Trimming Quotes

• The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.

  Dean Koontz

  Hands, Pieces, Literature

  Dean Koontz (2007). “Fear Nothing: A Novel”, p.193, Bantam

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• There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan.

  Herman Melville

  Political, Intellectual, Patriotism

  "Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War". Book by Herman Melville, 1860.

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• When you have less revenue coming in the door, you have more money going out the door. You have to find ways of trimming.

  Mike Lee

  Doors, Going Out, Way

  5 Copy quote

• Many a family tree needs trimming

  Kin Hubbard

  Family, Tree, Needs

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• Concision in art is a necessity and an elegance. The verbose painter bores: who will get rid of all these trimmings?

  Edouard Manet

  Art, Elegance, Painter

  13 Copy quote

• Gandalf: Confound it all, Samwise Gamgee. Have you been eavesdropping? Sam: I ain't been droppin' no eaves sir, honest. I was just cutting the grass under the window there, if you'll follow me. Gandalf: A little late for trimming the verge, don't you think? Sam: I heard raised voices. Gandalf: What did you hear? Speak. Sam: N-nothing important. That is, I heard a good deal about a ring, and a Dark Lord, and something about the end of the world, but... Please, Mr. Gandalf, sir, don't hurt me. Don't turn me into anything... unnatural.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Hurt, Cutting, Dark

  58 Copy quote

• Whether or not you agree that trimming and cooking are likely to lead on to downright forgery, there is little to support the argument that trimming and cooking are less reprehensible and more forgivable. Whatever the rationalization is, in the last analysis one can no more than be a bit dishonest than one can be a little bit pregnant. Commit any of these three sins and your scientific career is in jeopardy and deserves to be.

  Charles Thomas Jackson

  Science, Careers, Support

  17 Copy quote

• Religion is like the fashion, one man wears his doublet slashed, another lashed, another plain; but every man has a doublet; so every man has a religion. We differ about the trimming.

  John Selden

  Fashion, Men, Religion

  4 Copy quote

• We have a small, tight family. I left home at a young age and the best thing for me was to go home at Christmas-time and spend time with my family and friends. It's kind of funny, most people do turkey and all the trimmings, but we would have a big seafood festival because it's the only time of the year that we'd eat it. We never really went caroling, but once in a while we'd got out for a sleigh ride

  Jimmy Roy

  Funny Christmas, Home, Years

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• A genuine revival means a trimming of personal lamps.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  Mean, Lamps, Revival

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 521, 1895.

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• The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?

  Jerry Pournelle

  Writing, Rose, Sitting

  13 Copy quote

• Colour is a creative element, not a trimming.

  Piet Zwart

  Creative, Elements, Colour

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• I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings.

  Diane Ackerman

  Hate, Age, Possibility

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Deep Play”, p.116, Vintage

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• Lent is the time for trimming the soul and scrapping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent is about taking stock of time, even religious time. Lent is about exercising the control that enables us to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard of its own accord we have the stamina to yes to its twists and turns with faith and hope. Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want to be.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Religious, Exercise, Effort

  25 Copy quote

• Excess in apparel is another costly folly. The very trimming of the vain world would clothe all the naked ones.

  William Penn

  Excess, World, Naked

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.28, Courier Corporation

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• A beautiful eyelash is an important adjunct to the eye. The lashes may be lengthened by trimming them occasionally in childhood. Care should be taken that this trimming is done neatly and evenly, and especially that the points of the scissors do not penetrate the eye.

  Eliza Bisbee Duffey

  Beautiful, Taken, Eye

  Eliza Bisbee Duffey (1877). “The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Etiquette: A Complete Manual of the Manners and Dress of American Society. Containing Forms of Letters, Invitations, Acceptances and Regrets. With a Copious Index”

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• Christmas is a time of little time.
  How we get there is a mystery.
  Racing madly mall-to-mall, we climb
  Into fields of sunlit harmony.
  Shopping, cooking, clearing walks and yards,
  Trimming house and tree while working, too;
  Making phone calls, wrapping, writing cards,
  As all worn out we do what we must do
  So that this day of joy might joy renew.

  Nick Gordon

  Writing, Phones, Shopping

  4 Copy quote

• The ribbons! The wrappings! The tags! And the tinsel! The trimmings! The trappings!

  Dr. Seuss

  Christmas, Ribbons, Tag

  Dr. Seuss (1995). “Six by Seuss”, Prop Pub Juv

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• There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying in to Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands saying that they're going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses. There's a message there.

  Gary Ackerman

  Hands, Luxury, People

  3 Copy quote

• Learning isn't acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired.

  Criss Jami

  Information, Acquiring Knowledge, Clutter

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.61, Criss Jami

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• Trimming consists of clipping off little bits here and there from those observations which differ most in excess from the mean, and in sticking them onto those which are too small; a species of 'equitable adjustment,' as a radical would term it, which cannot be admitted in science.

  Charles Babbage

  Mean, Data, Here And There

  Charles Babbage, Anthony Hyman (1989). “Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage”, p.124, Cambridge University Press

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• There's no doubt I was a bit of a misfit in the Hollywood of the forties. The race for glamour left me far behind. I didn't really want to keep up. I wanted my stardom without the usual trimmings. Because of this, I was branded a rebel at the very least. But I don't regret that for a minute. My appetite was my own and I simply wouldn't have it any other way.

  Veronica Lake

  Regret, Race, Doubt

  Veronica Lake, Donald M. Bain (1971). “Veronica”

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• The weight of the old world is stifling, and trying to shovel its weight off your life is tiring just to think about. The constant shuttling of opinions is tiring, and the shuffling of papers across desks, the chopping of logic and the trimming of attitudes. There must, somewhere, be a simpler, more violent world.

  Hilary Mantel

  Attitude, Thinking, Trying

  Hilary Mantel (2013). “Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien”, p.147, HarperCollins UK

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• I have changed my mind, and changed the trimmings of my cap this morning; they are now such as you suggested.

  Jane Austen

  Morning, Mind, Caps

  Jane Austen (2012). “The Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.38, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys.

  Golda Meir

  Artist, Storm, Bouquets

  17 Copy quote