Numbers Quotes - Page 15

• Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside. One moment, you'd start to call her to tell her a snippet of news or to vent about your awful day before realizing you did not have that right anymore; the next, you could not remember the digits of her phone number.

  Jodi Picoult

  Phones, Differences, Triumph

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “Handle with Care: A Novel”, p.331, Simon and Schuster

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• Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Stupid, Party, Believe

  Letter to Edgar Newton Eisenhower, teachingamericanhistory.org. November 08, 1954.

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• We did all the standard camp numbers: "Down By The Aegean," "I Am My Own Great-Great-Great-Great Grandpa," "This Land is Minos's Land.

  Rick Riordan

  Land, Grandpa, Standards

  Rick Riordan (2007). “The Sea of Monsters”, Disney-Hyperion

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• I kept the fingers of my left hand crossed all the time, while on my right-hand fingers I counted anything at all—steps to the refrigerator, seconds on the clock, words in a sentence—to keep my head occupied. The counting felt like something to hang on to, as if finding the right numbers might somehow crack the code on whatever system ran the slippery universe we were moving through.

  Mary Karr

  Moving, Hands, Left Hand

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• There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Lying, Telling The Truth, Infinite

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2005). “The Shadow of the Wind”, p.189, Penguin

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• Best-selling horror fiction is indeed necessarily conservative because it must entertain a large number of readers. It’s like network television. I’m your local cable access station.

  Thomas Ligotti

  Fiction, Television, Conservative

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• FALLING STARS: Do you remember still the falling stars that like swift horses through the heavens raced and suddenly leaped across the hurdles of our wishes -- do you recall? And we did make so many! For there were countless numbers of stars: each time we looked above we were astounded by the swiftness of their daring play, while in our hearts we felt safe and secure watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate, knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Horse, Stars, Fall

  Rainer Maria Rilke, Albert Ernest Flemming (1986). “Rainer Maria Rilke: Selected Poems”, p.210, Psychology Press

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• - he's finished with that; it's like an old clock that won't tell time but won't stop neither, with the hands bent out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm bell rusted silent, an old worthless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing.

  Ken Kesey

  Hands, Alarms, Meaning Nothing

  Ken Kesey (2016). “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, p.28, Hamilton Books

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• In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Success, Believe, Magic

  "A Glorious Waste Of Time" by Kris Broughton, bigthink.com. 2017.

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• Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Lessons, Importance

  Malcolm Gladwell (2008). “Outliers: The Story of Success”, p.88, Penguin UK

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• According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Funny, Motivational, Death

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• A piratical ghost story in thirteen ingenious but potentially disturbing rhyming couplets, originally conceived as a confection both to amuse and to entertain by Mr. Neil Gaiman, scrivener, and then doodled, elaborated upon, illustrated, and beaten soundly by Mr. Cris Grimly, etcher and illuminator, featuring two brave children, their diminutive but no less courageous gazelle, and a large number of extremely dangerous trolls, monsters, bugbears, creatures, and other such nastiness, many of which have perfectly disgusting eating habits and ought not, under any circumstances, to be encouraged.

  Neil Gaiman

  Children, Two, Ghost Stories

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• Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but giving up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair - these are the long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. You are as young as your faith and as old as your doubts; as young as you self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

  James E. Faust

  Giving Up, Self Confidence, Wrinkles

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• I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.

  Donna Tartt

  Stories, Might, Able

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.5, Vintage

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• I belong to the 8% of the world population who calm their apprehension by drowning it in numbers.

  Muriel Barbery

  Population, World, Calm

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• The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules. Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.

  Craig Ferguson

  Real, Mean, Love Is

  Craig Ferguson (2010). “Between the Bridge and the River: A Novel”, p.108, Chronicle Books

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• Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is still the same. It's bad with large numbers. It's still taken by particularity. It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces while all the rest go blindly by, never coming to mind and never really missed. . . . I can't tell you how much I pass over in silence.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Taken, Dark, People

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What’s your name?' she asked, and surprised herself. But for some reason, she wanted to know. Dean’s brother—he hadn’t been just some nameless Bad Guy Number Four. This vampire wasn’t,either. He had a name, a history, maybe even people who cared what happened to him. My name is none of your business,' he said, and continued to stare out the window, even though there was nothing but blurry brick out there. Can I call you None for short?

  Rachel Caine

  Brother, Names, People

  Rachel Caine (2009). “Carpe Corpus: The Morganville Vampires”, p.83, Penguin

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• As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their homes. The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.

  Philip Roth

  Home, America, Gutters

  Philip Roth (1995). “Sabbath's Theater”, p.109, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they? -that is, seem as if they had. And the river says,-'Why do ye trouble me with your looks?' And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a line, the first of them the biggest and clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand further away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, 'I'm coming! Beware of me! Beware of me!

  Thomas Hardy

  Eye, Rivers, Tree

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• The pretense in disputed elections is that the great conflict is between the two major parties. The reality is that there is a much bigger conflict that the two parties jointly wage against large numbers of Americans who are represented by neither party and against powerless millions around the world." (p. 65)

  Howard Zinn

  Party, Reality, Two

  Howard Zinn (2013). “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”, p.65, City Lights Books

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• There are quite a number of people in the reading-room; but one is not aware of them. They are inside the books. They move, sometimes, within the pages like sleepers turning over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Dream, Reading, Moving

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1930). “The Journal of My Other Self”

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• I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen. I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number. I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me. I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Air, Eagles, Water

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• Researchers from Britain's Keele University have found that swearing after an injury may help alleviate pain. Evidently, the pain that you feel is inversely proportional to the number of middle names you give Jesus.

  Stephen Colbert

  Jesus, Pain, Names

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• Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.

  Jane Yolen

  Memories, People, Holocaust

  Jane Yolen (1990). “The Devil's Arithmetic”, p.100, Penguin

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