Four Quotes - Page 24

• You are a slow learner, Winston." "How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.

  George Orwell

  Eye, Two, Trying

  George Orwell (2001). “The Complete Novels of George Orwell: Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.1346, Penguin UK

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• Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.

  Umberto Eco

  Would Be, Born, Ifs

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• Willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver, thro' the wave that runs forever by the island in the river, flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls and four gray towers, overlook a space of flowers, and the silent isle imbowers, the Lady of Shalott.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Running, Wall, Flower

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Professor Norman Page (2013). “Tennyson: Selected Poetry”, p.20, Routledge

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• Four will Become Two, Lion and Tiger will Meet in Battle, and Blood will Rule the Forest.

  Erin Hunter

  Cat, Blood, Two

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• I once jokingly told someone that every book is like a relationship. They're four or five years long - that's not so bad. They're serious. They demand a lot of attention. But I remember thinking that I wanted to have one with someone who's not so crazy and peculiar and demanding.

  A.M. Homes

  Crazy, Book, Thinking

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• Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.

  Truman Capote

  Reading, Two, Orange

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• Upon four-legged forest clouds the cowboy angel rides

  Bob Dylan

  Angel, Cowboy, Clouds

  Song: Gates of Eden, Album: Bringing It All Back Home, 1965

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• I have my own set of survival techniques. I am patient. I know how to pack light. But my one might travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the dead. If there isn’t anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of sheetrock. That is why I’m not afraid to travel to the most remote places in the world, not if there are human beings there to meet. People asked me before I left, “do you have friends [there]?’ and I would just shake my head no, thinking to myself, But I will.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Thinking, Light, Feet

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• Cats are cats . . . the world over! These intelligent, peace-loving, four-footed friends- who are without prejudice, without hate, without greed- may someday teach us something. -James Mackintosh Qwilleran

  Lilian Jackson Braun

  Hate, Cat, Intelligent

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• You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption 'My time is my own'. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to him employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which h allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

  C. S. Lewis

  Religious, Feelings, Doubt

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• Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum.

  Paulo Coelho

  Love, Struggle, Power

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• The children were overwhelmingly morbid. Not a single adult asked me where butterflies go when they die, but this question was more popular than pixie sticks with the under-four-foot set. I cursed parents for not preparing their children. When I was five, my mother and sister sat me up on the kitchen counter and explained the facts of life: the Easter Bunny didn't exist, Elijah was God's invisible friend, with any luck Nana would die soon, and if I ever saw a unicorn, I should kill it or catch it for cash. I turned out okay.

  Sloane Crosley

  Mother, Easter, Children

  Sloane Crosley (2012). “I Was Told There'd Be Cake”, p.106, Portobello Books

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• when I was four I almost fell down the shaft of a tin mine and when I was five the car rolled over on the motorway and when I was seven we went on holiday and the gas ring blew out in the caravan and nobody noticed I've been dying all my life

  Jenny Downham

  Holiday, Car, Dying

  Jenny Downham (2007). “Before I Die”, David Fickling Books

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• Tortoise steps, slow steps, four steps like a tank with a tail dragging in the sand. Tortoise steps, land based, land locked, dusty like the desert tortoise herself, fenced in, a prisoner on her own reservation -- teaching us the slow art of revolutionary patience.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Art, Teaching, Land

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• These are the four that are never content: that have never been filled since the dew began- Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of Man.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Eye, Men, Hands

  Rudyard Kipling (2012). “Songs from Books”, p.206, tredition

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• How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Men, Thinking, Long

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• A few weeks later, I’m in a fluorescent-lit classroom in Chelsea awaiting the start of the official Mensa test. I’m sitting next to a guy who’s doing a series of elaborate neck stretches, like we’re about to engage in a vigorous rugby match. He’s neatly laid out four types of gum on his Formica desk: Juicy Fruit, Wrigley Spearmint, Big Red, and Eclipse. I hate this guy. I hope to God he’s not a genius.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Hate, Guy, Genius

  A. J. Jacobs (2004). “The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

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• Astraeus,' Aven called out. 'God of the four winds and friend to sailors. Say a little prayer when you look at him, so he will give us what we need to keep our course.' A little prayer?' said Jack. 'To a constellation?' To what it represents,' said Aven. But I don't believe in what it represents,' said Jack. Prayers aren't for the deity,' said Aven. 'They're for you, to recommit yourself to what you believe.' Can't you do that without praying to a dead Greek god?' Sure,' said Aven. 'But how often would anyone do that, if not in prayer?

  James A. Owen

  Prayer, Believe, Wind

  James A. Owen (2015). “Dawn of the Dragons: Here, There Be Dragons; The Search for the Red Dragon”, p.212, Simon and Schuster

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• Well, life isn't a cakewalk, is it?! Eighty-nine percent of the world's most valuable art was created by men living in rat-infested flats. You think Velásquez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the luxuries of central heating and twenty-four-hour pizza delivery?!

  Marisha Pessl

  Art, Men, Thinking

  Marisha Pessl (2013). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.432, Penguin UK

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• She could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot. She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down on four.

  Gloria Naylor

  Stars, Moon, Hands

  Gloria Naylor (2017). “Mama Day: A Novel”, p.6, Open Road Media

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• I understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess.

  Jon Krakauer

  College, Years, Parent

  "Into the Wild". Adventure, Biography, Drama, 2007.

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• I'm about to commence four years of obeying the cause of a bruiser on a horse. I refuse to put down what might be the last book I see for months.

  Tamora Pierce

  Horse, Book, Years

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• But when a man has had only four hours' sleep he isn't sentimental. He sees things as they are: that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of justice; hideous, witless justice.

  Albert Camus

  Sleep, Men, Light

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• I acknowledge that four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is.

  Voltaire

  Soul, Volume, Metaphysics

  "Voltaire – The Philosophical Works".

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• He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Views, Two

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

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