Attributes Quotes - Page 20

• By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. -this quote is actually found in Carl Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, where he attributes it to engineer James Oberg, who says he stole it from someone else.

  Richard Dawkins

  Book, Mean, Dark

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• If someone were to ask whether communications skills or meekness is most important to a marriage, I'd answer meekness, hands down. You can be a superb communicator but still never have the humility to ask, 'Is it I?' Communication skills are no substitute for Christlike attributes. As Dr. Douglas Brinley has observed, 'Without theological perspectives, secular exercises designed to improve our relationship and our communication skills (the common tools of counselors and marriage books) will never work any permanent change in one's heart: they simply develop more clever and skilled fighters!

  John Bytheway

  Clever, Communication, Book

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• The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.

  William Shakespeare

  Kings, Rain, Heart

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 4, sc. 1, l. [182]

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• What makes big boobs and perkiness so attractive to boys? I mean, really. Two round, mounds of fat and a fake smile. Yeah, winning attributes.

  Gena Showalter

  Life, Hilarious, Mean

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• The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Unique, Zest, Self

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• Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Stupidity, Underestimate, Malice

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• C. S. Lewis pointed out that some people are angry with God for His not existing, and others for His existing but for failing to do as mortals would have Him do. Instead of such childishness, we are urged to know God and to learn of His attributes.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Learning, People, Failing

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• Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. Let them eat cake. On being told that her people had no bread. Attributed to Marie-Antoinette, but remark is much older. Rousseau refers in his Confessions, 1740, to a similar remark, as a well-known saying. Others attribute the remark to the wife of Louis XIV.

  Marie Antoinette

  Cake, People, Wife

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• Whatever sympathy I feel towards religions, whatever admiration for some of their adherents, whatever historical or biological necessity I see in them, whatever metaphorical truth, I cannot accept them as credible explanations of reality; and they are incredible to me in proportion to the degree that they require my belief in positive human attributes and intervenient powers in their divinities.

  John Fowles

  Sympathy, Reality, Historical

  John Fowles (1970). “The Aristos”, Signet Book

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• There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.

  Saint Augustine

  Soul, Contentment, Elements

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• Generosity is a lovely attribute, and we only practice it when relationships are more important to us than our possessions.

  Michael Wright

  Christian, Practice, Generosity

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• I would sooner look for figs on thistles than for the higher attributes of art from one whose ruling motive... is money.

  Asher Brown Durand

  Art, Money, Looks

  Linda S. Ferber, Asher Brown Durand (2007). “Kindred spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American landscape”, D Giles Ltd

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• Lustful Desire (although 'twere rather fit To some brute creature to attribute it) Shall be presented in the second place, Because it shrouds a vile deformed face Beneath love's vizard, and assumes that name, Hiding its own fault with the other's blame.

  George Wither

  Names, Lust, Desire

  George Wither (1839). “Poems ...”, p.21

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• Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Future, Men

  John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.171

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• Infinite Love is a weapon of matchless potency. It is the 'summum bonum' of life. It is an attribute of the brave, in fact it is their all. It does not come within the each of the coward. It is no wooden of lifeless dogma but a living and life-giving.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Love Is, Giving, Brave

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• Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Ignorance, Simplicity, Mind

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• The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Excellence, Wish, Desire

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• Concerning [postmodern] ideas, let us not mince words. The ideas are profoundly dangerous. They subvert our civilization by denying that truth is found by conscientious attempts accurately to portray a reality that exists independently of our perception or attitudes or other attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex or class.

  George Will

  Sex, Attitude, Reality

  George F. Will (1995). “The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture, and Other News, 1990-1994”, Penguin Group USA

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• I attribute a scab to the present state of society. The way the scab looks in its worst state is gross and chaotic and horrible, that's now, but when it breaks away, there's a brand new piece of skin that's stronger than before. It's like creation out of chaos.

  Brandon Boyd

  Skins, Stronger, Looks

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• I hate everything approaching temperamental inspiration,'sacred fire'and all those attributes of genius which serve only as cloaks for untidy minds.

  Piet Mondrian

  Hate, Inspiration, Fire

  Quoted in F Elgar Mondrian (1968).

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• Though, in debating with regard to theories, it be lawful to say whether this or that is consistent with the Divine attributes, yet, when we find that God has actually done any thing, all question about its justice, wisdom, and benevolence, is forever out of place.

  Nehemiah Adams

  God, Justice, Forever

  Nehemiah Adams (1861). “Evenings with the doctrines”, p.163

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• Taking our stand on the immovable rock of Christ's character we risk nothing in saying that the wine of miracle answered to the wine of nature, and was not intoxicating. No counter proof can equal the force of that drawn from His attributes. It is an indecency and a calumny to impute to Christ conduct which requires apology.

  Abraham Coles

  Wine, Character, Apology

  Abraham Coles (1882). “The Evangel: Or The Life of Our Lord in Verse”

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• When you get in taekwondo, it teaches you the life skills of respect, self control, discipline-that's why I love it. I really attribute those skills to really getting over my dad's death. If I didn't have that, I would have lost it.

  Anthony Pettis

  Dad, Self, Skills

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• I would say that introverts make some of the best international philosophers. The less common attribute of the introverted lifestyle - a close societal connection, as such a connection disappears or changes in relevance as the currents of the winds change - leaves too much room for one's own cultural bias. Instead, introverts tend to turn inward, the laboratory of being and all its forms. This is the most accurate study of the individual human being, which is in turn, rather than those affected by cultural limitations, the most universal reflection of human understanding and human behavior.

  Criss Jami

  Reflection, Wind, Understanding

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• Lots of people today would never consider themselves guilty of idolatry as far as it is spelled out in the Ten Commandments, but by reducing God to some benevolent "man upstairs" whose only attributes are love and tolerance, and who could not care less about sin, they truly have transgressed God's commandment. They have created a god in their mind who does not actually exist and will on the day of judgment, not be able to offer them any help.

  Charlie Campbell

  Men, People, Tolerance

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