Traps Quotes - Page 5

• No value is higher than self-esteem, but you've invested it in counterfeit securities-and now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem by fighting for the creed of self-destruction. The grim joke is on you: that need of self-esteem, which you're unable to explain or to define, belongs to my morality, not yours; it's the objective token of my code, it is my proof within your own soul.

  Ayn Rand

  Self Esteem, Fighting, Soul

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.143, Penguin

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• Just like my Uncle Charlie used to say, just before he sprung the trap: He said, "You can't cheat and honest man! Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump!

  W. C. Fields

  Uncles, Men, Giving

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• Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.

  Franz Kafka

  Running, Wall, Cat

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• He's got hands so long and white and dainty I think they carved each other out of soap, and sometimes they get loose and glide around in front of him free as two white birds until he notices them and traps them between his knees; it bothers him that he's got pretty hands.

  Ken Kesey

  Thinking, Hands, Two

  Ken Kesey (2016). “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, p.9, Hamilton Books

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• Noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already piling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life I failed to claim. If one day I forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the blank cave would suck me up entire.

  Annie Dillard

  Grateful, Past, Light

  "An American Childhood". Book by Annie Dillard, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2009.

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• If the whole world is evil, then the tragedy that befell you is justified," she went on. "That would make it easier for you to accept the deaths of your wife and daughters. But if good people do exist, then, however much you deny it, your life will be unbearable; because fate set a trap for you, and you know you didn't deserve it. It isn't the light you want to recover, it's the certainty that there is only darkness.

  Paulo Coelho

  Daughter, Fate, Light

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• No grand inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as has anxiety and no spy knows how to attack more artfully the man he suspects, choosing the instant when he is weakest; nor knows how to lay traps where he will be caught and ensnared as anxiety knows how, and no sharp-witted judge knows how to interrogate, to examine the accused, as anxiety does, which never lets him escape.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Men, Judging, Anxiety

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• Don't blame me for the fact that competent programming, as I view it as an intellectual possibility, will be too difficult for the average programmer, you must not fall into the trap of rejecting a surgical technique because it is beyond the capabilities of the barber in his shop around the corner.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Fall, Views, Average

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.163, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.

  Kristin Scott Thomas

  Want, Littles, Turns

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• Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.

  Julian Casablancas

  Song, Fall, Wake Up

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• If a man keeps his trap shut, the world will beat a path to his door.

  Franklin P. Adams

  Success, Men, Doors

  Franklin P. Adams (1944). “Nods and Becks”

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• Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems.

  Tim Harford

  Thinking, Giving, Advice

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• True love, unlike popular sentimental substitutes, is willing to suffer. Love is not "luv." Love is the cross. Our problem at first, the sheer problem of suffering, was a cross without Christ. We must never fall into the opposite and equal trap of a Christ without a cross.

  Peter Kreeft

  Love, Fall, Opposites

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• Trying to pick individual stocks is a trap. I can't do it. Warren Buffett can, but hardly anyone else can beat the indexes over a long period of time.

  Ben Stein

  Long, Trying, Warren Buffet

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• I always feel like I'm in the five to ten pound struggle, but my life is so busy. I'm just not that concerned, really. I'm normal and I'm perfectly happy being that way. Some weeks I'm like, 'Man, my clothes are fitting so good' and then some weeks I'm like, 'I need to cut back on a few things,' but that's it. I don't fall into the trap of having to be 110 pounds.

  Hilary Duff

  Struggle, Fall, Cutting

  "At Home in Brooklyn With the Very Famous Hilary Duff". Interview with Justine Harman, www.elle.com. January 15, 2015.

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• You shouldn't hate another women because she is beautiful and you shouldn't hate yourself because another women is beautiful. Like, that's the trap that women fall into so much and they are like ”She is so beautiful I hate her”. I could never say something like that about another women. I celebrate everyone's beauty. Celebrate their beauty and celebrate your own, find the beauty in yourself.

  Cameron Diaz

  Beautiful, Hate, Fall

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• Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and, while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values.

  Michael Lewis

  Moving, Commitment, Mirrors

  Michael Lewis (1995). “Shame: The Exposed Self”, p.235, Simon and Schuster

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• In January we start saving money, getting out of credit card debt, funding our retirement accounts, and we're doing wonderful. Then, every single year like clockwork, starting in November, all of you fall into this trap that says, 'I have to buy this gift... I can't show up at this party and not have something for everybody.

  Suze Orman

  Retirement, Party, Fall

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• Tolerance is a virtue, but like all virtues, when exaggerated, it transforms itself into a vice. We need to be careful of the “tolerance trap” so that we are not swallowed up in it. The permissiveness afforded by the weakening of the laws of the land to tolerate legalized acts of immorality does not reduce the serious spiritual consequence that is the result of the violation of God’s law of chastity.

  Boyd K. Packer

  Spiritual, Law, Land

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• In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

  Alexander Smith

  Today, Departure, Tomorrow

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• Identification with the body, with the mind, with our possessions, with our families, with our friends - any kind of identification takes you outwards. All your possessions will be outwards: your wife, your husband, your children, your body - your body is outside you; your mind - your mind is outside you. The only thing that is not outside you is the witnessing. Just the watchfulness - that is your buddha. Identification means losing witnessing, falling into the trap of attachment. That is our misery, that is our slavery.

  Rajneesh

  Children, Husband, Fall

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• It's because we're so trapped in our culture, in the being of being human on this planet with the brains we have, and the same two arms and legs everybody has. We're so trapped that any way we could imagine to escape would be just another part of the trap. Anything we want, we're trained to want.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Two, Brain, Would Be

  "Invisible Monsters". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, 1999.

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• I read the Bible and know little of its history, but the human beings who wrote it were instruments of Divine Power, and Jesus forged a far stronger bond than the ten commandments: love. Birds and monkeys, or any of God's creatures, obey their instincts and merely do what they're programmed to do. In the case of the human being, things are more complicated because we know about love and its traps.

  Paulo Coelho

  Jesus, Bird, Stronger

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• When we’re unaware that we share the power to co-create reality with the universe itself, that power slips away from us, causing our dream to become a nightmare. We begin to feel we’re the victims of an unknown and frightening creation that we’re unable to influence, and events seem to control and trap us. The only way to end this dreadful reality is to awaken to the fact that it too is a dream—and then recognize our ability to write a better story, one that the universe will work with us to manifest.

  Alberto Villoldo

  Dream, Writing, Reality

  Alberto Villoldo (2010). “Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World Into Being”, p.4, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Poverty is not intrinsically a trap, otherwise we would all still be poor.

  Paul Collier

  Poverty, Poor, Stills

  Paul Collier (2007). “The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It”, p.5, Oxford University Press

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