Brilliant Quotes - Page 40

• At the time, my 6-year-old kept thinking my character's name was "Sam Alone," which is kind of brilliant. The funny came out of Sam's sad core: the alcoholic, the sex addict, the person who thinks he's God's gift.

  Ted Danson

  Sex, Character, Thinking

  "The Best TV Show That's Ever Been". Interview with Brian Raftery, www.gq.com. September 27, 2012.

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• If 'heartache' sounds exaggerated then surely you have never gone to your garden one rare morning in June to find that the frost, without any perceptible motive, any hope of personal gain, has quietly killed your strawberry blossoms, tomatoes, lima and green beans, corn, squash, cucumbers. A brilliant sun is now smiling at this disaster with an insenstive cheerfulness as out of place as a funny story would be if someone you loved had just died.

  Ruth Stout

  Morning, Garden, June

  Ruth Stout (1987). “How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back: A New Method of Mulch Gardening”, Fireside

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• The force behind the movement of time is a mourning that will not be comforted. That is why the first event is known to have been an expulsion, and the last is hoped to be a reconciliation and return. So memory pulls us forward, so prophecy is only brilliant memory - there will be a garden where all of us as one child will sleep in our mother Eve, hooped in her ribs and staved by her spine.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Mother, Time, Children

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• Comparing the Brooklyn that I know with Manhattan is like comparing a comfortable and complacent duenna to her more brilliant and neurotic sister.

  Carson McCullers

  Manhattan, Brooklyn, Compare

  Carson McCullers (2005). “The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I believe that the experience of childhood is irretrievable. All that remains, for any of us, is a headful of brilliant frozen moments, already dangerously distorted by the wisdoms of maturity.

  Penelope Lively

  Believe, Maturity, Childhood

  Penelope Lively (2006). “Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived”, p.9, Penguin UK

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• Virtue, without the graces, is like a rich diamond unpolished--it hardly looks better than a common pebble; but when the hand of the master rubs off the roughness, and forms the sides into a thousand brilliant surfaces, it is then that we acknowledge its worth, admire its beauty, and long to wear it in our bosoms.

  Jane Porter

  Hands, Long, Grace

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.104

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• There will be ups, there will be downs, there will be sideways. I can just tell you I have been hired, I have been fired, I have been lauded, I have been vilified. I've said some of the most brilliant things that just by accident appeared on my tongue, and I've said some of the dumbest things that you could imagine. But each day - even the day that I knew I was going to be fired - I looked forward to because I've always believed that tomorrow was going to be the best day of my life.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Each Day, Tongue, Tomorrow

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• A brilliant strategy is, certainly, a matter of intelligence, but intelligence without audaciousness is not enough.

  Garry Kasparov

  Chess, Matter, Strategy

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• A hen's egg is, quite simply, a work of art, a masterpiece of design and construction with, it has to be said, brilliant packaging!

  Delia Smith

  Art, Food, Eggs

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• Advisors are generally brilliant theoreticians but wretched practitioners.

  Francoise Giroud

  Advisors, Wretched

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• Books, of which the principles are diseased or deformed, must be kept on the shelf of the scholar, as the man of science preserves monsters in glasses. They belong to the study of the mind's morbid anatomy, and ought to be accurately labelled. Voltaire will still be a wit, notwithstanding he is a scoffer; and we may admire the brilliant spots and eyes of the viper, if we acknowledge its venom and call it a reptile.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Book, Eye, Men

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• There is a policy in manner. I have heard one, not inexperienced in the pursuit of fame, give it his earnest support, as being the surest passport to absolute and brilliant success.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Giving, Support, Fame

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1850). “The optimist”, p.232

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• Separate from the other unnamed billions who walk the earth, each of these little groups of three or five or twelve, brought together by the shuffle of chance, then welded by blood, sees in itself the whole of earth, or all that matters of it. What happens to one of the three or five or twelve will happen to them all. Whatever grief or triumph may touch any one will touch every one, as they are carried forward into the unknowable under the brilliant, terrifying sun which nourishes all.

  Belva Plain

  Family, Grief, Blood

  Belva Plain (2009). “Evergreen”, p.441, Dell

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• I am to consider the many advantages arising from a frequent use of oaths, curses, and imprecations. In the first place, this genteel accomplishment is a wonderful help to discourse; as it supplies the want of good sense, learning, and eloquence. The illiterate and stupid, by the help of oaths, become orators; and he, whose wretched intellects would not permit him to utter a coherent sentence, by this easy practice, excites the laughter, and fixes the attention, of a brilliant and joyous circle.

  Mary Collyer

  Laughter, Stupid, Practice

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• I consider him Stalin one of the greatest persons in the history of mankind. In the history of Russia he was, in my opinion, even greater than Lenin. Until Stalin's death I was anti-Stalinist, but I always regarded him as a brilliant personality.

  Alexander Zinoviev

  Russia, Personality, Opinion

  Interview with Gennadiy Petrov, November 05, 2006.

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• History more often records the brilliant successes and spectacular defeats of contending forces than the effect of war on the common people.

  Mildred Cable

  War, People, Records

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• You're about to be the conductor on the most brilliant, runaway train in showbiz. Good luck you'll love it.

  Dermot O'Leary

  Good Luck, Runaway, Conductor

  Twitter post from Mar 27, 2015

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• I was obsessed with country music when I was a kid, and it's definitely had a huge influence on the way I write songs. I was always attracted to songs that had a brilliant pun or a clever turn of phrase, but came from a dark, bitter place. As a writer, I've always gravitated towards that feeling.

  Teddy Thompson

  Country, Song, Clever

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• Chloe Honum's brilliant first book The Tulip-Flame traces an identity forming within radically divergent but interlocking systems: a family traumatized by the mother's suicide, a failed relationship, the practice of ballet, a garden-each strict, exacting. And with 'a crow's sky-knowing mind,' Honum in every case transfigures emotion by way of elegant language and formal restraint. Chloe Honum is 'one astounding flame' of a poet, and I predict a long-lasting one.

  Claudia Emerson

  Mother, Suicide, Book

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• Look at the world of books nowadays. People just download books. They don't go to a bookstore. Amazon is wiping out Borders and Barnes and Noble. Those are brilliant examples of ephemeralization doing more with less at a better price.

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Book, People, Wiping Out

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• A brilliant liar; he has total recall.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Liars, Total Recall, Recalls

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• Operating in an unlit world, the unconscious mind is a brilliant detective.

  Jo Coudert

  Mind, World, Detectives

  Jo Coudert (2003). “Advice from a Failure”, p.30, iUniverse

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• The darling schemes and fondest hopes of man are frequently frustrated by time. While sagacity contrives, patience matures, and labor industriously executes, disappointment laughs at the curious fabric, formed by so many efforts, and gay with so many brilliant colors, and, while the artists imagine the work arrived at the moment of completion, brushes away the beautiful web, and leaves nothing behind.

  Timothy Dwight V

  Beautiful, Disappointment, Gay

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• no one who has seen an angel ever mistakes it for a ghost. Angels are remarkable for their warmth and light, and all who see them speak in awe of their irridescent and refulgent light, of brilliant colors, or else of the unbearable whiteness of their being. You are flooded with laughter, happiness.

  Sophy Burnham

  Laughter, Mistake, Angel

  Sophy Burnham (2011). “A Book of Angels: Reflections on Angels Past and Present, and True Stories of How They Touch Our L ives”, p.35, Penguin

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• I'm good at my job for a midwestern American. Maybe it's because people in fashion often mistake common sense for genius. I mean, some model walks down the runway in an impossible outfit, and I state the obvious ? no one is going to wear that ? and people are like, you're brilliant!.

  David Wolfe

  Fashion, Jobs, Mistake

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