Assuming Quotes - Page 20

• What is perceptible to one’s mistrust is the cut-and-dried way that life is divided up and the ready-made form it assumes, the ever-recurring sameness of it, the pre-formations passed down by generation after generation, the ready-made language not only of the tongue but also of the sensations and the feelings.

  Robert Musil

  Cutting, Feelings, Generations

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• I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said that you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

  Anne Lamott

  Hate, Writing, Thinking

  "Bird by Bird". Book by Anne Lamott, 1994.

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• Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.

  John Knowles

  Powerful, Mean, Past

  John Knowles (2014). “A Separate Peace”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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• I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.

  William Butler Yeats

  Thinking, Self, Energy

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.413

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• It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.

  Ian Mcewan

  Educational, People, Intellectual

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• Every individual has to assume responsibility for his or her own actions, even the poor and the young. A social system that decrees otherwise is inviting intellectual atrophy and spiritual stagnation.

  Tom Robbins

  Spiritual, Responsibility, Intellectual

  Tom Robbins (2005). “Villa Incognito”, p.163, Bantam

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• Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight, And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence; the next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature.

  William Shakespeare

  Angel, Giving, Devil

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 4, l. 160

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• if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

  John Stuart Mill

  Silence, May, Opinion

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.191, Hackett Publishing

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• It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure - in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals.

  Trevanian

  Fun, Opportunity, Justice

  Trevanian (2005). “Shibumi: A Novel”, p.137, Broadway Books

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• As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment. Whatever your conscious mind assumes and believes to be true, your subconscious mind will accept and bring to pass. Whatever you habitually think sinks into the subconscious. The subconscious is the seat of the emotions and is a creative mind. Once subconscious accepts an idea, it begins to execute it. Whatever you feel is true, your subconscious will accept and bring forth into experience.

  Jane Roberts

  Believe, Thinking, Ideas

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• When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mean, Talking, Vision

  Flannery O'Connor (1983). “Three by Flannery O'Connor: Wise blood, The violent bear it away, Everything that rises must converge”, Signet Classics

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• When someone tells you they’ve just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they’re locked into jobs they hate; that they’re broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they’re fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It’s profoundly depressing.

  Douglas Coupland

  Depressing, Jobs, Hate

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• One of the things my parents taught me, and I'll always be grateful as a gift, is to not ever let anybody else define me; that for me to define myself. and I think that helped me a lot in assuming a leadership position.

  Wilma Mankiller

  Grateful, Thinking, Parent

  "Rebuilding the Cherokee Nation". Speech at Sweet Briar College, gos.sbc.edu. April 02, 1993.

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• Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues 'no air exists' but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe - they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions [which assumes an orderly universe], to make moral judgments [which assumes absolute values] - but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such 'breathing' impossible. They are breathing God's air all the time they are arguing against him.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  God, Religious, Atheist

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• What is the point? We assume that every time we do anything we know what the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly, cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong!

  Douglas Adams

  Crosses, Knows, Consequence

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.734, Pan Macmillan

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• A third...candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just two months older than Shakespeare), had the requisite talent, and would certainly have had ample leisure after 1593, assuming he wasn't too dead to work.

  Bill Bryson

  Two, Age, Leisure

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• To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Life, People, Trying

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• Just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don't ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead you to false notions about me. Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.

  William P. Young

  Mean, Color, Grace

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• Especially among Christians in positions of wealth and power, the idea of reading the Gospels and keeping Jesus' commandments as stated therein has been replaced by a curious process of logic. According to this process, people first declare themselves to be followers of Christ, and then they assume that whatever they say or do merits the adjective "Christian".

  Wendell Berry

  Christian, Jesus, Reading

  Wendell Berry (2005). “Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ's Teachings about Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness”, p.3, Counterpoint Press

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• Why do people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it is the only way to live. … Why can’t they be blamed for being bad at promiscuity?

  Hanif Kureishi

  People, Way To Live, Being Bad

  Hanif Kureishi (2002). “Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write

  George Sand

  Queens, Powerful, Writing

  George Sand “Les ëuvres Choisies de George Sand. The Selected Works of George Sand”, Library of Alexandria

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• Admire and adore the Author of the telescopic universe, love and esteem the work, do all in your power to lessen ill, and increase good, but never assume to comprehend.

  John Adams

  Never Assume, Increase, Admire

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• I assume I don't need an introduction.

  Anne Rice

  Needs, Introduction

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• If I'm not with a butch everyone just assumes I'm straight. It's like I'm passing too, against my will. I'm sick of the world thinking I'm straight. I've worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian

  Leslie Feinberg

  Thinking, Sick, World

  Leslie Feinberg (2010). “Stone Butch Blues”, p.275, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ," said President Hinckley. "How can any man holding the Melchizedek Priesthood arrogantly assume that he is eligible for the priesthood whereas another who lives a righteous life but whose skin is of a different color, is ineligible?

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Men, Race, Color

  "The Need for Greater Kindness" by Gordon B. Hinckley, www.lds.org. May, 2006.

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