Diminish Quotes - Page 18

• A poet who makes use of a worse word instead of a better, because the former fits the rhyme or the measure, though it weakens the sense, is like a jeweller, who cuts a diamond into a brilliant, and diminishes the weight to make it shine more.

  Horace Walpole

  Cutting, Shining, Use

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• To conceal ignorance is to increase it. An honest confession of it, however, gives ground for the hope that it will diminish some day or the other.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Ignorance, Giving, Honest

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• Sometimes it is not wise to make a second plan; it diminishes the power of the first plan! In risky paths, make only one plan; this will increase the possibility of success! On the edge of a precipice, if your second plan is a parachute on your back, your possibility of falling will increase! When you have nothing to trust, you will be safer, because you have no right to make any mistake!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Success, Wise, Mistake

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• Wanting someone so much that his very presence takes your breath away is one of the most thrilling happenings in life. Not getting him in no way diminishes this.

  Perry Brass

  Life, Wanting Someone, Way

  Perry Brass (1998). “The Lover of My Soul: A Search for Ecstasy and Wisdom”, p.28, Perry Brass

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• Society, during the last hundred years, has been alternately perplexed and encouraged, respecting the two great questions -how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of, in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand, and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?

  Dorothea Dix

  Hands, Order, Years

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• We continually make decisions in private which affect the commonweal, as the ecologists (to take but one example) have shown us. When I keep my house warmer than it needs to be, I consume fuel which might help someone else keep warm, or keep a job. When the food I eat is high on the protein chain I contribute to a maldistribution of protein around the world. When I teach my children to be primarily concerned with private gain, I diminish the ranks of public leadership in the rising generation.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Jobs, Children, Decision

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• Modern problems proliferate and remain unsolved because we spend so much time trying to deal with societal and world problems without first dealing with family and community problems. If we organized for normal families and communities - if these two groups provided the functions they are designed for - world problems would diminish and fade out in two or three generations.

  Ralph Borsodi

  Two, Community, Trying

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• If you want to diminish the number of abortions, you've got to change hearts and not laws.

  Stephen Harper

  Heart, Numbers, Law

  Interview with Peter Mansbridge, www.cbc.ca. January 17, 2011.

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• I do take the threat of terrorism seriously. You cannot eliminate that threat or diminish that threat by bombing a country.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Terrorism, Threat

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Language is our way of communicating what we want and who we are. By using bad language, we diminish the divine spark within us that defines our humanity.

  Laura Schlessinger

  Wise, Wisdom, Humanity

  Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Stewart Vogel (1999). “The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life”, p.69, Dr. Laura Schlessinger

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• I love playing and I like traveling. I really do like playing in Canada, its not to diminish anywhere else because touring internationally can be cool.

  Joel Plaskett

  Canada, Touring, Being Cool

  Source: www.coltoneddy.com

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• There are nations that resist, voices that attempt to diminish the urgency or dismiss the science, or declare, either in word or indifference, that this is not our problem to solve. Well, let me tell you, it is our problem to solve... To the reticent nations, including the United States, I say this: There is such a thing as a global conscience.

  Paul Martin

  Voice, United States, Problem

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• My intent was not to go after Rush - I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh. I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. ... There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.

  Michael Steele

  Voice, Littles, Inarticulate

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• As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends to compensatingly increase and the dictator... will do well to encourage that freedom in conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope, movies, and radio. It will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.

  Julian Huxley

  Fate, Dope, Political

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• The abuse of a good does not diminish the good of a good

  Matthew Kelly

  Abuse, Doe

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• To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.

  Kathleen Norris

  Humility, Exercise, Self

  Kathleen Norris (1997). “The Cloister Walk”, p.25, Penguin

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• My mother really was an extraordinary, inspirational, tough, cool, sexy, funny woman and that's the kind of woman I've always surrounded myself with. It's my friends, particularly my wife, who is not only smarter than and stronger than I am but, occasionally taller too. I think it all goes back to my mother. My father and my stepfather prized whit and resolve in the women they were with above all things. And they were among the rare men who understood that recognising somebody else's power does not diminish your own.

  Joss Whedon

  Sexy, Mother, Father

  Joss Whedon's acceptance speech at the Equality Now Award, www.americanrhetoric.com. May 15, 2006.

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• I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation.

  William Boyd

  Reality, Glowing, People

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• Paper money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money: gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous.

  Thomas Paine

  Drinking, Europe, Vanity

  Thomas Paine (1824). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs in the American Revolution : to which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life”, p.410

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• Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Quality, Term, Expressive

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• It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.

  Adam Smith

  Real, Improvement, Natural

  Adam Smith (2016). “The Wealth of Nations: the Great Master”, p.283, VM eBooks

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• I used to have to downplay my sexuality because I wanted to be taken so seriously as a thespian and as an artist and as an actor, so I'd play crack heads and down trotting women and disguise myself, and I think as I've gotten older, I become more comfortable with who I really am and all parts of me knowing that my physical self doesn't diminish me in any way or my talent.

  Halle Berry

  Taken, Artist, Thinking

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• Sadness diminishes a man's powers

  Baruch Spinoza

  Sadness, Men

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• Food is such an important part of our lives, and sometimes we tend to diminish the importance of that, because we rely on conveniences or because our lives are so complicated. We forget about those moments that we can actually share around the table with our family, with our friends, with our loved ones.

  Thomas Keller

  Important, Tables, Forget

  "Table Talk with Thomas Keller". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. November 24, 2009.

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• It is easier to diminish God than it is to enlarge one's heart.

  Mike Mason

  Heart, Easier

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