Vague Quotes - Page 8

• I learnt too late that what is most important to us is always most precious at the moment it occurs, and it is precious in its absolute immediacy and not as some vague confirmation of future directions; since the only certain fact, aside from death, is the flimsiness of everything.

  Luke Davies

  Important, Too Late, Facts

  Luke Davies (2002). “Isabelle the Navigator”, p.78, Penguin

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• I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it. How sweet to think of! my extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thanksgiving, Running, Sweet

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.373, Penguin

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• All writers have this vague hope that the elves will come in the night and finish any stories.

  Neil Gaiman

  Writing, Night, Stories

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• Hey. Not sure what’s going on-gonna go find out. Be careful and don’t do anything stupid. Don’t come after me-your better on your own. See you. F I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the note. Okay, so Fang had looked up vague in the dictionary and this was what it had said to write.

  James Patterson

  Stupid, Writing, Bed

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• For as long as he could remember, he’d suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.

  Douglas Adams

  Long, Feelings, Nagging

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.77, Pan Macmillan

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• Then I realized what separated us: what I thought about him could not reach him; it was psychology, the kind they write about in books. But his judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to exist. And it was true, I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Book, Writing, Psychology

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• She frowned at him. "That sounds vaguely like a threat." "It's not vague and it's not a threat. It's clearly blackmail.

  P. C. Cast

  Sound, Threat, Blackmail

  P.C. Cast (2010). “Brighid's Quest”, p.298, Harlequin

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• The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we've done fine tonight. Even Death can't spoil it.

  Ray Bradbury

  Death, Running, Pain

  Ray Bradbury (1962). “Something wicked this way comes: a novel”, Bantam

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• It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Believe, Artist, People

  "The Quotable Feynman".

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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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• Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I'm a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like a spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber's itch — terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean.

  Rube Goldberg

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

  "Rube Goldberg: Inventions!".

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• 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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• 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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• 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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• How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Determination, Past, Age

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.101

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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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• 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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• 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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• On vague wording of drone strike criteria: “Are you going to just drop a hellfire missile on Jane Fonda? Are you going to drop a missile on Kent State? That’s gobbledygook.

  Rand Paul

  Drones, Criteria, States

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• Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning for the end of the world.

  Emile M. Cioran

  World, Melancholy, Ends

  "A Short History of Decay". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1949.

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• People watch movies - and it's vague ideas, it's vague notions, but people pick up on these things, that they are supposed to think certain ways or that they're not supposed to think, basically, and they don't.

  Crispin Glover

  Thinking, Ideas, People

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com. 2003.

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• You can never get rich, or start the creative power into action, by sending out unformed longings and vague desires.

  Wallace D. Wattles

  Creative, Desire, Action

  Wallace D. Wattles, General Press (2016). “The Science of Getting Rich”, p.26, GENERAL PRESS

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