Figures Quotes - Page 32

• If they had rankings in baseball, maybe I would have been able to do the math and figure out my chances of being a professional baseball player versus a tennis player. But that was the decision-maker for me, I just thought I was better in tennis.

  Jim Courier

  Baseball, Math, Player

  "Interview With Davis Cup's American Coach Jim Courier". Interview with Lauren Lynch, bleacherreport.com. December 1, 2010.

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• Having reached a point in which I was so bitter and exhausted from being a quote unquote public figure, I wanted to return to a more childlike relationship to writing.

  David Leavitt

  Writing, Return, Bitter

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• [Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poetic inspiration. Every figure is a world in itself, a portrait of which the original appeared in a sublime vision, in a flood of light, pointed to by an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which showed what the sources of expression had been in the whole past life of the subject.

  Honore de Balzac

  Inspiration, Communication, Past

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• Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life-the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids-is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.

  Michael Pollan

  Taken, Mean, Simple

  Michael Pollan (2009). “The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World”, p.15, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone brought such grace and skill to the reconstruction of animals from disarticulated skeletons. Charles R. Knight, most celebrated of artists in the reanimation of fossils, painted all the canonical figures of dinosaurs that fire our fear and imagination to this day.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Artist, Animal

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History".

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• It was at "Little Lodge" I was first menaced with Education. The approach of a sinister figure described as 'the Governess' was announced.

  Winston Churchill

  Education, Littles, Firsts

  Winston Churchill (2010). “My Early Life: 1874-1904”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.

  Max Beckmann

  Trying, Quality, Fortune

  Max Beckmann, Barbara Copeland Buenger (1997). “Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903-1950”, p.302, University of Chicago Press

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• Nobody went out to pasture, and a lot of people are doing their best work. Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Sting are at the top of their game. I mean, Tony Bennett is the coolest guy I ever met! We have to figure out how to break out of this age ghetto.

  Bonnie Raitt

  Mean, Ghetto, Games

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• In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't.

  Lev Grossman

  Life, Clueless, Our World

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.796, Penguin

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• The figure of my father looms large in my imagination.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Father, Imagination, My Imagination

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• The ancients had little doubt about the true shape of the earth: "It's [the world's] shape has the rounded appearance of a perfect sphere. This is shown first of all by the name of 'orb' which is bestowed upon it by the general consent of mankind. ...Our eyesight also confirms this belief, because the firmament presents the aspect of a concave hemisphere equidistant in every direction, which would be impossible in the case of any other figure."

  Pliny the Elder

  Names, Perfect, Doubt

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• His epitaph: Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.

  Isaac Newton

  Sea, Mind, Vigor

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• I cannot classify the other, for the other is, precisely, Unique, the singular Image which has miraculously come to correspond to the speciality of my desire. The other is the figure of my truth, and cannot be imprisoned in any stereotype (which is the truth of others).

  Roland Barthes

  Unique, Desire, Stereotype

  Roland Barthes (1990). “A lover's discourse: fragments”, Penguin Books

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• Desmond O'Grady is one of the senior figures in Irish
  Literary life, exemplary in the way he has committed
  himself over the decades to the vocation of poetry and
  has lived selflessly for the art

  Seamus Heaney

  Senior, Art, Way

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• 'Tell me one last thing,' said Harry. 'Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?' Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure. 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?'

  J. K. Rowling

  Strong, Real, Life Lesson

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• You can't expect insights, even the big ones, to make you suddenly understand everything. But I figure: Hey it's a step in the right direction if they leave you confused in a deeper way.

  Lily Tomlin

  Confused, Way, Steps

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• Get money - but stop once in a while to figure what it is costing you to get it. No man gets it without giving something in return. The wise man gives his labor and ability. The fool gives his life.

  Bruce Barton

  Wise, Men, Giving

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• I'm against the idea that rock stars have to live a life that's completely understandable or predictable to their audience....Maybe I'll just be the mysterious figure that'll never be able to truly be defined. Maybe that's what my thing is.

  Debbie Harry

  Stars, Ideas, Rocks

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• It is a great pity when the one who should be the head figure is a mere figure head.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Pity, Should, Mere

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• Sometimes it takes failure to figure out who you aren't.

  Anne Lamott

  Sometimes, Who You Are

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• Where beams of imagination play, the memory's soft figures melt away.

  Alexander Pope

  Inspirational, Memories, Play

  Alexander Pope, “An Essay On Criticism”

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• If at first you don't succeed, before you try again, stop to figure out what you did wrong.

  Leo Rosten

  Trying, Firsts, Succeed

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• Figure out what works for you and what doesn't.

  Leighton Meester

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• Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself.

  Frida Kahlo

  Real, Order, Profound

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• It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. It ceases to be fertilized.

  Virginia Woolf

  Stress, Simple, Men

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.136

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