Vague Quotes - Page 12

• From time to time, from the endless flow of our mental imagery, there emerges unexpectedly something that, vague though it may be, seems to carry the promise of a form, a meaning, and, more important, an irresistible poetic charge.

  Leo Lionni

  Promise, Important, Flow

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• The fictive is an emormous territory it turns out, its boundaries vague, and there is little certainty about where it begins and ends.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Littles, Territory, Boundaries

  Siri Hustvedt (2011). “The Summer Without Men: A Novel”, p.87, Macmillan

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• For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown

  A. R. Ammons

  Needs, Unlimited, Certain

  A. R. Ammons (1996). “Set in motion: essays, interviews, and dialogues”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Mean, Outcomes, Tiny

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• The reward of the young scientist is the emotional th
  rill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience The reward of the old scientist is the sense of having seen a vague sketch grow into a masterly landscape.

  Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

  Emotional, World, Landscape

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• I don't see how it's doing society any good to have so many members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams and clear memories of hating them.

  Paul Lockhart

  Memories, Hate, Diagrams

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• After all we speak of people 'taking refuge' in vagueness -the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.

  J. L. Austin

  People, Vagueness, Chance

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• People frequently comment on the emptiness in one night stands, but emptiness here has always been just another word for darkness. Blind encounters writing sonnets no one can ever read. Desire and pain communicated in the vague language of sex.
  None of which made sense to me until much later when I realized everything I thought I'd retained of my encounters added up to so very little, hardly enduring, just shadows of love outlining nothing at all.

  Mark Z. Danielewski

  Sex, Pain, Writing

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• Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

  Raymond Smullyan

  People, Criticism, Critics

  Raymond M. Smullyan (2013). “The Tao Is Silent”, p.25, Harper Collins

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• In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!

  Anton Chekhov

  Character, Psychology, Essentials

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• I have a hard time getting motivated to do something that seems like a career move. I've gotten into vague trouble with my agents for turning down work that I thought was exploitative.

  Mira Sorvino

  Moving, Hard Times, Careers

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• After giving a student the basic mating patterns and strategies you must begin giving them advanced concepts. At first these ideas will not make sense, many players will have a vague idea of what you are talking about but nothing more. Even a fragmented understanding of these concepts will prove useful though, and eventually they will improve as these lessons are assimilated by repetition and example.

  Jeremy Silman

  Player, Talking, Ideas

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• I never said it. Honest. Oh, I said there are maybe 100 billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said "billion" many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said "billions and billions." For one thing, it's too imprecise. How many billions are "billions and billions"? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion? "Billions and billions" is pretty vague. When we reconfigured and updated the series, I checked-and sure enough, I never said it.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Numbers, People

  "Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium". Book by Carl Sagan, 1997.

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• Religions are vague, of course. This means that they are easy to follow -you can interpret their prescriptions as you like. but it also means that it is easy to slip up -there is always some injunction you are violating. But Islam has no religious establishment - no popes, no bishops - that can declare by fiat which is the correct interpretation. As a result, the decision to oppose the state on the grounds that is insufficiently Islamic belongs to anyone who wishes to exercise it.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Religious, Islamic, Mean

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• As human beings, we can encompass a vague feeling of what the universe is, and all in this funny little brain here - so there has to be something more than just brain, it has to be something to do with spirit as well.

  Jane Goodall

  Feelings, Brain, Littles

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• I'm a little vague on the details but aren't doughnuts just the most marvellous thing to ever come out of organised religion?

  Catherine Webb

  Details, Littles, Doughnut

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• Puberty was very vague. I literally locked myself in a room and played guitar.

  Johnny Depp

  Inspirational, Guitar, Rooms

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• The love of God is not something vague or generic; the love of God has a name and a face: Jesus Christ.

  Pope Francis

  Jesus, Names, Faces

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• We live in a vague world. And it gets vaguer all the time. In this environment, the power of the specific, measurable and useful promise made and kept is difficult to overstate.

  Seth Godin

  Promise, World, Environment

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• In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Ideas, America

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4281, Delphi Classics

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• A goal that is not in writing is like cigarette smoke: It drifts away and disappears. It is vague and insubstantial. It has no force, effect, or power. But a written goal becomes something that you can see, touch, read, and modify if necessary.

  Brian Tracy

  Writing, Cigarette Smoke, Goal

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• Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one.

  C. S. Lewis

  Long, Direct

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• Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Music, Beautiful, Simple

  Krishna Dutta, Rabindranath Tagore (1991). “Purabi: A Miscellany in Memory of Rabindranath Tagore 1941-1991”

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• The hypothesis of the supernatural and/or a supreme being is vague, unfounded, and inapplicable in any practical fashion

  PZ Myers

  Fashion, Hypothesis, Practicals

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• Art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Art, Soul, Improvement

  Wassily Kandinsky (1914). “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, p.54, Courier Corporation

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