Details Quotes - Page 14

• The truth of the story lies in the details.

  Paul Auster

  Lying, Stories

  Paul Auster (2007). “The Brooklyn Follies: A Novel”, p.158, Macmillan

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• If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.

  Isabel Allende

  Daughter, Destiny, Grandparent

  Isabel Allende (2003). “My invented country: a memoir”, HarperPerennial

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• Nothing matches the holiness and fascination of accurate and intricate detail.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Fascination, Holiness, Accurate

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “I Have Landed”, p.47, Harvard University Press

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• Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that is hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Ostriches, Ideas

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• To my taste, the men in Rome are ridiculously, hurtfully, stupidly beautiful. More beautiful even than Roman women, to be honest. Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say-- no detail spared in the quest for perfection. They’re like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Beautiful, Men, Italian

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.68, A&C Black

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• It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in the great things than in the little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Thinking, Details Of Life

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2001). “Democracy in America”, p.314, Penguin

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• Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.

  John Stuart Mill

  Mean, Details Of Life, Practice

  John Stuart Mill (2017). “The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women, On Liberty, Principles of Political Economy, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Memoirs…”, p.189, e-artnow

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• Note to self on waking. Lay off the beer on an empty stomach. This dream is even more screwed up than the time I had a donkey and a corkscrew. (Aiden) Donkey and a corkscrew? (Leta) I don’t know you well enough to fill you in on those details. (Aiden)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Dream, Beer, Self

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2007). “Upon The Midnight Clear”, p.76, Macmillan

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• ...we ask: Why suicide? We search for reasons, causes, and so on.... We follow the course of the life he has now so suddenly terminated as far back as we can. For days we are preoccupied with the question: Why suicide? We recollect details. And yet we must say that everything in the suicide's life- for now we know that all his life he was a suicide, led a suicide's existence- is part of the cause, the reason, for his suicide.

  Thomas Bernhard

  Suicide, Causes, Reason

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• Father may have been wanting in some things, but here he was masterful. Night upon night, I marveled at his power to hold listeners in rapt attention. He could tell a story with such detail, such flourish, that afterwards a man could swear it had been his own memory, and not a tale at all.

  Seth Grahame-Smith

  Memories, Father, Night

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• It was one of those strange moments that came to him rarely, but never left. A moment that stamped itself on heart and brain, instantly recallable in every detail, for all of his life. There was no telling what made these moments different from any other, though he knew them when they came. He had seen sights more gruesome and more beautiful by far, and been left with no more than a fleeting muddle of their memory. But these-- the still moments, as he called them to himself-- they came with no warning, to print a random image of the most common things inside his brain, indelible.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Beautiful, Memories, Heart

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• Keep things informal. Talking is the natural way to do business. Writing is great for keeping records and putting down details, but talk generates ideas. Great things come from out luncheon meetings which consist of a sandwich, a cup of soup, and a good idea or two. No martinis.

  T. Boone Pickens

  Communication, Writing, Talking

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• Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication. Or, worse, to fault viewers for a lack of understanding.

  Edward Tufte

  Data, Confusion, Design

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• Know the philosophy, know the details, and ignore everything in the middle.

  Gary Vaynerchuk

  Inspirational, Philosophy, Middle

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• We are like the explorers of a great continent, who have penetrated its margins in most points of the compass and have mapped the major mountain chains and rivers. There are still innumerable details to fill in, but the endless horizons no longer exist.

  H. Bentley Glass

  Science, Rivers, Mountain

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• His [Henry Cavendish's] Theory of the Universe seems to have been, that it consisted solely of a multitude of objects which could be weighed, numbered, and measured; and the vocation to which he considered himself called was, to weigh, number and measure as many of those objects as his allotted three-score years and ten would permit. This conviction biased all his doings, alike his great scientific enterprises, and the petty details of his daily life.

  George Wilson

  Science, Years, Numbers

  George Wilson (1851). “The life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish: including abstracts of his more important scientific papers, and a critical inquiry into the claims of all the alleged discoverers of the composition of water”, p.186

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• Beneath all the wealth of detail in a geological map lies an elegant, orderly simplicity.

  John Tuzo Wilson

  Lying, Science, Order

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• Traditional dinosaur theory is full of short circuits. Like the antiquated wiring in an old house, the details sputter and burn out when specific parts are tested.

  Robert T. Bakker

  Science, House, Dinosaurs

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• Nevertheless, just as I believe that the Book of Scripture illumines the pathway to God, so I believe that the Book of Nature, with its astonishing details-the blade of grass, the Conus cedonulli, or the resonance levels of the carbon atom-also suggest a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist.

  Owen Gingerich

  Believe, Book, Thinking

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• Every writer must reconcile, as best he may, the conflicting claims of consistency and variety, of rigour in detail and elegance in the whole. The present author humbly confesses that, to him, geometry is nothing at all, if not a branch of art.

  Julian Coolidge

  Art, Science, Consistency

  Julian Lowell Coolidge (2004). “A Treatise on Algebraic Plane Curves”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• At last there dawned the most beautiful day of all the days of my life. How perfectly I remember even the smallest details of those sacred hours! The joyful awakening, the reverent and tender embraces of my mistresses and older companions, the room filled with white frocks, like so many snowflakes, where each child was dressed in turn.

  Therese of Lisieux

  Beautiful, Children, White

  Saint Therese of Lisieux (2007). “The Story of the Soul”, p.59, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Whatever the ups and downs of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.

  Gregory Bateson

  Beautiful, Attitude, Ups & Downs

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• A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Life, Letting Go, Cutting

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• Here's a Challenge: Study a complicated topic in such detail that anyone interested can nod their head and understand as you explain specific concepts within the topic.

  Albert Einstein

  Challenges, Topics, Study

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• Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together - and they call the result intuition.

  Agatha Christie

  Women, Knowing, Intuition

  Agatha Christie (1977). “Masterpieces of murder”, Dodd Mead

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