Extremes Quotes - Page 25

• The intention of this way of life [voluntary simplicity] is not to dogmatically live with less. It's a more demanding intention of living with balance. This is a middle way that moves between the extremes of poverty and indulgence.

  Duane Elgin

  Inspiring, Moving, Simplicity

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• The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.

  Gavin Bryars

  Music, Beautiful, Running

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• Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and write all the books in the British Museum.

  Fred Reed

  Book, Writing, Lakes

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• Scary Movie' is very broad, and the reality is extreme.

  Regina Hall

  Reality, Scary, Broads

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• Images today have now become so extreme that what used to be considered hardcore is now mainstream pornography.

  Gail Dines

  Today, Hardcore, Used

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• The Buddha's insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment. The middle way is an invitation to leap beyond nirvana and samsara and to realize the unborn Buddha mind right in the middle of everywhere.

  Adyashanti

  Missing, Understanding, Mind

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• The infinitesimal seedlings became a forest of trees that grew courteously, correcting the distances between themselves as they shaped themselves to the promptings of available light and moisture, tempering the climate and the temperaments of the Scots, as the driest land became moist and the wettest land became dry, seedlings finding a mean between extremes, and the trees constructing a moderate zone for themselves even into what I would have called tundra, until I understood the fact that Aristotle taught, while walking in a botanic garden, that the middle is fittest to discern the extremes.

  William Wilson

  Distance, Mean, Garden

  William S. Wilson (2002). “Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka”, p.110, University of Alabama Press

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• Probably no single event highlights the strength of Campbell's argument (on peak oil) better than the rapid development of the Alberta tar sands. Bitumen, the world's ugliest and most expensive hydrocarbon, can never be a reasonable substitute for light oil due to its extreme capital, energy, and carbon intensity. Bitumen looks, smells, and behaves like asphalt; running an economy on it is akin to digging up our existing road infrastructure, melting it down, and enriching the goop with hydrogen until it becomes a sulfur-rich but marketable oil.

  Andrew Nikiforuk

  Running, Oil, Smell

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• A work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic; everything else is either arithmetic or biology.

  Truman Capote

  Art, Design, Magic

  Truman Capote (2013). “Portraits and Observations”, p.385, Modern Library

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• Realism should only be the means of expression of religious genius... or, at the other extreme, the artistic expressions of monkeys which are quite satisfied with mere imitation. In fact, art is never realistic though sometimes it is tempted to be. To be really realistic a description would have to be endless.

  Albert Camus

  Religious, Art, Mean

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.270, Vintage

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• There's always going to be that pressure when you're in front of the camera. When you're famous it's just an extreme version of reality and there's a pressure to look a certain way.

  Geri Halliwell

  Reality, Cameras, Looks

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• I think that what's so interesting about her is that she took to an extreme her embrace of peasant life even though she was a singing and dancing European intellectual.

  Tom Jaine

  Thinking, Dancing, Interesting

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• Part of the problem with extreme patriotism is that it makes the support of one's country and its policies unconditional. Moderate patriots, on the other hand, see that taking morality seriously requires that our commitment to our country be conditional in two ways. First, the actions or policies of a government must be worthy of support or, at least, must not be serious violations of morality. When nations behave immorally, patriots need not support them.

  Stephen Nathanson

  Country, Commitment, Government

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• Compulsory sports for those who by temperament or physique do not qualify may be a disaster. . . . The repercussions may be extreme . . . and they may be very long-lasting, even throughout adulthood.

  John Money

  Sports, Long, May

  John Money (1994). “Reinterpreting the Unspeakable: Human Sexuality 2000: The Complete Interviewer and Clinical Biographer, Exigency Theory, and Sexology for the Third Millennium”, Burns & Oates

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• Let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible. . . . For this is the way of happiness.

  Plato

  Life, Mean, Way

  Plato, Catholic Way Publishing (2015). “The Plato Collection [47 Books]”, p.1769, Catholic Way Publishing

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• Liberal gardeners are people who feel that, through gardening, we can alleviate our sense of alienation from nature; and that, through good gardening, we can repair some of the damage we have done to our environment. The most extreme liberals believe that there is an original or a natural state in which the environment would be if we hadn't shown up on the scene, and that we have not only the ability but also a moral imperative to help nature return to this state.

  Deborah Needleman

  Art, Believe, People

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• For a man who is lost, the three greatest dangers in order of importance, are Fear, Cold, and Hunger. He may endure extreme hunger for a week, and extreme cold for a day, but extreme fear may undo him an hour. There is no way of guarding against this greatest danger except by assuring him that he is fortified against the other two.

  Ernest Thompson Seton

  Men, Order, Two

  Ernest Thompson Seton (2016). “Woodcraft and Indian Lore: A Classic Guide from a Founding Father of the Boy Scouts of America”, p.278, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• On her extreme thinness during her 'Ally McBeal' years: "I started under-eating, over-exercising, pushing myself too hard and brutalizing my immune system. I guess I just didn't find time to eat. I am much more healthy these days.

  Calista Flockhart

  Exercise, Years, Anorexia

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• The people who are abroad are all those that have no religion, neither one based on speculation nor one received by tradition. Such are the extreme Turks that wander about in the north, the Kushites who live in the south, and those in our country who are like these. I consider these as irrational beings, and not as human beings; they are below mankind, but above monkeys, since they have the form and shape of man, and a mental faculty above that of the monkey.

  Maimonides

  Country, Religious, Animal

  Moses Maimonides (1961). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.384, Courier Corporation

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• Geometry has two great treasures; one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may name a precious jewel.

  Johannes Kepler

  Mean, Math, Jewels

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• Groups tend to be more extreme than individuals.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Groups, Individual

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• And it’s not just that ‘we all need somebody to lean on’; recent work on giving support shows that caring for others is often more beneficial than is receiving help. . . . We need the give and the take, we need to belong. An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Jobs, Home, Caring

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• Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who are from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts, but brothers, not rivals, but fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence...The difference... is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging.

  Demosthenes

  Brother, Ideas, Differences

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• When I see a head from a great distance, it ceases to be a sphere and becomes an extreme confusion falling down into the abyss.

  Alberto Giacometti

  Distance, Fall, Confusion

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• Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced - a catastrophe of our own making.

  Al Gore

  Epic, Years, Weather

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