Precise Quotes - Page 10

• Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.

  E. O. Wilson

  Stars, Confused, Real

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• Perfect hexagonal tubes in a packed array. Bees are hard-wired to lay them down, but how does an insect know enough geometry to lay down a precise hexagon? It doesn't. It's programmed to chew up wax and spit it out while turning on its axis, and that generates a circle. Put a bunch of bees on the same surface, chewing side-by-side, and the circles abut against each other - deform each other into hexagons, which just happen to be more efficient for close packing anyway.

  Peter Watts

  Circles, Axes, Perfect

  Peter Watts (2014). “Firefall”, p.193, Head of Zeus

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• The subject should be observed more for shape and color than for drawing... precise drawing is dry and hampers the impression of the whole, it destroys all sensations.

  Camille Pissarro

  Color, Drawing, Dry

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• Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration. Relative, apparent, and common time is any sensible and external measure (precise or imprecise) of duration by means of motion; such as a measure-for example, an hour, a day, a month, a year-is commonly used instead of true time.

  Isaac Newton

  Time, Mean, Science

  Sir Isaac Newton (2014). “Newton: Philosophical Writings”, p.84, Cambridge University Press

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• The whole thing was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic

  John Green

  Opposites, Would Be, Patient

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.207, Penguin

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• Men walk through tragedy, quietly, calm and precise on the outside, tearing themselves to shreds inside.

  Steven Herrick

  Men, Tragedy, Calm

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• The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations - all of them rearranging themselves so this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

  David Levithan

  Falling In Love, Silly, Heart

  David Levithan (2013). “Every Day”, p.19, Egmont UK

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• She was a keen observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny. She could stir your emotions. Yes, really, that's what she was so good at - stirring people's emotions, moving you. And she knew she had this power...I only realized later. At the time, I had no idea what she was doing to me.

  Haruki Murakami

  Moving, Ideas, People

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• In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Atheism, Facts, Emotion

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• Because this exact leaf had to grow in that exact way, in that exact place, so that precise wind could tear it from that precise branch and make it fly into this exact face at that exact moment. And, if just one of those tiny little things had never had happened, I'd never have met ya. Which makes this leaf the most important leaf in human history

  Neil Cross

  Wind, Important, Tears

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• He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Silence, Moments, Psychological

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.184, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious, and direct. If we can open, then we suddenly begin to see that our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Disappointment, Reality, Expectations

  Chogyam Trungpa (2010). “The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism; The Myth of Freedom; The Heart of the Bud dha; Selected Writings”, p.24, Shambhala Publications

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• Your life experience is unfolding in the precise response to the vibrations that radiate as a result of your thoughts, whether you know it is or not.

  Esther Hicks

  Lost Love, Vibrations, Life Experience

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• Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.

  Lionel Trilling

  Literature, Possibility, Difficulty

  1950 The Liberal Imagination, preface.

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• What we think is less than what we know; What we know is less than what we love; What we love is so much less than what there is. And to that precise extent we are so much less than what we are.

  R. D. Laing

  Love Is, Thinking, Spirituality

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• Trying to capture the physicists' precise mathematical description of the quantum world with our crude words and mental images is like playing Chopin with a boxing glove on one hand and a catcher's mitt on the other.

  George Johnson

  Science, Hands, Boxing

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• But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises. In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing, and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door. This is the precise difference between dancing and acrobatics. The dancer tries to express something; the acrobat merely pulls, raises, stretches and grinds. The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.

  Agnes de Mille

  Dance, Wings, Ideas

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• You can give words, but you can't take them. And when words are given, that is when they are shared. We remember what that was like. Words so real they were almost tangible. There are conversations you remember, for certain. But more than that, there is the sensation of conversation. You will remember that, even when the precise words begin to blur.

  David Levithan

  Real, Giving, Tangible

  David Levithan (2014). “Two Boys Kissing”, p.35, Egmont UK

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• He wouldn't write a letter because he couldn't without beginning it 'Dear Sylvia' and ending it 'Yours sincerely' or 'truly' or 'affectionately.' He's that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he's so formal he can't do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can't use half of them.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Writing, Use, Half

  Ford Madox Ford (2012). “Parade's End”, p.34, Vintage

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• Accidents are not accidents but precise arrivals at the wrong right time.

  Dejan Stojanovic

  Right Time, Accidents, Arrivals

  "Being Late". Poem by Dejan Stojanovic,

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• War is a positive, precise and specific evil, of gigantic proportions ...making within the sphere of its influence all true grandeur impossible.

  Charles Sumner

  War, Evil, Spheres

  Charles Sumner (1871). “Addresses on War”, p.14

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• The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.

  David Rakoff

  Lonely, Art, Opposites

  FaceBook post by David Rakoff from Oct 23, 2016

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• You are always looking at people like this.” And then she made a face, one he couldn’t possibly begin to describe. “If I ever look like that,” he said dryly, “precisely like that, to be more precise, I give you leave to shoot me.

  Julia Quinn

  Giving, People, Looks

  Laurie Paige, Julia Quinn (2015). “Something to Hide”, p.80, Harlequin

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• Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Want, Language

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.100, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

  Philip Yancey

  Christian, Prayer, Struggle

  Philip Yancey (2011). “Prayer”, p.18, Hachette UK

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