Standstill Quotes - Page 2

• The best defence of the country is the fear of the fighter. If we are strong in fighters we should probably never be attacked in force. If we are moderately strong we shall probably be attacked and the attacks will gradually be bought to a standstill. . . . If we are weak in fighter strength, the attacks will not be bought to a standstill and the productive capacity of the country will be virtually destroyed.

  Hugh Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding

  Country, Strong, Air Power

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• It is a dangerous thing for the perfecting of our minds to gain applause by works that do not call forth the whole of our energies; for in that case one generally comes to a standstill.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Mind, Gains, Energy

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• It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive. It has come to a standstill; nothing withers, and fall is not ready to begin. There are no stars yet, just darkness.

  Tove Jansson

  Summer, Stars, Fall

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• The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Block, Car, Racing

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• The position of First Lady has no rules, just precedent, so its evolution has been at a virtual standstill for years. If Martha Washington didn't do it, then no one is sure it should be done.

  Paula Poundstone

  Years, Example, Done

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• If you say, 'You've made it,' then you kind of come to a standstill, and I don't think any actor wants to do that.

  Jenna Ushkowitz

  Thinking, Actors, Want

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• It is said that life is too short, and that’s quite true, unless you are lonely. Loneliness can bring time to its knees; an absolute and utter standstill.

  Jonathan Hull

  Lonely, Loneliness, Life Is Too Short

  Jonathan Hull (2001). “Losing Julia”, Island Books

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• But eternity is not temporality at a standstill. What is oppressive about the concept of the eternal is the justification, incomprehensible to us, that time must undergo in eternity and the logical conclusion of that, the justification of ourselves as we are.

  Franz Kafka

  Time, Eternity, Logical

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• In the war, you lose areas, but you recapture another area. So, it is difficult to tell whether you are losing or gaining or it was a standstill. No-one has this answer.

  Bashar al-Assad

  War, Answers, Losing

  The Associated Press Interview, www.foxnews.com. September 21, 2016.

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• He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess... the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leas to standstill or to anarchy.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Mistake, Vanity, Self

  "Lasker's Manual of Chess". Book by Emanuel Lasker, Published in New York: Dover, p. 338, 1960.

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• Whenever calamity howlers shake their heads and impress upon you that this, that, and the next dire catastrophe is to befall this nation or the nations of the world-such as, for example, that exhaustion of the world's oil supply will bring all transportation and machinery to a standstill through lack of lubrication, or that exhaustion of the earth's stores of coal will make life unlivable in these cold climates-just smile and reply that the worst troubles of all are those that never happen [and] that you prefer not to cross shaky bridges until you come to them.

  B. C. Forbes

  Bridges, Oil, Next

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• If, on thinking this, I look up to see if reality can quench my thirst, I see inexpressive facades, inexpressive faces, inexpressive gestures. Stones, bodies, ideas - all dead. All movements are one great standstill. Nothing means anything to me, not because it's unfamiliar but because I don't know what it is. The world has slipped away. And in the bottom of my soul - as the only reality of this moment - there's an intense and invisible grief, a sadness like the sound of someone crying in a dark room.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Grief, Sadness, Mean

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• At last the cold crept up my spine; at last it filled me from foot to head; at last I grew so chill and desolate that all thought and pain and awareness came to a standstill. I wasn't miserable anymore: I wasn't anything at all. I was a nothing-- a random configuration of molecules. If my heart still beat I didn't know it. I was aware of one thing only; next to the gaping fact called Death, all I knew was nothing, all I did meant nothing, all I felt conveyed nothing. This was no passing thought. It was a gnawing, palpable emptiness more real than the cold.

  David James Duncan

  Pain, Real, Heart

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• We must do jobs we detest because we are part of an organized society, and if everyone did what they wanted to do, the world would come to a standstill.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Jobs, Inspiration

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• Listen, global warming is a real problem, but it's not the end of the world. A 30-centimetre sea level rise is just not going to bring the world to a standstill, just like it didn't over the last 150 years.

  Bjorn Lomborg

  Real, Years, Sea

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• When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones. For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope; if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped to go rolling down.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, War, Moving

  Sun Tzu, Julius Caesar, Einhard, Niccolò Machiavelli, Carl von Clausewitz (2016). “Strategy Six Pack”, p.15, Lulu.com

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• When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing.

  Elizabeth von Arnim

  Dream, Book, Writing

  Elizabeth Von Arnim (2006). “Elizabeth and Her German Garden”, p.82, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• I'm the smartest man in the world. Once I wore a cape in public, and fought battles against men who could fly, who had metal skin, who could kill you with their eyes. I fought CoreFire to a standstill, and the Super Squadron, and the Champions. Now I have to shuffle through a cafeteria line with men who tried to pass bad checks. Now I have to wonder if there will be chocolate milk in the dispenser. And whether the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could do with his life.

  Austin Grossman

  Eye, Men, Champion

  "Unconventional Education Fuels Author's First Novel". Interview with James Hattori, www.npr.org. October 14, 2007.

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• Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill.

  George Eliot

  Skepticism

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• By that time it was already clear that the next prime minster was going to be Golda Meir, a woman whom I frankly detested - a mutual sentiment, I might add. I knew her as an opinionated, obstinate person, primitive in her outlook, rigid in her attitudes, with a genius for reaching and exploiting the deepest fears and prejudices of the Jewish masses. I was certain that with her as prime minister, all peace efforts would come to a total standstill.

  Uri Avnery

  Attitude, Effort, Add

  "My Friend, the Enemy". Book by Uri Avnery, 1986.

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• If somehow every volunteer vanished tomorrow, so much of this country would come to a standstill: schools, hospitals and libraries. You can't name an institution that doesn't depend on volunteers.

  Al Roker

  Country, School, Names

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• What the carburetor, sparkplug and self-starter are to an automobile, initiative, private enterprise and executive ability are to industry as a whole, including the wage earner, wage payer, wage spender and wage saver, i.e., the investor. If the sparkplug and self-starter get out of commission, the car will come to a standstill.

  William J. H. Boetcker

  Self, Car, Initiative

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• The idea of suicide, understandable as it is, does not seem commendable to me. We live in order to gain the greatest possible amount of spiritual development and self-awareness. As long as life is possible, even if only in a minimal degree, you should hang onto it, in order to scoop it up for the purpose of conscious development. To interrupt life before its time is to bring to a standstill an experiment which we have not set up. We have found ourselves in the midst of it and must carry it through to the end.

  Carl Jung

  Suicide, Spiritual, Self

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• We are reaching the point where the temperature standstill is becoming the major feature of the recent global warm period that began in 1980. In brief, the global temperature has remained constant for longer than it has increased."

  David Robert Whitehouse

  Temperature, Becoming, Reaching

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• The spring in Boston is like being in love: bad days slip in among the good ones, and the whole world is at a standstill, then the sun shines, the tears dry up, and we forget that yesterday was stormy.

  Louise Closser Hale

  Spring, Bad Day, Being In Love

  Louise Closser Hale (1912). “Her Soul and Her Body”

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