Reflexes Quotes - Page 3

It's a game of habit, or repetition. You can't play one way in practice and another way in a game. It's a reflex. The game is so quick you don't have time to think.

Bill Sharman

Leadership, Sports, Thinking

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No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.

Thomas Carlyle

Art, Character, Men

Thomas Carlyle (1839). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays”, p.2

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Ben yanked Hi sideways as spikes snapped from the wall…Once again, only Ben’s reflexes had saved him. “Please stop doing that!” Ben barked. “Please keep doing that!” Hi warbled.

Kathy Reichs

Wall, Sideways, Please

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For me chivalry isn't dead; it's an involuntary reflex.

Jim Butcher

Chivalry, Involuntary

Jim Butcher (2002). “Summer Knight: Book four of The Dresden Files”, p.107, Penguin

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Then why was his tongue in your mouth? Was he conducting a clinical test of your gag reflex?" He smiled, but not nicely. "How is your gag reflex, Ms. Lane? Are you a hair trigger?" Barrons likes to use sexual innuendo to try to shut me up. I think he expects the well-raised southern belle in me will think eew and back off. Sometimes, I do think eew, but I don't back off. "I'm a spitter, if that's what you're asking." I flashed him a too-sweet smile. "Didn't look that way to me. I think you're a swallower. His tongue was halfway to China and you were still taking it." "Jealous?

Karen Marie Moning

Sweet, Jealous, Thinking

Karen Marie Moning (2011). “Faefever”, p.76, Hachette UK

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Curran struck at my wrist. His fingers were cat-quick, but I had spent my life honing my reflexes, and he missed. “Well, look at that.” I studied my free wrist. “Denied. Good-bye

Ilona Andrews

Cat, Bye, Looks

Ilona Andrews (2009). “Magic Strikes”, p.45, Penguin

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These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, acording to his mood. He misuses them quite ruthlessly - despite the respectful way he has to talk about them in public - to put him to bed, to take his mind off the hands of the clock, to relax the nagging of his pyloric spasm, to gossip him out of his melancholy, to trigger the conditioned reflexes of his colon.

Christopher Isherwood

Wise, Book, Hands

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Have you been drinking this morning? How did you miss me? I swear I’ve fought old women with better reflexes. (Takeshi) The fact you fight old women tells me just how rusty you’ve become. What? Your ego needed the boost and they were the only ones you could find you could beat? (Savitar)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Morning, Drinking, Fighting

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There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares.

Jim Butcher

Hands, Touching You, Knowing

Jim Butcher (2010). “The Dresden Files Collection 7-12”, p.1584, Penguin

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It's a reflex. Hear a bell, get food. See an undead, throw a knife. Same thing, really.

Ilona Andrews

Knives, Bells, Undead

Ilona Andrews (2012). “Magic Bites: A Special Edition of the First Kate Daniels Novel”, p.11, Penguin

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to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap

Alain de Botton

Believe, Mean, Light

Alain de Botton (2007). “The Architecture of Happiness”, p.121, Penguin UK

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Of the primary emotions, fear is the one that bears most directly on survival. Children show fear. Adults try not to, maybe because it's shameful, or, in some circumstances, dangerous. The fear response is automatic, though, and your body runs through its reflexes whether you want it to or not.

Sebastian Junger

Running, Children, Survival

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You can’t blame a fella for kissing the prettiest girl in New York, can you, sister?” Sam’s grin was anything but apologetic. Evie brought up her knee quickly and decisively, and he dropped to the floor like a grain sack. “You can’t blame a girl for her quick reflexes now, can you, pal?

Libba Bray

Girl, New York, Kissing

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Jared had his back to the wall, which Kami thought was a reflex when he was uncomfortable. She wanted to shield him. “He was doing some—Zen jogging,” she claimed. Jared flicked her an incredulous glance. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Zen jogging. I wasn’t wearing that many clothes because—that’s part of the process. You’re meant to commune with the elements. Normally, I wouldn’t have worn my jeans, but I put them on because I know the English are a modest people.

Sarah Rees Brennan

Wall, Jeans, Clothes

Sarah Rees Brennan (2012). “Unspoken”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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Joy is the reflex of terror.

Victor Hugo

Joy, Terror

Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.488, Modern Library

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The mental act of sensation which issues in reflex movement is so simple as to defy analysis.

Samuel Alexander

Simple, Issues, Analysis

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A person does feel sheepish picking on journalists, a class already so richly despised that if a planeload of them crashed in flames, most people would smile from pure reflex.

Garrison Keillor

Flames, Class, People

Garrison Keillor (1994). “The Book of Guys: Stories”, Penguin Group USA

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Judging other people is such a natural and reflex phenomenon that even when somebody advises everybody not to judge anybody, actually he never realised that he has already judged that people judge others.

Anuj

People, Judging, Natural

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There is a tendency among many shallow thinkers of our day to teach that every human act is a reflex, over which we do not exercise human control. They would rate a generous deed as no more praiseworthy than a wink, a crime as no more voluntary than a sneeze. . . Such a philosophy undercuts all human dignity. . . All of us have the power of choice in action at every moment of our lives.

Fulton J. Sheen

Philosophy, Exercise, Choices

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Discipline is no longer literal obedience but intelligent obedience, for discipline aims at obedience coupled with activity of will. Once discipline weakens and vanishes, as it does towards the latter stages of the fire fight, and the crowd instinct possesses the soldier, then will he, if training has formed those necessary mental reflexes, surrender himself to the will of his leader; this is where leadership supplants discipline without destroying it.

J. F. C. Fuller

Fighting, Intelligent, Fire

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(Propaganda) proceeds by psychological manipulations, character modifications, by creation of stereotypes useful when the time comes - The two great routes that this sub-propaganda takes are the conditioned reflex and the myth

Jacques Ellul

Character, Two, Manipulation

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Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Famous Love, Heart, Flames

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1854). “The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions”, p.284

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"Death," said Akiva. His life was leaving him fast now that he no longer held his wound. His eyes just wanted to drift closed. "I'm ready." "Well, I'm not. I hear it's dull, being dead." She said it lightly, amused, and he peered up at her. Had she just made a joke? She smiled. Smiled. He did, too. Amazed, he felt it happening, as if her smile had triggered a reflex in him. "Dull sounds nice," he said, letting his eyes flutter closed. "Maybe I can catch up on my reading."

Laini Taylor

Nice, Reading, Eye

"Daughter of Smoke and Bone". Book by Laini Taylor, September 27, 2011.

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Until I became a parent, I thought children just naturally knew how to catch a ball, that catching was an instinctive biological reflex that all children are born with, like knowing how to operate a remote control or getting high fevers in distant airports.

Dave Barry

Funny, Baby, Children

Dave Barry (1994). “The World According to Dave Barry”, Outlet

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A bird maintains itself in the air by imperceptible balancing, when near to the mountains or lofty ocean crags; it does this by means of the curves of the winds which as they strike against these projections, being forced to preserve their first impetus bend their straight course towards the sky with divers revolutions, at the beginning of which the birds come to a stop with their wings open, receiving underneath themselves the continual buffetings of the reflex courses of the winds.

Leonardo da Vinci

Ocean, Mean, Science

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