Explaining Quotes - Page 16

• Explaining the moment of connection between a reader and book to someone who's never experienced it is like trying to describe sex to a virgin.

  Sara Nelson

  Sex, Book, Trying

  Sara Nelson (2004). “So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading”, p.27, Penguin

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• The idea of tiny changes cumulated over many steps is an immensely powerful idea, capable of explaining an enormous range of things that would be otherwise inexplicable.

  Richard Dawkins

  Powerful, Ideas, Tiny

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.95, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I think that metaphor really is a key to explaining thought and language. The human mind comes equipped with an ability to penetrate the cladding of sensory appearance and discern the abstract construction underneath - not always on demand, and not infallibly, but often enough and insightfully enough to shape the human condition. Our powers of analogy allow us to apply ancient neural structures to newfound subject matter, to discover hidden laws and systems in nature, and not least, to amplify the expressive power of language itself.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Law, Keys

  Steven Pinker (2007). “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature”, p.282, Penguin

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• Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that result to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and fitted to sympathize, there is no veil, and there can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Mistake, Blessing

  Henry David Thoreau (1973). “Winter: From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau”

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• when driven to the necessity of explaining, I found that I did not myself understand what I meant.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Driven, Found

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1825). “Works”, p.396

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• Writing about why you write is a funny business, like scratching what doesn't itch. Impulses are mysterious, and explaining them must be done with mirrors, like certain cunning slight-of-hand routines.

  Patricia Hampl

  Writing, Mirrors, Hands

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• To be a good sportsman, one must be a stoic and never show rancor in defeat, or triumph in victory, or irritation, no matter what annoyance is encountered. One who can not help sulking, or explaining, or protesting when the loser, or exulting when the winner, has no right to take part in games or contests.

  Emily Post

  Sports, Games, Irritation

  Emily Post (2007). “Etiquette: In Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home”, p.529, Cosimo, Inc.

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• A valuable qualification of a modern politician seems to be a capacity for concealing or explaining away the truth.

  Dorothy Nevill

  Politician, Modern, Capacity

  Lady Dorothy Nevill (1912). “My own times”

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• Man is the only mammal whose normal method of locomotion is to walk on two legs. A pattern of mammal behavior that emerges only once in the whole history of life on earth takes a great deal of explaining.

  Elaine Morgan

  Men, Two, Mammals

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• When it comes to social issues, Republicans dont just need to be more empathetic. They also need to be more emphatic in explaining to voters what they believe, and why.

  Gary Bauer

  Believe, Issues, Needs

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• In politics, when you`re explaining, you`re losing.

  Jim Moore

  Losing

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• Today's reporter is forced to become an educator more concerned with explaining the news than with being first on the scene.

  Fred W. Friendly

  News, Today, Firsts

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• It is clear that the building of models is not a purely mechanical process but requires skill of a high order - not merely mathematical skill but a sensitivity to the relative importance of different factors and a critical, almost an artistic, faculty in the selection of behaviour equations which are reasonable, tentative hypotheses in explaining the behaviour of actual economies.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Order, Skills, Different

  "The Skills of the Economist". Book by Kenneth Ewart Boulding, pp. 16-17, 1958.

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• When it comes to explaining the Blessed Virgin Mary, having a lot of love is more important than having a lot of answers. When we come up lacking, she’ll make greater goods out of our deficiencies, as only a mother can do. Whenever we're humiliated and shown our weakness, we should get ready for something better than we could ever plan and prepare to accomplish. Evangelize with joy, then, and with confidence. Know from the start that you don’t have all the answers-but your Savior does, and He loves His mother. He will give you everything you need, even if sometimes you need to fail.

  Scott Hahn

  Mother, Blessed, Love Is

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• When you start explaining why something's funny or finding a formula for it I think it loses some of its funniness.

  Betty White

  Thinking, Funniness, Formulas

  "Q&A: Betty White Talks ‘Off Their Rockers’, ‘Hot in Cleveland’ and Her Long, Wonderful Career". Interview, www.dailyactor.com. April 24, 2012.

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• Designing is always on the mind of a designer, and as I was saying it's a sort of digestive process, so I usually keep it to myself unless I'm collaborating with someone because explaining all the things that are going on in your head can be quite exhausting, especially in the early stages of a project.

  Christian Louboutin

  Design, Mind, Projects

  "interview with shoe designer christian louboutin". Designboom magazine Interview, www.designboom.com. May 21, 2014.

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• Writing is the main gig and teaching and performing are sidelines, an excuse for not writing more. Working on a novel and on an opera make me seriously want to retire and find a volunteer job as a docent at the zoo explaining to schoolchildren where frogs go in the winter.

  Garrison Keillor

  Jobs, Zoos, Teaching

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

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• Explaining belief has alwayas been difficult. How do you explain a love and a logic at the heart of the universe when the world is so out of whack? Explaining faith is impossible - vision over visibility - instinct over intellect - a songwriter plays a chore with the faith that he will hear the next one in his head.

  Edward de Bono

  Jesus, Heart, Play

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• [T]he next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you'll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we're bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we're good. And real-world policy - policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families - is being built on that foundation.

  Paul Krugman

  Real, People, Trying

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• Are we willing to risk being misunderstood and maligned in order that truth might be told and men might be saved? Identifying a malady and explaining its seriousness are always the first steps to finding a cure... God has ordained that men come to conviction of sin, repentance, and saving faith through preaching. Yet how can the [Holy] Spirit use our preaching if we are not willing to expose sin or call men to repentance?

  Paul Washer

  Men, Order, Risk

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• No one has more than scratched the surface when it comes to understanding and explaining the miracle of the market.

  Leonard Read

  Miracle, Understanding, Surface

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• In explaining the Constitution, James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper 45: 'The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peach, negotiation, and foreign commerce.' Has the Constitution been amended to permit Congress to tax, spend and regulate as it pleases or have Americans said, 'To hell with the Constitution'?

  Walter E. Williams

  Father, War, Government

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• The elephant smoked too much.(explaining why the keys of his piano were so yellow)

  Victor Borge

  Keys, Elephants, Piano

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• Phil Harris and Pat Boone were once paired as guests on an episode of Andy Williams' TV show. During a rehearsal break, Harris suggested the three of them go out for a drink. When Boone declined, explaining he did not drink, Harris asked Williams, "Andy, can you imagine getting up in the morning knowing that's the best you're going to feel all day?"

  Andy Williams

  Morning, Tv Shows, Knowing

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• There's just nothing funnier than, like, a guy awkwardly explaining to another guy that he's hurt his feelings, and then later, awkwardly, you know, forgiving him for doing that.

  Seth Rogen

  Hurt, Guy, Feelings

  "Seth Rogen, Not Such A Loser In Real Life". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. January 2, 2009.

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