Precise Quotes - Page 20

• A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Language, Difficulty, Translations

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• I grew up with a pencil. A pencil was my computer at the time and so drawing, drawing, drawing and the tools of drawing where the usual ones and eventually then you graduated from the tools when the work increases and you start to draw by freehand as precise as possible and as accurate as possible, and I was pretty good at that.

  Massimo Vignelli

  Drawing, Usual, Tools

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter.

  Peter De Vries

  Diction, Cookies, Shapes

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• Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.

  Voltaire

  Law, Uniforms, Clear

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• The word 'vegetable' has no precise botanical meaning in reference to food plants, and we find that almost all parts of plants have been employed as vegetables - roots (carrot and beet), stems (Irish potato and asparagus), leaves (spinach and lettuce), leaf stalk (celery and Swiss chard), bracts (globe artichoke), flower stalks and buds (broccoli and cauliflower), fruits (tomato and squash), seeds (beans), and even the petals (Yucca and pumpkin).

  Charles Heiser

  Flower, Vegetables, Squash

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• I don't know that there were any rules for documentary photography. As a matter of fact, I don't think the term was even very precise. So as far as I'm concerned, the kind of photography I did in the FSA was the kind of photography I still do today, because it is based on passionate concern for the human condition. That is the basis of all the work that I do.

  Jack Delano

  Photography, Thinking, Passionate

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• To call oneself a libertarian marxist today is not to look backwards but to be committed to the future. The libertarian marxist is not an academic but a militant. He is well aware that it is up to him to change the world - no more, no less. History throws him on the brink. Everywhere the hour of the socialist revolution has sounded. Revolution - like landing on the moon - has entered the realm of the immediate and possible. Precise definition of the forms of a socialist society is no longer a utopian scheme. The only utopians are those who close their eyes to these realities.

  Daniel Guerin

  Eye, Moon, Reality

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• It's superb to be out in the early, early morning before the sun comes up. There's this sense of being super-alive. You're in on a secret that all the dull, sleeping people don't know about. Unlike them, you're alert and aware of existing right here in this precise moment between what happened and what's going to happen.

  Tim Tharp

  Morning, Sleep, People

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• The applause of all but very good men is no more than the precise measure of their possible hostility.

  Alec Guinness

  Men, Good Man, Applause

  Alec Guinness (1998). “My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor”, Penguin Mass Market

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• I have just learned a delicious French usage. On wedding invitations when they say the mass is at noon they mean one o'clock -when they say at noon precise they mean half after twelve - and when they say at very precisely noon they mean noon.

  Alice B. Toklas

  Mean, Twelve, Noon

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• The unlucky hand dealt to clear and precise writers is that people assume they are superficial and so do not go to any trouble inreading them: and the lucky hand dealt to unclear ones is that the reader does go to some trouble and then attributes the pleasure he experiences in his own zeal to them.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Reading, Hands, People

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• Once one's up against it, the precise manner of one's death has obviously small importance.

  Albert Camus

  Death, Importance

  Albert Camus (1960). “Collected fiction”

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• The dusk runs down the lane driven like hail;
  Far off a precise whistle is escheat
  To the dark; and then the towering weak and pale.

  Allen Tate

  Running, Sunset, Dark

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.18, Macmillan

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• The process of philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow.

  Bertrand Russell

  Real, Philosophical, Reflection

  Bertrand Russell (1972). “Russell's Logical atomism”

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• I like talking to engineers best. They built bridges, they're very precise, very disciplined, yet I find they have roving minds.

  Ralph Richardson

  Science, Talking, Bridges

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• There are so many different kinds of people in America, with so many different boiling points, that we don't know how to fight with each other. The set piece that shapes and contains quarrels in homogeneous countries does not exist here. The Frenchman is an expert on the precise gradations of espèce de and the Italian knows exactly when to introduce the subject of his other's grave, but no American can be sure how or when another will react, so we zap each other with friendliness to neutralize potentially dangerous situations.

  Florence King

  Country, Fighting, Italian

  Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.83, Macmillan

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• A conviction is in the nature of a verdict and judgment, and therefore it must be precise and certain.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Judgment, Conviction, Certain

  "King v. Harris". 1797.

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• No fruit has a more precise marked period of maturity, than love; if neglected to be gathered at that time, it will certainly fall to the ground and die away.

  Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

  Love, Fall, Maturity

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• The precise statement of any problem is the most important step in its solution.

  Ed Bliss

  Important, Steps, Problem

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• Historians ought to be precise, faithful, and unprejudiced; and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should make them swerve from the way of truth.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Hatred, Faithful, Way

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1809). “Don Quixote”, p.62

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• There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.

  Anton Chekhov

  Discipline, People, Plenty

  Letter to V.A. Posse, February 15, 1900.

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• I think it's very useful for you folks (reporters) to try your damndest to be precise. And don't repeat things that are inaccurate if you can possibly avoid it. And when you see things that are inaccurate, knock them down -- because there's a bucket of it floating around.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Thinking, Trying, Buckets

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• Discoveries are always accidental; and the great use of science is by investigating the nature of the effects produced by any process or contrivance, and of the causes by which they are brought about, to explain the operation and determine the precise value of every new invention. This fixes as it were the latitude and longitude of each discovery, and enables us to place it in that part of the map of human knowledge which it ought to occupy. It likewise enables us to use it in taking bearings and distances, and in shaping our course when we go in search of new discoveries.

  Benjamin Thompson

  Distance, Discovery, Use

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• All distinctions of birth or of rank have been abolished. All citizens, whether native or adopted, are placed upon terms of precise equality. All are entitled to equal rights and equal protection.

  James K. Polk

  Rights, Citizens, Birth

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• Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
  Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affection,
  Figures pedantical--these summer flies
  Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Three, Phrases

  'Love's Labour's Lost' (1595) act 5, sc. 2, l. 407

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