Definitions Quotes - Page 32

• Good luck trying to force Evie to do anything else once she has made up her mind. She is the definition of a stubborn, headstrong teenager.” “And you love me for it.” “I do.

  Kiersten White

  Love, Teenager, Good Luck

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• As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a creator poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress. If God created the universe, what created God? To say that God, by definition, is uncreated simply begs the question. Any being capable of creating a complex world promises to be very complex himself. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has observed repeatedly, the only natural process we know of that could produce a being capable of designing things is evolution.

  Sam Harris

  Creating, Design, Promise

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• It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both.

  James A. Baldwin

  Suicidal, Mean, Ideas

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• The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.

  Albert Einstein

  Simple, Genius, Complexes

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• The hallmark of an authoritarian idiot is yelling TERRORIST-LOVER! at anyone questioning the definition of Terrorist.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Yelling, Lovers, Idiot

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• My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Nerd, Aphorism, Asks

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.109, Random House

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• I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Sorry, Fate

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• Putting my hand in someone else’s has always been my definition of happiness. Before I fall asleep, often - in that small struggle not to lose consciousness and go into the greater world - often, before I get up the courage to go into the vastness of sleep, I pretend that someone has my hand in theirs, and then I go, go to that enormous absence of form that is sleep. And when even after that I don’t have courage, I dream.

  Clarice Lispector

  Dream, Struggle, Fall

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• We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.

  Ben Okri

  Destination

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• But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn't be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil.

  Robin Sloan

  Learning Something New, Long, Evil

  Robin Sloan (2012). “Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel”, p.6, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, any more than anything else important in life can be proved.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Important

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.30, Open Road Media

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• Might not hurt you to pick up a book, just as an experiment." Whatever. I looked up the definition for 'nerd' in the dictionary. Know what it said?" "I bet you'll tell me." " 'If you're reading this, you are one.' " You're a riot.

  Brandon Mull

  Hurt, Book, Reading

  Brandon Mull, Brandon Dorman (2009). “Grip of the Shadow Plague”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

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• Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall - or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life.

  Graham Swift

  Children, Memories, Fall

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• If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.

  David Levithan

  Comforting, Want, Painful

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• I have given no definition of love. This is impossible, because there is no higher principle by which it could be defined. It is life itself in its actual unity. The forms and structures in which love embodies itself are the forms and structures in which love overcomes its self-destructive forces.

  Paul Tillich

  Self, Unity, Overcoming

  Paul Tillich, Erdmann Sturm (1998). “Sozialphilosophische und Ethische Schriften”, p.700, Walter de Gruyter

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• In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.

  Chinua Achebe

  Protest, Restraint

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.46, Penguin

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• But all I said, as I dug a five from my pocket to pay for my soda, was, "You have a friend?" Tod scowled. "Well, I wouldn't call him a friend according to the traditional definition, but in the sense that he imposes on me constantly and isn't afraid to point out my flaws, I'd say he qualifies." "Sounds more like a cousin.

  Rachel Vincent

  Cousin, Pockets, Sound

  Rachel Vincent (2012). “Soul Screamers Volume Two: My Soul to Keep\My Soul to Steal\Reaper”, p.214, Harlequin

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• Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.

  David Levithan

  Self Esteem, Cutting, Clothes

  David Levithan (2009). “Boy Meets Boy”, p.28, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Thwart," I said. "To prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person." "I'm pretty sure that isn't the definition." Sarissa said. "It is today.

  Jim Butcher

  Mean, Today, Violence

  Jim Butcher (2012). “Cold Days: The Dresden Files, Book Fourteen”, p.252, Hachette UK

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• If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.

  John Fowles

  Atheist, Intelligent, Coward

  John Fowles (1968). “The Magus”, Pan

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• [Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers.

  Jane Jacobs

  Cities, Way, Towns

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.30, Vintage

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• Nothing, she now knew, could be defined in exclusion, and every bug, pencil, and grass blade was a dictionary in itself, requiring the definitions of all things to fulfill its own.

  Anthony Marra

  Bugs, Exclusion, Blades

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• Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

  Alain de Botton

  Goal, Anxiety, Promise

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.197, Vintage

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• More than anything, the journal wanted. It wanted more than it could hold, more than words could describe, more than diagrams could illustrate. Longing burst from the pages, in every frantic line and every hectic sketch and every dark-printed definition. There was something pained and melancholy about it.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Dark, Lines, Pages

  Maggie Stiefvater (2012). “The Raven Boys”, p.70, Scholastic Inc.

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• Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." (Harvard Business School definition of leadership)

  Sheryl Sandberg

  Success, School, Impact

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