Prodigies Quotes - Page 2

• Convulsions in nature, disorders, prodigies, miracles, though the most opposite of the plan of a wise superintendent, impress mankind with the strongest sentiments of religion.

  David Hume

  Wise, Opposites, Miracle

  David Hume (1957). “The Natural History of Religion”, p.42, Stanford University Press

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• What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster... what a contradiction, what a prodigy

  Blaise Pascal

  Inspiration, Men, Monsters

  Blaise Pascal (2015). “Pensees: Thoughts on Religion”, p.133, Letcetera Publishing

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• There various news I heard of love and strife,Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,The fall of favourites, projects of the great,Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.

  Alexander Pope

  Stars, War, Fall

  Alexander Pope (1819). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: In Three Volumes Complete : with His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements, Together with All His Notes, as They Were Delivered to the Editor a Little Before His Death : Together with the Commentary and Notes of Mr. Warburton”, p.244

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• Many people used to call me a child prodigy, but I never thought that. I knew that I had learned everything, that I had very good circumstances.

  Michala Petri

  Children, People, Used

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• Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine, and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies,omens, oracles, judgments, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every pagewe soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous, and that, though this inclination may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated.

  David Hume

  Battle, Oracles, May

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• And yes, again, that was it exactly. A retyper and not a writer. A prodigy and not a genius.

  John Green

  Genius, Colin Singleton

  John Green (2008). “An Abundance of Katherines”, p.91, Penguin

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• The first book I could call mine, my first book, was a picture book, The Magic Monkey - it was adapted from an old Chinese legend by a thirteen-year-old prodigy named Plato Chan with the help of his sister.

  Nick Flynn

  Plato, Book, Years

  "The Ticking Is the Bomb" by Nick Flynn, www.esquire.com. January 24, 2008.

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• Ronan merely invested a look with as much contempt as he could muster. A lady reached over the top of Noah to pat Matthew's head fondly before continuing down the aisle. She didn't seem to care that he was fifteen, which was all right, because he didn't, either. Both Ronan and Declan observed this interaction with the pleased expressions of parents watching their prodigy at work.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Expression, Parent, Looks

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• If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Achieve, Torture

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.268, Vintage

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• It is only when aggression is legitimate that one can expect prodigies of valour.

  Michel Ney

  War, Aggression, Valour

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• Unless you're a true prodigy, you're going to have to practice for a while being bad before you get any good. And it will seem like a waste of time. I remember that feeling well. But don't worry about wasting time, because it'll be so worth it. It's my experience that in the end, life lessons and guitar lessons begin to blur in all sorts of interesting ways.

  Brad Paisley

  Life Lesson, Guitar, Practice

  Brad Paisley, David Wild (2012). “Diary of a Player: How My Musical Heroes Made a Guitar Man Out of Me”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• An audience is perhaps unnecessary to the soul-searching mystic, but it is vital to the magician, the maker of prodigies.

  Domenico Gnoli

  Soul, Unnecessary, Makers

  Source: observer.com

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• Child prodigy is a curse because you've got all those terrible possibilities.

  Itzhak Perlman

  Children, Possibility, Terrible

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• Destiny, quite often, is a determined parent. Mozart was hardly some naive prodigy who sat down at the keyboard and, with God whispering in his ears, let music flow from his fingertips. It's a nice image for selling tickets to movies, but whether or not God has kissed your brow, you still have to work. Without learning and preparation, you won't know how to harness the power of that kiss.

  Twyla Tharp

  Nice, Kissing, Destiny

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• If Beethoven is a prodigy of man, Bach is a miracle of God.

  Gioachino Rossini

  Men, Miracle, Ifs

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• I believe that every man has in his soul a passion for treasure-hunting, which will often drive a coward into prodigies of valour.

  John Buchan

  Believe, Passion, Men

  John Buchan (2017). “Prester John”, p.114, BookRix

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• When I noticed how my own children were effortlessly able to use all this sophisticated technology, at first I thought, 'My children are prodigies!' But then I noticed all their friends were like them, so that was a bad theory.

  Don Tapscott

  Children, Technology, Use

  Interview with Sean Wise, www.theglobeandmail.com. April 19, 2007.

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• Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.

  Orson Welles

  Real, Looks

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• I have never considered myself a prodigy. Others have used that term, but I never bought in to it.

  Joshua Waitzkin

  Used, Term

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• Oddly enough, my partner went on Prodigy when it first came out, and I ended up playing with some of that stuff!.

  Bobby Sherman

  Stuff, Firsts, Enough

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• You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy.

  Franz Liszt

  Children, Imagine, Spoil

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• He'd met other prodigies in mathematical competitions. In fact he'd been thoroughly trounced by competitors who probably spent literally all day practising maths problems and who'd never read a science-fiction book and who would burn out completely before puberty and never amount to anything in their future lives because they'd just practised known techniques instead of learning to think creatively.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Book, Math, Thinking

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• In life's last scene what prodigies surprise,
  Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
  From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
  And Swift expires a driveller and a show.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Wise, Eye

  Samuel Johnson (1820). “The Poems of Dr. Samuel Johnson. To which is Prefixed, a Life of the Author”, p.39

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• What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?

  Blaise Pascal

  Truth, Pride, Men

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• Mia and I had been together for more than two years, and yes, it was a high school romance, but it was still the kind of romance where I thought we were trying to find a way to make it forever, the kind that, had we met five years later and had she not been some cello prodigy and had I not been in a band on the rise - or had our lives not been ripped apart by all this -I was pretty sure it would've been.

  Gayle Forman

  School, Years, Two

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