to me, insisting I acknowledge its progress and sometimes, for just a moment I feel a flicker of hope before the agony of the night engulfs me again.

  Suzanne Collins

  Lying, Moon, Night

  Suzanne Collins (2011). “The Hunger Games Trilogy”, p.442, Scholastic Inc.

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• Anna, there's something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right.

  Doris Lessing

  Arrogant, Anna

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• These days everyone was insisting on their identity, coming out as a man, woman, gay, black, Jew - brandishing whichever features they could claim, as if without a tag they wouldn’t be human.

  Hanif Kureishi

  Gay, Men, Black

  Hanif Kureishi (2009). “The Black Album”, p.66, Faber & Faber

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• My father was right: you could make anybody amazing just by insisting they were.

  Elizabeth McCracken

  Father

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• He was a lovely man in many ways. But he kept on insisting on forgiving me when there was nothing to forgive.

  Angela Carter

  Men, Lovely, Forgiving

  Angela Carter (2012). “Wise Children”, p.123, Random House

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• Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's okay now because he's off the life support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.

  Bill Bryson

  Country, Uncles, Eye

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• After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how.... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.' When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Fun, Character, Names

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• What i’m saying is, my friends, one ought to be able to let go. If a path does not please us, instead of insisting on going that specific way, of making our selfishness the guide, we ought to forsake. The books we cannot write, the films we cannot shoot, the projects we cannot develop, the jobs we cannot pursue and the people who no longer love us. Being able to let go, at times, is the most beautiful of all!

  Elif Safak

  Beautiful, Letting Go, Jobs

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• I have a cotillion event. Some yacht-club charity fundraiser thingy. Whitney is insisting, and Kit took her side.” Three wide smiles. “Oh shut up.

  Kathy Reichs

  Events, Three, Charity

  Kathy Reichs (2011). “Seizure: A Virals Novel”, p.35, Penguin

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• [W]hen I see men callously and cheerfully denying women the full use of their bodies, while insisting with sobs and howls on the satisfaction of their own, I simply can't find it heroic, or kind, or anything but pretty rotten and feeble.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Men, Use, Rotten

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• All I wanted was to be left alone. They abhor a vacuum, other people. You find a quiet corner where you can hunker down in peace, and the next minute there they are, crowding around you in their party hats, tooting their paper whistles in your face and insisting you get up and join in the knees-up.

  John Banville

  Party, People, Vacuums

  John Banville (2011). “Eclipse”, p.145, Pan Macmillan

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• Laughter is spiritual health. And laughter is very unburdening. While you laugh, you can put your mind aside very easily. For a man who cannot laugh the doors of the buddha are closed. To me, laughter is one of the greatest values. No religion has ever thought about it. They have always been insisting on seriousness, and because of their insistence the whole world is psychologically sick.

  Rajneesh

  Spiritual, Laughter, Men

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• Some men use no other means to acquire respect than by insisting on it; and it sometimes answers their purpose, as it does a highwayman's in regard to money.

  William Shenstone

  Respect, Mean, Men

  William Shenstone (1804). “Essays on Men and Manners”, p.122

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• Feminism has led the way in demystifying personal relations, forcefully insisting they are political to the core.

  Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

  Political, Feminism, Way

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• I believe it is important to go on insisting that normality is not what we are exposed to. Honestly, among my acquaintances there is no woman wearing XS. No, sorry, there is one: my daughter. The point is that Mia is 11 years old. It's true that you need much time to get rid of the fat girl you once were, but you know I am sincerely grateful for my buttocks.

  Kate Winslet

  Girl, Daughter, Sorry

  "Kate Winslet: 'I am sincerely grateful for my buttocks'". Interview with Simona Siri, www.vanityfair.it. May 30, 2012.

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• You keep insisting, I feel good because the world is right! Wrong! The world is right because I feel good. That's what all the mystics are saying.

  Anthony de Mello

  Spiritual, Feel Good, World

  Anthony De Mello (2011). “Awareness: Conversations with the Masters”, p.83, Image

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• The overwhelming condemnation makes it clear we have made enormous progress in teaching everyone that racism is bad. Where we seem to have dropped the ball... is in teaching people what racism actually is ... which allows people to say incredibly racist things while insisting they would never.

  Jon Stewart

  Teaching, Racism, People

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• The art of leading, in operations large or small, is the art of dealing with humanity, of working diligently on behalf of men, of being sympathetic with them, but equally, of insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems.

  Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall

  Leadership, Art, Business

  "Men Against Fire : The Problem of Battle Command in Future War". Book by S.L.A. Marshall, p. 160, 1954.

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• The underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us.

  Barack Obama

  Struggle, Diversity, Together

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.10, Canongate Books

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• In this world, unity is achievable only by learning to unite in spite of differences, rather than insisting on unity without differences. For their total eradication is an impossibility. The secret of attaining peace in life is tolerance of disturbance of the peace. (p. 99)

  Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

  Inspirational, Life, Change

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• I am very tired of this Government, which I have never seen, and which is always insisting that I must do disagreeable things, and does no good to anybody.

  Naomi Novik

  Tired, Government, Doe

  Naomi Novik (2009). “In His Majesty's Service: Three Novels of Temeraire (His Majesty's Service, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War)”, p.424, Del Rey

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