Colossal Quotes - Page 3

• Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  People, Appreciate, Meat

  "Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, November 2, 2009.

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• Expect to make some mistakes when you try new and different approaches. Sometimes colossal failures lead to spectacular successes.

  Harvey Mackay

  Mistake, Trying, Different

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• I always felt really guilty if I spent too much time playing video games. It's a colossal waste of time. And I can't say it's a very satisfying feeling at the end of the day, if you've spent eight hours playing a video game; you just end up feeling kind of spent, and used.

  John C. Reilly

  Eight, Games, Feelings

  "Interview: John C. Reilly On His Animated Anti-Hero 'Wreck-It Ralph'". Interview with Alex Zalben, www.mtv.com. October 31, 2012.

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• One of the Age of Enlightenment's most hypnotic images is Ledoux's rendering of his neoclassical theater of 1775 - 1784 in Besancon, surreally reflected in the colossal eye of an unidentified cosmic being.

  Martin Filler

  Eye, Age, Enlightenment

  Martin Filler (2007). “Makers of Modern Architecture”, New York Review of Books

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• There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Dream, Passion, Heart

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “(The Great Gatsby)”, p.57, F. Scott Fitzgerald

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• I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.

  Sylvia Plath

  Jobs, Writing, Expression

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.81, Anchor

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• "If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a green light that burns at the end of your dock." Daisy put her arm through his abruptly but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to him, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted things had diminished by one.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Stars, Distance, Home

  "The Great Gatsby". Book by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925.

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• Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot

  Albert Einstein

  Jesus, Men, Christianity

  "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck", The Saturday Evening Post, p. 17, www.saturdayeveningpost.com. October 26, 1929.

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• Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them—and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution--these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little— crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand. - "The Chronicle of Young Satan," Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts

  Mark Twain

  Laughter, Blow, Race

  The Mysterious Stranger ch. 10 (1916)

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• It's such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what's lost, but to be enchanted by what was.

  Jandy Nelson

  Effort, Enchanted, Lost

  Jandy Nelson (2010). “The Sky Is Everywhere”, p.173, Penguin

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• The colossal might of wickedness: how we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

  Gregory Maguire

  Doe, Wickedness, Breakfast

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• Whatever else it was, Adolf Hitler's short-lived regime was also a colossal industrial process by which the wealth and productive power of much of Europe was wrenched from its normal purposes and converted into a machine for killing.

  James Buchan

  Europe, Purpose, Machines

  "Hitler's gold". www.theguardian.com. August 11, 2006.

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• Creative Artists Agency put together a project of extraordinary mediocrity and colossal stupidity. Otherwise, it was great.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Artist, Agency, Creative

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• Maybe somewhere in some other galaxy there is a super-intelligence so colossal that from our point of view it would be a god. But it cannot have been the sort of God that we need to explain the origin of the universe, because it cannot have been there that early.

  Richard Dawkins

  Views, Would Be, Needs

  Interview with Sheena McDonald, 1995.

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• Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

  Mark Twain

  Laughter, Blow, Rags

  "The Mysterious Stranger". Book by Mark Twain, 1916.

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• The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Support, Bricks

  Mark Twain (2000). “The Jumping Frog: And 18 Other Stories”, p.101, Book Tree

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• Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

  Agnes Repplier

  Friendship, Dog, Animal

  Agnes Repplier (1924). “Under dispute”

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• There is an attraction and a charm inherent in the colossal that is not subject to ordinary theories of art ... The tower will be the tallest edifice ever raised by man. Will it therefore be imposing in its own way?

  Gustave Eiffel

  Art, Science, Men

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• The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Sleep, Animal, Insomnia

  "This column will change your life: Can't sleep, don't sleep" by Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. May 21, 2010.

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• I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful." He further added: "No man can read the gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life...Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.

  Albert Einstein

  Jesus, Hero, Men

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• Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long lasting structures? Aren't the genuine functions of strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony? ... Besides, there is an attraction, a special charm in the colossal to which ordinary theories of art do not apply.

  Gustave Eiffel

  Beautiful, Art, Science

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• Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.

  Primo Levi

  Country, Roots, Air

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• Possibly it had occurred to him the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. [...] It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Stars, Moon, Light

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli (1991). “F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby”, p.73, Cambridge University Press

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• Perhaps the way to succeed is to think of life on Earth as a colossal joke, a creation of such immense stupidity that the only way to live is to laugh until you think your heart will break.

  Meg Rosoff

  Heart, Thinking, Laughing

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• The heavy eyelids snapped open. Jack froze. A huge gold-and-amber eye, as big as a dinner plater, stared at him. The dark pupil shrank, focusing. Jack stood very still. The colossal head turned, the scaled lip only three feet from Jack. The golden eyes gazed at him, wirling with fiery color. Jack breathed in tiny, shallow breaths. Dont blink. Don't blink... Two gusts of wind erutped from the wyvern's nostrils Jack jumped straight up, bounced off the ground into another jump, and scrambled up the nearest tree. In the clearing, Gaston bent over, guffawing like an idiot. 'It's not funny!

  Ilona Andrews

  Eye, Dark, Color

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