Blank Quotes - Page 23

• It is difficult for young people to live things down. We will tolerate vice, grand larceny and the quieter forms of murder in our contemporaries... but our children's friends must show a blank service record.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Children, People, Vices

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jackson R. Bryer, John Richard Kuehl (1997). “The Basil and Josephine Stories”, p.285, Simon and Schuster

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• (Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born.

  Saul Bellow

  Two, Soul, Would Be

  Saul Bellow (2008). “Humboldt's Gift”, Penguin Classics

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• Oh, blank confusion! true epitome Of what the mighty City is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity.

  William Wordsworth

  Son, Cities, Confusion

  William Wordsworth (1994). “The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.698, Wordsworth Editions

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• You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Important, Paper

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.837, Simon and Schuster

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• Fairness' is one of the great mantras of the left. Since everyone has his own definition of fairness, that word is a blank check for the expansion of government power. What fairness means in practice is that third parties -- busybodies -- can prevent mutual accommodations by others.

  Thomas Sowell

  Party, Mean, Equality

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.225, Hoover Press

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• The cool thing about writing is that there is really never a typical day. Sometimes I get a rhythm going and head off to work every morning and come home at night. Sometimes I'll write for two days straight and then be utterly blank for the next two.

  Patricia Briggs

  Morning, Home, Writing

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• ... a canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting.

  Irving Stone

  Painting, Canvas, Reason

  Irving Stone (1937). “Lust for Life: The Novel of Vincent Van Gogh”

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• Mr.Blank's reputation as a card shark had preceded him. No one accused him of being dishonest, but on the other hand no one accused him of being honest.

  Groucho Marx

  Funny, Humorous, Gambling

  Groucho Marx (2008). “Memoirs Of A Mangy Lover”, p.132, Da Capo Press

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• Mexican homes as a rule are closed off to the world by high blank walls of yellowish masonry, topped with broken glass to discourage escaladores, or climbing burglars. The gardens and fountains and other delights are hidden, as in an Arab city.

  Charles Portis

  Wall, Home, Garden

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• It's no mystery why many of us in the media can't get enough of the fabricators Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, the latter of whom concocted more than a score of bogus feature stories for the New Republic (and who wrote for other magazines, including this one, once) in the mid-1990s. Anyone--journalist, student, academic--who has ever stared at a blank screen, their brains grinding emptiness, and thought, How can I fill this hole? knows that in those desperate moments before a deadline, almost anyone can do almost anything: make stuff up, plagiarize, scribble senseless half-truths.

  David Edelstein

  Glasses, Media, Brain

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• Anger clearly has its proper place at work, which is neither wholly absent nor ever present. The manager who is an emotional blank is just as hard to work for as the volcanic boss, and both can do great harm by setting an unhelpful example for what kind of emotional expression is expected and accepted.

  Julian Baggini

  Emotional, Expression, Boss

  "Calm? Why should I be calm?" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. March 02, 2009.

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• Being a journalist is good if you want to write books: it teaches you to get beyond the blank screen. My books have been described as froth but there's scope to be witty and ironic about everything in life.

  Sophie Kinsella

  Witty, Book, Writing

  "Big ideas". Interview with Alice Wignall, www.theguardian.com. July 19, 2004.

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• Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives as knowing wildish women.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Wall, Real, Cutting

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• You would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.

  Samuel Beckett

  Looks, Misery, Speechless

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.9, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Don't act so callous to blank out good friends who failed on their way to success, just because something unusual hindered them, but you meandered out by a stroke of luck.

  Michael Bassey

  Good Friend, Luck, Way

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• Most people have a blank slate and can start from nothing. But for me, I had to break a bad habit that I've been doing all of my life, which is freestyle hip-hop.

  Roshon Fegan

  People, Hip Hop, Hips

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• Da Vinci was as great a mechanic and inventor as were Newton and his friends. Yet a glance at his notebooks shows us that what fascinated him about nature was its variety, its infinite adaptability, the fitness and the individuality of all its parts. By contrast what made astronomy a pleasure to Newton was its unity, its singleness, its model of a nature in which the diversified parts were mere disguises for the same blank atoms.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Notebook, Nature, Science

  Jacob Bronowski (2011). “The Common Sense of Science”, p.16, Faber & Faber

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• Omission to do what is necessary Seals a commission to a blank of danger; And danger, like an ague, subtly taints Even then when we sit idly in the sun.

  William Shakespeare

  Omission, Sun, Danger

  William Shakespeare, Bowdler (1823). “The family Shakspeare”, p.179

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• The fact is that blank pages inspire me with terror. What will I put on them? Will it be good enough? Will I have to throw it out?

  Margaret Atwood

  Fear, Inspire, Pages

  Margaret Atwood (1990). “Margaret Atwood: Conversations”, Princeton, N.J. : Ontario Review Press

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• That's the horrible thing starting out, you get distracted a lot because anything is easier than writing. It's just the same enemy - blank paper.

  Jimmy Breslin

  Writing, Enemy, Paper

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• Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don't know anything.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Insecurity, Canvas, Certain

  Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

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• I'm lucky enough that there is never a blank canvas in front of me... I have hundreds of projects that I want to do but I am running out of time.

  George Lucas

  Running, Lucky, Want

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• Constant attention wears the active mind, Blots out our pow'rs, and leaves a blank behind.

  Charles Churchill

  Mind, Attention, Constant

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• The spot paintings, the spin paintings, they're all a mechanical way to avoid the actual guy in a room, myself, with a blank canvas.

  Damien Hirst

  Procrastination, Guy, Way

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• Writer's block.. when one curses the blinking cursor on the blank page.

  Regina Brett

  Block, Pages, Curse

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