Unwritten Quotes - Page 4

• This is the real unwritten rule: You don't want what you know you shouldn't. And I haven't just broken that rule. I have wrecked it, smashed it, and still... And still I want.

  Elizabeth Scott

  Real, Broken, Want

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• This place is full of unwritten rules.

  Alexander Gordon Smith

  Unwritten Rules

  Alexander Gordon Smith (2010). “Escape from Furnace 1: Lockdown”, p.64, Faber & Faber

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• Something about first love defies duplication. Before it, your heart is blank. Unwritten. After, the walls are left inscribed and graffitied. When it ends, no amount of scrubbing will purge the scrawled oaths and sketched images, but sooner or later, you find that there’s space for someone else, between the words and in the margins.

  Tammara Webber

  Wall, Heart, First Love

  Tammara Webber (2011). “Where You Are”, p.8, Tammara Webber

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• And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.

  John Green

  Book, Thinking, Kind

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.45, Penguin

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• Tell my daughter Elizabeth -- no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.

  Philippa Gregory

  Daughter, Rights, Age

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• All I need to understand is the unwritten law of warriors," he said firmly. "And women and children are never sent to do our work without our protection." He pointed to the trees, emphatically. "That's the language I share with them.

  Melina Marchetta

  Children, Warrior, Law

  Melina Marchetta (2015). “The Complete Lumatere Chronicles”, p.162, Penguin UK

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• There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.

  Ian Mcewan

  Character, Self, Views

  FaceBook post by Ian McEwan from Dec 19, 2012

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• I'm not the color of my skin. I'm a story. One with a past and a future unwritten.

  Heidi W. Durrow

  Past, Color, Skins

  Heidi W. Durrow (2011). “The Girl Who Fell from the Sky”, p.264, Algonquin Books

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• What you have done to this point cannot be undone. What you do next... It is still unwritten.

  Mitch Albom

  Done, Next, Stills

  Mitch Albom (2012). “The Time Keeper”, p.108, Hachette UK

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• Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments come at a cost.

  Sheryl Sandberg

  Powerful, Successful, Men

  Sheryl Sandberg (2014). “Lean In for Graduates”, p.26, Knopf

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• There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Laughing, Heaven, Together

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2014). “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, p.55, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.

  Theodore Roethke

  Believe, Miracle, Poetry

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• Live your life with arms wide open. Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten.

  Natasha Bedingfield

  Happy Birthday, Book, Live Your Life

  Song: Unwritten, Album: Unwritten, 2004

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• 'Take offense at the drop of a hat' is the unwritten eleventh commandment.

  Richard Dawkins

  Doubt, Atheism, Hats

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• Economic theorists, like French chefs in regard to food, have developed stylized models whose ingredients are limited by some unwritten rules. Just as traditional French cooking does not use seaweed or raw fish, so neoclassical models do not make assumptions derived from psychology, anthropology, or sociology. I disagree with any rules that limit the nature of the ingredients in economic models.

  George Akerlof

  Economic Models, Psychology, Cooking

  "An Economic Theorist's Book of Tales". Book by George Akerlof, October 26, 1984.

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• There's a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don't know what it is. But I've got it.

  Ronnie Wood

  Music, Running, Kind

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• One of the most singular facts about the unwritten history of this country is the consummate ability with which Southern influence, Southern ideas and Southern ideals, have from the very beginning even up to the present day, dictated to and domineered over the brain and sinew of this nation.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Country, Ideas, Southern

  Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.97, Rowman & Littlefield

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• ... there's a large core of powerlessness which is balanced against the unwritten contract that says that if you behave, you'll be okay. No wonder people pay so much attention to knowing the rules, to knowing the right people, to not making waves, to never making errors -- to not risking, trying, innovating.

  Judith M Bardwick

  Knowing, Errors, People

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• Those works whose ideal has not as much living reality and, as it were, personality as the beloved one or a friend had better remain unwritten. They would at least never become works of art.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Art, Reality, Personality

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• Some laws, though unwritten, are more firmly established than all written laws.

  Seneca the Younger

  Law, Written

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• It is contended that those who have been bred at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Westminster, that the public sentiment within each of those schools is high-toned and manly; that, in their playgrounds, courage is universally admired, meanness despised, manly feelings and generous conduct are encouraged: that an unwritten code of honor deals to the spoiled child of rank, and to the child of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, purges their nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done to make them gentlemen.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Children, School

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.567, Modern Library

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• A man of true honor protects the unwritten word which binds his conscience more scrupulously, if possible, than he does the bond a breach of which subjects him to legal liabilities, and the United States, in aiming to maintain itself as one of the most enlightened nations, would do its citizens gross injustice if it applied to its international relations any other than a high standard of honor and morality.

  Grover Cleveland

  Men, Honor, Citizens

  "A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897". Book by James D. Richardson, 1896-1899.

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• I'm rather relaxed about death. From quite an early age I've regarded it as part of the deal, the unwritten guarantee that comes with your birth certificate.

  Bob Monkhouse

  Funny, Humor, Guarantees That

  Bob Monkhouse (2012). “Crying With Laughter: My Life Story”, p.329, Random House

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• There's a kind of unwritten rule: Don't say anything at all, and everything will be fine. It's a producer's medium. The directors aren't there to make any decisions. They're not going to change anything.

  Robert Carlyle

  Decision, Say Anything, Directors

  "Robert Carlyle on California Solo, American vs. British TV, and the appeal of fairy tales". interview with Sam Adams, film.avclub.com. December 20, 2012.

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• The unconscious is the unwritten history of mankind from time unrecorded.

  Carl Jung

  Mankind, Unconscious

  Carl Gustav Jung, Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler (1969). “Psychology and religion: West and East”

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