Blank Quotes - Page 19

• Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Our Actions, Rhyme, Please

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• No one should feel at all offended or threatened by the obvious fact that we are not all born entirely blank, or entirely the same, in our mixture of the broad behavioral propensities defining what we call "temperament".

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Mixtures, Facts, Defining

  "The Lying Stones of Marrakech". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "The Internal Brand of the Scarlet W", p. 281, 2001.

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• As a creative person, you want to start with a blank canvas.

  Bibhu Mohapatra

  Creative, Want, Canvas

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• I knew the mass of men conceal'd Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd They would by other men be met With blank indifference.

  Matthew Arnold

  Men, Indifference, Mets

  Matthew Arnold (1994). “Dover Beach and Other Poems”, p.23, Courier Corporation

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• You can make anything into a play for the simple reason that the human mind is one of the best writers in the business. So, if you've got a writer who's clever enough to give you enough clues, you will fill out every blank spot in a play, every single one.

  Morgan Freeman

  Clever, Simple, Play

  "Morgan Freeman and Virginia Madsen Talk THE MAGIC OF BELLE ISLE, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, and Turning SIDEWAYS Into a Play". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. July 4, 2012.

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• When you first sit down to write the first song, until you've maybe got three or four under your belt, it's always, to me, like a mountain to climb. You look at that one blank piece of paper and you think, `God, how many songs do I have to write here?' It always feels like pressure.

  Martin Gore

  Song, Writing, Thinking

  "Martin Gore on new Depeche Mode CD, Frank Ocean". Interview with Mesfin Fekadu, newsok.com. March 26, 2013.

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• It seems strange that some artists fear a blank canvas, when it has been a major contributory factor to great paintings.

  David Luiz

  Fear, Artist, Strange

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• In a way, the blank canvas... represents the infinity of trying to use color to express emotions - to assign a linguistic function to color.

  Guido Molinari

  Expression, Color, Trying

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• They call me "a teacher, a fomenter of violence." I would say point blank, "That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice."

  Malcolm X

  Teacher, Lying, Justice

  "The Autobiography of Malcolm X". Book by Alex Haley and Malcolm X, 1965.

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• The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged by the experience, and write more.

  Alberto Manguel

  Wall, Reading, Book

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

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• I was embarrassed when a businessman friend asked, 'What's the yearly budget of your talk show? What's the per-episode budget?' And I looked at him with these blank, typical-model eyes and said, 'I don't know.' I call myself a businesswoman and I don't know that? So that is my goal next year - to really dissect the budget.

  Tyra Banks

  Eye, Years, Goal

  "Celebrity 100: Tyra Banks On It". Interview with Kiri Blakeley, www.forbes.com. July 03, 2006.

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• There are several other sources of enjoyment in a long voyage, which are of a more reasonable nature. The map of the world ceases to be a blank; it becomes a picture full of the most varied and animated figures.

  Charles Darwin

  Long, World, Maps

  Charles Darwin, R. D. Keynes (2001). “Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary”, p.445, Cambridge University Press

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• If we were sensible we would seek death - the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Sensible, Enjoyed, Ifs

  "Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy" edited by S. T. Joshi, (p. 71), 2006.

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• It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world - we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death - the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Suicide, Cat, Dark

  "Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy" edited by S. T. Joshi, (p. 71), 2006.

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• The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.

  Charles Darwin

  Education, School, Mean

  Charles Darwin “Charles Darwin: An Anthology”, Transaction Publishers

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• His examiner said severely: "Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature."
  "The aim of literature," Baskerville replied grandly, "is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart."

  Donald Barthelme

  Heart, Fur, Literature

  "Florence Green is 81". "Come Back, Dr. Caligari". Book by Donald Barthelme, 1964.

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• In railway halls, on pavements near the traffic, They beg, their eyes made big by empty staring And only measuring Time , like the blank clock. No, I shall weave no tracery of pen-ornament To make them birds upon my singing tree: Time merely drives these lives which do not live As tides push rotten stuff along the shore.

  Stephen Spender

  Eye, Bird, Tree

  Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.50, Faber & Faber

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• Eyes wide and blank as the buttons on a first Communion coat.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Eye, Firsts, Buttons

  "Ask the Parrot (Parker, Book 23)". Book by Donald E. Westlake (under the pseudonym Richard Stark), 2006.

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• I never plan ahead, with the exception of the Amber books which had to proceed in sequence. But I don't really like to know what I'm going to be working on a year in advance. So I just sign blank contracts for books and whatever strikes me as a good idea is what I write about.

  Roger Zelazny

  Book, Writing, Years

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• Two days like icebergs bleak, blank, half-melting, all frigid, mainly out of sight, and definitely a threat to peace of mind drifted by and were good to put behind.

  Roger Zelazny

  Sight, Two, Mind

  Roger Zelazny (2009). “Threshold”, Nesfa Press

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• It was told in the Bible. A man fell. He bit into knowledge and fell... How do you fall without falling completely? What do you bring as knowledge to a blank canvas? How do you begin?

  Milton Resnick

  Fall, Men, Canvas

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• Your life is a blank, and you're barely a shade across it.

  Tim Lebbon

  Shade, Life Is

  Tim Lebbon (2008). “Fallen”, p.120, Spectra

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• A rich man's body is like a premium cotton pillow, white and soft and blank. ''Ours'' is different. My father's spine was a knotted rope, the kind that women use in villages to pull water from wells; the clavicle curved around his neck in high relief, like a dog's collar; cuts and nicks and scars, like little whip marks in his flesh, ran down his chest and waist, reaching down below his hip bones into his buttocks. The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.

  Aravind Adiga

  Dog, Father, Cutting

  FaceBook post by Aravind Adiga from Nov 30, 2013

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• When I swing at a golf ball right, my mind is blank and my body is loose as a goose.

  Sam Snead

  Golf, Swings, Mind

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• Photography is a medium of formidable contradictions. It is both ridiculously easy and almost impossibly difficult. It is easy because its technical rudiments can readily be mastered by anyonwith a few simple instructions. It is difficult because, while while the artist working in any other medium begins with a blank surface and gradually brings his conception into being, the photographer is the only imagemaker who begins with the picture completed. His emotions, his knowledge, and his native talent are brought into focus and fixed beyond recall the moment the shutter of his camera has closed.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Artist, Simple

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