Sharp Edges Quotes

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  Don't necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Leadership, Rough Edges, Vision

  Donald Rumsfeld (2001). “Public Statements of Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, 2001”

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• I've learned that some memories surprise you and reveal a sharp edge just when you least expect it.

  Pittacus Lore

  Memories, Surprise, I've Learned

  5 Copy quote

• Virtue often trips and falls over the sharp edge of poverty.

  Eugene Sue

  Fall, Poverty, Virtue

  6 Copy quote

• YOU MUST LEARN THE COMPASSION PROPER TO YOUR TRADE" "And what's that?" "A SHARP EDGE.

  Terry Pratchett

  Compassion, Trade, Edges

  5 Copy quote

• I'll tell you, my friends: it's all in the nerves. The nerves that tense and relax as you approach the edges of companionship and love. The razor-sharp edges of companionship and love.

  Roberto Bolano

  Relax, And Love, Nerves

  9 Copy quote

• The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are.

  Joe Meno

  Past, Cities, Glitter

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• Principles are like sheaths. It doesn't have the sharp edge to cut something, but it can cover that sharp edge. So that no one gets hurt.

  Choi Woo-seok

  Hurt, Drama, Cutting

  8 Copy quote

• The world comes to us in fragments and shards. Whatever stories we shape from our days, we're always dealing with gaps, blank-spots, and blackouts - and in handling all these breakages, we are, at all times, so incredibly intimate with sharp edges, the unending knife-like moments of failure and joy in our lives.

  Alex Lemon

  Knives, Joy, Stories

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Carrie doesn't seem to talk about anything with sharp edges. Maybe she's afraid they might poke her and then she'd burst.

  Lisa McMann

  Might, Poke, Carrie

  Lisa McMann (2010). “Wake”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was kind of tumbler. The sale as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. This isn't suffering. It's erosion.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Erosion, Rocks, People

  8 Copy quote

• In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Lonely, Romance, Ruins

  Elizabeth Kostova (2010). “The Swan Thieves”, p.302, Hachette UK

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• Those who know do not speak; Those who speak do not know. Stop up the openings, Close down the doors, Rub off the sharp edges. Unravel all confusion. Harmonize the light, Give up contention: This is called finding the unity of life.

  Laozi

  Giving Up, Light, Doors

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• It is the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews a man's character from the fountain upwards.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Spring, Flower, Character

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1993). “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Merry Men and Other Stories”, p.105, Wordsworth Editions

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• I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn’t have the stomach to use the sharp edge). The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death.

  Yann Martel

  Jobs, Blue, Hands

  Yann Martel (2015). “Life of Pi - CANCELED”, p.194, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Who wants a bag of bones?” he said, with absolute sincerity. “I don’t want to hurt myself on the sharp edges of the woman I’m bedding.

  Charlaine Harris

  Hurt, Bags, Want

  Charlaine Harris (2010). “Dead in the Family: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel”, p.146, Penguin

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• And his paths shall be many, and who shall know his name, for he shall be beorn among us many times, in many guises, as he has been and ever will be, time without end. His coming shall be like the sharp edge of the plow, turning our lives in furrows form out of the places where we lie in our silence. The breaker of binds; the forger of chains. The maker of futures; the unshaper of destiny. -from Commentaries on the Prophecies of the Dragon, by Jurith Dorine, Right Hand to the Queen of Almoren, 742 AB, the Third Age

  Robert Jordan

  Queens, Lying, Destiny

  Robert Jordan (2009). “The Dragon Reborn: Book 3 of the Wheel of Time”, p.7, Hachette UK

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• Mi Corazon. Mi alma. Son tuyos." My heart. My soul. They are yours, he whispered against the generous curve of her breast as a million sensations, all of them hot, all of them rich, all of them straddling the razor-sharp edge of pain, ripped through his loins like a flash fire and stripped him of everything but consciousness. "Tuyo. Todo que tengo es tuyo." Yours. Everything I have is yours.

  Cindy Gerard

  Pain, Heart, Son

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• He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep.

  Hector Hugh Munro

  Philosophy, Sleep, Cat

  Saki, Hector Hugh Munro (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)”, p.670, Delphi Classics

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• You can never do enough for the dead. You search around for comfort but there is no comfort; there never was and never will be. There is only a gradual wearing away of the sharp edges, so that you don't feel ambushed at every turn, as if you saw the dead suddenly rounding the corner.

  Martha Grimes

  Saws, Comfort, Enough

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• Economic problems have no sharp edges. They shade off imperceptibly into politics, sociology, and ethics. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the ultimate answer to every economic problem lies in some other field.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Lying, Answers, Shade

  "The Economics of Peace". Book by Kenneth E. Boulding, p. 252, 1945.

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• The university is well structured, well tooled, to turn out people with all the sharp edges worn off, the well-rounded person. The university is well equipped to produce that sort of person, and this means that the best among the people who enter must for four years wander aimlessly much of the time questioning why they are on campus at all, doubting whether there is any point in what they are doing, and looking toward a very bleak existence afterward in a game in which all of the rules have been made up, which one cannot really amend.

  Mario Savio

  Mean, Years, Games

  "An End To History". Humanity magazine, www.historyisaweapon.com. December 1964.

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• All my novels are about the ambiguities that lie beneath the sharp edges of the law.

  Scott Turow

  Lying, Law, Ambiguity

  "To hell with Perry Mason". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. November 24, 2002.

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• Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village-the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.

  Terry Pratchett

  Mountain, Meat, Village

  Stephen Briggs, Terry Pratchett (2008). “The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld”, p.24, Random House

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• Even as a child, she had preferred night to day, had enjoyed sitting out in the yard after sunset, under the star-speckled sky listening to frogs and crickets. Darkness soothed. It softened the sharp edges of the world, toned down the too-harsh colors. With the coming of twilight, the sky seemed to recede; the universe expanded. The night was bigger than the day, and in its realm, life seemed to have more possibilities.

  Dean Koontz

  Stars, Children, Twilight

  Dean Koontz (2004). “Midnight”, p.15, Penguin

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• Fearlessness is a fool's boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that's the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who's worth a damn feels fear. It's the use you make of it that counts.

  Joe Abercrombie

  Believe, Fighting, Men

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