Attempting Quotes - Page 13

• Yes. To write a novel is to risk my sanity. The deeper I get into the suffering and conflict of the characters, into the very situations and thoughts and feelings that make the novel worthwhile, the worse I feel, and the more likely I am to be severely depressed when the book is finished. There is no avoiding this: it is the result of attempting to tell all you know, to reach for the stars, to write what matters.

  Anne Rice

  Stars, Book, Character

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• There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence that haunts us until we make our peace with them and let them go. The problem, however, is that we tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts. Hence we often encounter them only late at night, in the corridors of our dreams.

  Peter Rollins

  Dream, Memories, Night

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• Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.
  It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world.

  William Cobbett

  Patience, Men, Quality

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• George Bush, within a week of this [the 9/11 attacks], in a speech, attempting to distinguish US from the Muslim fundamentalists, said Our God is the God who named the stars. The problem is: two-thirds of all stars that have names, have Arabic names. I don't think he knew this. That would confound the point that he was making.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Stars, Thinking, Names

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• It troubles me that we are so easily pressured by purveyors of technology into permitting so-called "progress" to alter our lives without attempting to control it-as if technology were an irrepressible force of nature to which we must meekly submit.

  Hyman Rickover

  Nature, Science, Technology

  United States. Congress. Joint Economic Committee, Hyman George Rickover (1982). “Economics of Defense Policy: Adm. H.G. Rickover : Hearing Before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, Ninety-seventh Congress, Second Session”

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• In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Men, Mind

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Analysis of Mind”, p.54, Bertrand Russell

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• First, In showing in how to avoid attempting impossibilities. Second, In securing us from important mistakes in attempting what is, in itself possible, by means either inadequate or actually opposed to the end in view. Thirdly, In enabling us to accomplish our ends in the easiest, shortest, most economical, and most effectual manner. Fourth, In inducing us to attempt, and enabling us to accomplish, object which, but for such knowledge, we should never have thought of understanding.
  On the ways that a knowledge of the order of nature can be of use.

  John Herschel

  Mistake, Knowledge, Mean

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• Active conservation [of gorillas] involves simply going out into the forest, on foot, day after day after day, attempting to capture poachers, killing-regretfully-poacher dogs, which spread rabies within the park, and cutting down traps.

  Dian Fossey

  Dog, Cutting, Feet

  "Naturalist Dian Fossey Slain at Camp in Rwanda : American Was Expert on Mountain Gorillas; Assailants Hunted". articles.latimes.com. December 29, 1985.

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• Lobbying' is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators. It is the result and creation of a mixed economy-of government by pressure groups. Its methods range from mere social courtesies and cocktail-party or luncheon "friendships" to favors, threats, bribes, blackmail.

  Ayn Rand

  Party, Government, Pressure Groups

  Ayn Rand (1990). “The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought”, p.241, Penguin

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• Child development: Most damaging course of action is attempting to keep children from experience or protect them from pain, for it is this time that children learn that life is a magic thing, if "not a rose garden." The parent's role is primarily to stand by with a good supply of band-aids.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Children, Pain, Garden

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• Attempting to satisfy the passions that rage inside us and the longings that motivate us, we invent spirituality, lean on political solutions, create new villains, turn our backs on Jesus, and blame a thousand tyrannies- but we never come to terms with the source of the problem deep within the heart and inclination of every human being.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Jesus, Passion, Heart

  Ravi Zacharias (2010). “Has Christianity Failed You?”, p.41, Zondervan

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• A speaker who is attempting to move people to thought or action must concern himself with Pathos.

  Aristotle

  Moving, People, Speech

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• I have told you of the Spaniard who always put on his spectacles when about to eat cherries, that they might look bigger and more attempting. In like manner I made the most of my enjoyment s: and through I do not cast my cares away, I pack them in as little compass as I can, and carry them as conveniently as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others.

  Robert Southey

  Looks, Care, Littles

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• There was the man who seemed to be attempting to decieve his ball and lull it into a false sense of security by looking away from it and then making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Golf, Men, Lightning

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• Human beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair oboots to fit him, unless they are either made to his measure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in the shape of their feet? If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model.

  John Stuart Mill

  Spiritual, Men, Sheep

  John Stuart Mill “Annotated On Liberty with English Grammar Exercises: by John Stuart Mill (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, Powell Publications, LLC

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• Here, then, is what I wanted to tell you of my architecture. I created it with courage and idealism, but also with an awareness of the fact that what is important is life, friends and attempting to make this unjust world a better place in which to live.

  Oscar Niemeyer

  Badass, Bad Ass, Important

  "The Curves of Time: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer". Book by Oscar Niemeyer, 1998.

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• There are three ways in which a ruler can bring misfortune on his army: By commanding the army to advance or to retreat, being ignorant of the fact that it cannot obey. This is called hobbling the army. By attempting to govern an army in the same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant of the conditions which obtain in an army. This causes restlessness in the soldier's minds. By employing the officers of his army without discrimination, through ignorance of the military principle of adaptation to circumstances. This shakes the confidence of the soldiers.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, Military, War

  Sun Tzu (2010). “The Art of War”, p.10, Cosimo, Inc.

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• It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the master work. Now, I'm beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I'm happy at least that I didn't wait twenty years.

  Paulo Coelho

  Fear, Procrastination, Years

  "The Alchemist". Book by Paulo Coelho, 1988.

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• We're not attempting to circumcise rules.

  Bill Cowher

  Sports, Nfl, Dumb

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• Too many young people are being taught to give up their dreams before they have any experience attempting to pursue them.

  Robert Fritz

  Dream, Giving Up, Teaching

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• One thing that makes the adventure of working in our field particularly rewarding, especially in attempting to improve the theory, is that... a chief criterion for the selection of a correct hypothesis... seems to be the criterion of beauty, simplicity, or elegance.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Adventure, Science, Simplicity

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• Don't you know that boys don't cry?' Adam grinned. 'Shall I tell you something I've only recently discovered,' I replied, not attempting to hide the tears rolling down my face and not the least bit ashamed of them. 'Boys don't cry, but real men do.

  Malorie Blackman

  Real, Boys, Men

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• Walking out in the middle of a funeral would be, of course, bad form. So attempting to walk out on one's own was beyond the pale.

  Steve Hockensmith

  Funeral, Zombie, Would Be

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• I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Purpose, Impossible, Better Life

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• It is great good health to believe as the Hindus do that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one s dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality. There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant.

  Clive Barker

  Dream, Art, Believe

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