Quality Quotes - Page 24

• This afternoon held that special quality of mournful emptiness I've connected with late Sunday afternoons ever since childhood: the feeling of having nothing to do.

  Margaret Atwood

  Sunday, Childhood, Feelings

  Margaret Atwood (1999). “The Edible Woman”, Emblem Editions

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• So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.” Apple’s design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

  Walter Isaacson

  Running, Art, Simple

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Steve Jobs”, p.126, Simon and Schuster

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• Before, I was always trying to make my relationships work by means of willpower and forced affability. This time I didn't have to strive for anything. A quality of ease spread over us.

  Charles Baxter

  Mean, Always Trying, Ease

  "The Feast of Love: A Novel". Book by Charles Baxter, May 1, 2001.

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• But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day.

  James Joyce

  Humanity, Age, Generations

  "Dubliners".

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• I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company.

  Walter Isaacson

  Running, Jobs, Moving

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set: Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Einstein”, p.692, Simon and Schuster

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• From the first time he'd met her, he'd sensed an air of contradiction about her. She was very much a woman, but still retained a waiflike quality. She could be brash, and at times deliberately suggestive, yet she was painfully shy. She was incredibly easy to get along with, yet she had few friends. She was a talented artist in her own right, but so self-conscious about her work that she rarely completed a piece and preferred to work with other people's art and ideas.

  Charles de Lint

  Art, Ideas, Air

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• To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.

  Henry James

  Strong, Book, Imagination

  Henry James (1994). “Henry James: selected works”, Random House Value Publishing

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• I did not consider him to be any kind of a genius. I considered him deeply lacking in the area that mattered most in life. Star quality.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Stars, Genius, Kind

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• If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Hazards, Matter, Fortune

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.223, Pan Macmillan

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• Around us the night creatures have their say. We are surrounded by a symphony of crickets and frogs. Neither of us feels the need to speak, and I suppose that is one of the qualities I find comforting in Kartik. We can be alone together.

  Libba Bray

  Night, Symphony, Comforting

  Libba Bray (2010). “The Sweet Far Thing”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

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• The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Art, Nature, Light

  Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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• If you think of someone's good qualities as the umeboshi in an onigiri it's as if their qualities are stuck to their back! Maybe the reason people get jealous of each other is because they can see so clearly the umeboshi on other people's backs.

  Natsuki Takaya

  Jealous, Thinking, People

  "Fictional character: Tohru Honda". "Fruits Basket", 1998 - 2006.

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• My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. . . . Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world--qualities that stick to the writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them.

  Italo Calvino

  Writing, Cities, People

  "Six Memos For This Millennium" by Sam Cooney, therumpus.net. November 22, 2010.

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• ...once I falsely hoped to meet the beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Excellent, Form, Unfolding

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2005). “Frankenstein”, p.184, Prestwick House Inc

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• There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Agency, Sensual, Vision

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• The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not by the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis.

  Cornel West

  Color, Skills, White

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• Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.

  Don DeLillo

  Talking, Once Upon A Time, Narrative

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Cosmopolis”, p.64, Pan Macmillan

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• You're easily distracted by the pattern of the cloth and can't see the quality of the threads.

  Maria V. Snyder

  Patterns, Thread, Distracted

  Maria V. Snyder (2012). “Fire Study”, p.34, Harlequin

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• A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairy lands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Real, Love Is, Flames

  Theodore Dreiser (2016). “Sister Carrie”, p.230, Simon and Schuster

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• The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.

  William Shakespeare

  Kings, Rain, Heart

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 4, sc. 1, l. [182]

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• But I am constant as the Northern Star, Of whose true fixed and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament.

  William Shakespeare

  Stars, Firmament, Fixed

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 3, sc. 1, l. 59

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• How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant--has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?

  Antonio Gramsci

  Strong, People, Parent

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• It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Love, Heart, Character

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Entertainment is a sacred pursuit when done well. When done well, it raises the quality of human life.

  Michael Chabon

  Done, Sacred, Entertainment

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• The mother...swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood.

  Victor Hugo

  Mother, Children, Eye

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