Explaining Quotes - Page 6

• Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn't going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.

  John Green

  Cancer, Eye, Grace

  "The Fault in Our Stars". Book by John Green, 2012.

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• I'm not very good at explaining things," she said. "But I think you have beautiful eyes. I love the gold in them. I love that they're different from my eyes- I see mine all the time and I'm bored with them.

  Holly Black

  Beautiful, Eye, Thinking

  Holly Black (2012). “Valiant”, p.128, Simon and Schuster

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• The debate raged on for so long, at last Saphira had interrupted with a roar that shook the walls of the command tent. Then she said, I am sore and tired, and Eragon is doing a poor job of explaining himself. We have better things to do than stand around yammering like jackdaws, no? ... Good now listen to me. It was reflected Eragon, hard to argue with a dragon.

  Christopher Paolini

  Jobs, Wall, Tired

  Christopher Paolini (2014). “The Inheritance Cycle Complete Collection: Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance”, p.1435, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• You think you’re a very clever fellow, don’t you?” Saldur challenged. “No, Your Grace,” Merrick replied. “Clever is the man who makes a fortune selling dried-up cows, explaining how it saves the farmers the trouble of getting up every morning to milk them. I’m not clever—I’m a genius.

  Michael J. Sullivan

  Morning, Clever, Men

  Michael J. Sullivan (2009). “Nyphron Rising”, p.99, Ridan Publishing

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• I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Strong, Ideas, Suffering

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• I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!

  Charles Simic

  Beautiful, Dream, Thinking

  Charles Simic (2013). “New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012”, p.117, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There's so much I wish for these days, but most of all, I wish you were here. It's strange, but before I met you, I couldn't remember the last time that I cried. Now, it seems that tears come easily to me...but you have a way of making my sorrows seem worthwhile, of explaining things in a way that lessens my ache. You are a treasure, a gift, and when we're together again, I intend to hold you until my arms are weak and I can do it no longer. My thoughts of you are sometimes the only things that keep me going.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Together Again, Sorrow, Wish

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• When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t “mean anything” because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Daughter, Mean, Eye

  Cheryl Strayed (2013). “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There”, p.248, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) - how rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at see, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us. Catastrophe has become art; but this is no reducing process. It is freeing, enlarging, explaining. Catastrophe has become art: that is, after all, what it is for.

  Julian Barnes

  Art, Ambition, Dark

  Julian Barnes (2010). “A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters”, p.137, Random House

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• We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans — because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone- because we have the impulse to explain who we are. Not just how tall we are, or thin… but who we are internally… perhaps even spiritually. There’s something, which impels us to show our inner-souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

  Maya Angelou

  Life, Ocean, Writing

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• In explaining the growth of his faith, psychiatrist Gerald May writes, "I know that God is loving and that God’s loving is trustworthy. I know this directly, through the experience of my life. There have been plenty of times of doubt, especially when I used to believe that trusting God's goodness meant I would not be hurt. But having been hurt quite a bit, I know God's goodness goes deeper than all pleasure and pain it embraces them both." Ruthless Trust, pg 22

  Brennan Manning

  Hurt, Pain, Believe

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• Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.

  Carl Sagan

  Love You, World, Want

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.48, Ballantine Books

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• God is more interested in declaring than explaining.

  Matt Chandler

  Declaring

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• I had a horrible feeling my leg was broken. If it wasn’t, it had a lot of explaining to do.

  Darynda Jones

  Broken, Feelings, Legs

  Darynda Jones (2015). “The Charley Davidson Series”, p.721, St. Martin's Press

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• Leaving people to jumped conclusions is sometimes simpler than explaining a complicated truth

  Gayle Forman

  People, Leaving, Sometimes

  FaceBook post by Gayle Forman from Mar 13, 2014

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• Time, among all concepts in the world of physics, puts up the greatest resistance to being dethroned from ideal continuum to the world of the discrete, of information, of bits.... Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than 'time.' Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence ... is a task for the future.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Time, Connections, Tasks

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• I am much afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labour in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which means are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must be corrupt.

  Martin Luther

  Education, Children, Heart

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• Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac's talents didn't extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, 'I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.' If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.

  Warren Buffett

  Stars, Business, Loss

  Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman's Letter, www.berkshirehathaway.com. 2005.

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• Stop explaining yourself. Shut up and act!

  Craig MacDonald

  Acting, Shut Up

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• God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining.

  Douglas Adams

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

  Douglas Adams (2005). “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”, p.104, Del Rey

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• Liebig was not a teacher in the ordinary sense of the word. Scientifically productive himself in an unusual degree, and rich in chemical ideas, he imparted the latter to his advanced pupils, to be put by them to experimental proof; he thus brought his pupils gradually to think for themselves, besides showing and explaining to them the methods by which chemical problems might be solved experimentally.

  Hermann Kolbe

  Teacher, Science, Thinking

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• In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.

  Diane Ackerman

  Fun, Pain, Drama

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Deep Play”, p.23, Vintage

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• Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance.

  Noel Coward

  Funny, Humorous, Years

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• These principles have given me a way of explaining naturally the union or rather the mutual agreement [conformité] of the soul and the organic body. The soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Science, Law, Agreement

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• Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Ideas, Apples

  "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Evolution as Fact and Theory", pp. 254 - 55, 1983.

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