Famous Quotes & Sayings

David Nicholls

I still find it absurdly difficult to concentrate on a novel if there's a phone or computer to hand; I have taken to locking them outside the room like noisy pets.

Derek Jacobi

I'd gone into that restaurant and sat down and the waitress had taken my order and everybody else had seen me with this what must have looked like this creature, this animal, sitting on the top of my head!

Denzel Washington

Cursed be the ground for our sake. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for us. For out of the ground we were taken, for the dust we are and to the dust we shall return.

Denise Levertov

We have the words in our pockets, obscure directions. The old ones have taken away the light of their presence....

Deb Caletti

Maybe sometimes you just feel like everything can be taken from you all at once.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Sometimes the most difficult things to see are those that have been right in front of us all along… We who have heard the glorious message of the coming of the Son of God, we who have taken upon us His name and have covenanted to walk in His path as His disciples—we must not fail to open our hearts and minds and truly see Him.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

It is said that any virtue when taken to an extreme can become a vice. Overscheduling our days would certainly qualify for this. There comes a point where milestones can become millstones and ambitions, albatrosses around our necks.

Dick Durbin

In going too far, they [presidents] have taken away the individual rights of American citizens.

Dick Durbin

Millions of Americans take vitamins safely every day, including me. Vitamins and mineral supplements taken in recommended doses are safe. It's the designer supplements that are worrisome.

Deepak Chopra

Every emotion is keyed into some bodily location, and taken all together, they form the emotional body.

Edward Forbes

In truth, ideas and principles are independent of men; the application of them and their illustration is man's duty and merit. The time will come when the author of a view shall be set aside, and the view only taken cognizance of. This will be the millennium of Science.

Abraham Lincoln

It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other.

The Hamas has taken the path of avoiding causing harm to Zionist interests outside of Palestine, not from weakness or lack of ability to do so, but because Hamas does not wish for further fronts to be opened against it around the world

Alexis de Tocqueville

When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. “Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.

Alexandre Dumas

So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the most astonishing deeds, and which, more then once, showed me that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only obstacle to the sucess of those projects which require rapid decision, and vigorous and determined execution. In reality, when you have once devoted your life to your enterprises, you are no longer the equal of other men, or, rather, other men are no longer your equals, and whosoever has taken this resolution, feels his strength and resources doubled.

On the day of the funeral, I was just taken by it all - I didn't want it to be forgotten.

Baruch Spinoza

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles, and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.

Auguste Rodin

Recently I have taken to isolating limbs, the torso. Why am I blamed for it? Why is the head allowed and not portions of the body? Every part of the human figure is expressive.

Augusten Burroughs

I don't read memoirs. But if you write a memoir, I would think you'd want people to know, "O.K., look, I've taken some liberties here." It's just a matter of being open with your readers.

Art Buchwald

Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, 'I am not a crook.' Jimmy Carter says, 'I have lusted after women in my heart.' President Reagan says, 'I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

I embrace technology and I just think that in 1984 when James Cameron wrote about the technology, everyone thought he was totally way out there and it was science fiction. Now it's almost reality what he talked about. The machines have taken over, except they have not become self-aware, like in Terminator. So this is really one thing that we have to watch out for, but I think technology is good.

Azar Nafisi

It is amazing how, when all possibilities seem to be taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom.

Aziz Ansari

I have never taken the high road, but I tell other people to 'cause then there's more room for me on the low road.

Aziz Ansari

When you meet someone you really like and connect with, I think that's very special, and not to be taken for granted.

Ayn Rand

Economics departments are dominated by Marxism, which is taken straight or on the rocks, in the form of Keynesianism.

Ayn Rand

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

Audie Murphy

I'm glad that it didn't take as long to get Shepard off the ground as it's taken this series. I'd begun to think the Congo would be ahead of us in the space race before Whispering Smith ever got on the air.

Bertrand Russell

We are ... led to a somewhat vague distinction between what we may call "hard" data and "soft" data. This distinction is a matter of degree, and must not be pressed; but if not taken too seriously it may help to make the situation clear. I mean by "hard" data those which resist the solvent influence of critical reflection, and by "soft" data those which, under the operation of this process, become to our minds more or less doubtful.

Bertrand Russell

The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.

Benjamin Cardozo

Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances. Substitute statute for decision, and you shift the center of authority, but add no quota of inspired wisdom.

Benjamin Cardozo

Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.

Ben Fountain

I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world, and machines - TV, telephone, cars - were still more or less ancillary, and computers were unheard of in everyday life.

Carl Sandburg

I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way.