Avoided Quotes - Page 9

On the outside, Oscar simply looked tired, no taller, no fatter, only the skin under his eyes, pouched from years of quiet desperation, had changed. Inside, he was in a world of hurt. He saw black flashes before his eyes. He saw himself falling through the air. He knew what he was turning into. He was turning into the worst kind of human on the planet: an old bitter dork. Saw himself at the Game Room, picking through the miniatures for the rest of his life. He didn't want this future but he couldn't see how it could be avoided, couldn't figure his way out of it. Fukú.

Junot Diaz

Hurt, Fall, Tired

Junot Diaz (2008). “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, p.268, Faber & Faber

5 Copy quote

Show source
No, death hadn't changed [Willie] much. But just in case, I avoided looking directly into his eyes. It was standard policy for dealing with vampires. He was a slime bucket, but now he was an undead slime bucket.

Laurell K. Hamilton

Eye, Vampire, Buckets

Laurell K. Hamilton (2002). “Guilty Pleasures: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.7, Penguin

4 Copy quote

Show source
It’s funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes. The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature,” he said. “You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.

Mitch Albom

Mistake, Fighting, Men

Mitch Albom (2007). “For One More Day”, p.96, Hachette UK

4 Copy quote

Show source
Besides, humans aren't prey. They are our natural enemies. They are to be avoided.

Cynthia Leitich Smith

Enemy, Natural, Prey

Cynthia Leitich Smith (2010). “Tantalize”, p.54, Candlewick Press

4 Copy quote

Show source
Christmas in the Underworld was NOT my idea. If I'd known what was coming, I would've called in sick. I could've avoided an army of demons, a fight with a Titan, and a trick that almost got my friends and me cast into eternal darkness. But no, I had to take my stupid English exam.

Rick Riordan

Stupid, Fighting, Army

81 Copy quote
A world without right or wrong was a world that did not want itself, anything other than itself, or anything not those two things, but that still wanted something. A world without right or wrong invited you over, complained about you, and gave you cookies. Don't leave, it said, and gave you a vegan cookie. It avoided eye contact, but touched your knee sometimes. It was the world without right or wrong. It didn't have any meaning. It just wanted a little meaning.

Tao Lin

Eye, Two, Cookies

4 Copy quote
of all the weapons of destruction that man could invent, the most terrible-and the most powerful-was the word. Daggers and spears left traces of blood; arrows could be seen at a distance. Poisons were detected in the end and avoided. But the word managed to destroy without leaving clues.

Paulo Coelho

Life, Powerful, Distance

6 Copy quote
One of the few certainties in life is that persons of certainty should certainly be avoided.

Willy Russell

Certainty In Life, Life Is, Should

17 Copy quote
I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment. The pain was no worse than the quick sting of a booster shot. And yet thinking about this makes me ache again. How is it that as a child I knew I should have been loved more? Is everyone born with a bottomless emotional resevoir?

Amy Tan

Children, Pain, Disappointment

Amy Tan (1995). “The Hundred Secret Senses: A Novel”, p.15, Penguin

4 Copy quote

Show source
His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Gratitude, Past, Men

Robert Louis Stevenson (2010). “Markheim, Jekyll And The Merry Men”, p.242, Canongate Books

4 Copy quote

Show source
Usually I avoided college students, whom I considered brutal, wrapped up in themselves, particularly in their youth, in which they found material for drama or an excuse for their own boredom. I did not care for young people.

Francoise Sagan

Drama, College, People

FRANCOISE SAGAN (1955). “BONOUR TRISTESSE”

7 Copy quote

Show source
The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.

Mark Twain

Christian, Taken, Biblical

12 Copy quote
At least I was true. My intellectual abilities gave me a release, and an excuse. I shunned company because I preferred books; and the dreams I confided to my father were of becoming a scholar in good earnest, and going to University. It was unheard-of several shocked governesses were only too quick to tell me, when I spoke a little too boldly -- but my father nodded and smiled and said, 'We'll see.' Since I believed my father could do anything -- except of course make me pretty -- I worked and studied with passionate dedication, lived in hope, and avoided society and mirrors.

Robin McKinley

Dream, Father, Book

6 Copy quote
Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.

Brennan Manning

Greatness, Soul, Growth

Brennan Manning (2015). “Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”, p.87, NavPress

17 Copy quote

Show source
I think there is something beautiful in reveling in sadness. The proof is how beautiful sad songs can be. So I don’t think being sad is to be avoided. It’s apathy and boredom you want to avoid. But feeling anything is good, I think. Maybe that’s sadistic of me.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Beautiful, Song, Sadness

12 Copy quote
In my opinion there is no other salvation for civilization and even for the human race than the creation of a world government with security on the basis of law. As long as there are sovereign states with their separate armaments and armament secrets, new world wars cannot be avoided.

Albert Einstein

War, Science, World Government

53 Copy quote
Temptations, of course, cannot be avoided, but because we cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, there is no need that we should let them nest in our hair.

Martin Luther

Hair, Bird, Temptation

166 Copy quote
Christianity is a lifestyle - a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established "religion" (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one's "personal Lord and Savior" . . . The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.

Richard Rohr

Christian, Jesus, Selfish

220 Copy quote
The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.

Mark Twain

Biblical, Discovery, Innovation

Quoted in Albert B. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)

31 Copy quote

Show source
A friend in need is a friend to be avoided.

Samuel Hall Lord

Funny, Friendship, Negative

38 Copy quote
I hate funerals and would not attend my own if it could be avoided

Robert Tappan Morris

Funny, Death, Hate

7 Copy quote
The foremost reason that happiness is so hard to achieve is that the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind...It seems that every time a pressing danger is avoided a new and more sophisticated threat appears on the horizon...Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Spiritual, Mind, Comfort

7 Copy quote
If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and over 60,000 aggravate assaults would have been avoided yearly.

John R. Lott Jr.

Gun, Murder, States

58 Copy quote
Like taxes, radioactivity has long been with us and in increasing amounts; it is not to be hated and feared, but accepted and controlled. Radiation is dangerous, let there be no mistake about that-but the modern world abounds in dangerous substances and situations too numerous to mention. ... Consider radiation as something to be treated with respect, avoided when practicable, and accepted when inevitable.

Ralph Lapp

Hate, Mistake, Long

4 Copy quote
Zionism is a subject that all but a few are either too ignorant or too frightened to tackle and expose, but it must be made public and the web dismantled if global tyranny is to be avoided in the very near future.

David Icke

Ignorance, Ignorant, Made

8 Copy quote