Command Quotes - Page 27

• I look sad because I don't have the courage to escape from you. And I think I don't want to understand the truth: for you, I am nothing but a dream. You like to play with life, you're not afraid of anything, not even of me. But I want you to know that I am not an object or a doll: I don't change faces on command, I like to sit down every day in the same place, on my own chair, and I know that you, you like to leave, to go to a new place every day.

  Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry

  Dream, Thinking, Play

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• George Smiley: [quoting an old letter from Bill Haydon about Jim Prideaux] He has that heavy quiet that commands. He's my other half. Between us we'd make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I'm vastly tickled by the compliment. He's virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge

  John le Carre

  Men, Eight, Feet

  "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy". www.imdb.com. 1979.

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• I'm not threatening you. I'm just informing you of police procedure. If you continue to obstruct me, I remove the obstruction, in this case you, and proceed to the next command.

  Eoin Colfer

  Police, Next, Threatening

  Eoin Colfer (2002). “Artemis fowl: the Arctic incident”

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• She long ago accepted the fact that happiness is like, swallows in spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Easter, Spring, Long

  "The White Witch".

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• Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself.

  Corrie Ten Boom

  Jesus, Healing, Men

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• I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Freedom, Women, Equality

  Charlotte Bronte (2004). “Jane Eyre”, p.66, Variocity

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• Man has free choice, or otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Men, Choices, Would Be

  Thomas Aquinas (1997). “Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas: Volume One”, p.787, Hackett Publishing

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• She will remain sane and she will live as she was meant to live, richly and deeply, among others of her kind, in full possession and command of her gifts.

  Michael Cunningham

  Kind, Possession, Sane

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• Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be.

  Francis Spufford

  Song, Reading, Tree

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• Tolerance obviously requires a non-contentious manner of relating toward one another’s differences. But tolerance does not require abandoning one’s standards or one’s opinions on political or public policy choices. Tolerance is a way of reacting to diversity, not a command to insulate it from examination.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Differences, Diversity, Choices

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• The ‘experimental’ writer, then, is simply following the story’s commands to the best of his human ability. The writer is not the story, the story is the story. See? Sometimes this is very hard to accept and sometimes too easy. On the one hand, there’s the writer who can’t face his fate: that the telling of a story has nothing at all to do with him; on the other hand, there’s the one who faces it too well: that the telling of the story has nothing at all to do with him

  Thomas Ligotti

  Writing, Fate, Hands

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• I admit that I myself am far from having a complete command of every topic I touch on, but my knowledge of my subject is always greater than the interest or the understanding of my auditors. You see, there is one very good thing about mankind; the mediocre masses make very few demands of the mediocrities of a higher order, submitting stupidly and cheerfully to their guidance

  Alfred de Vigny

  Stupid, Order, Understanding

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• Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.

  Saul Bellow

  Real, Boredom, Social

  Saul Bellow (2008). “Humboldt's Gift”, Penguin Classics

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• A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Believe, Men, Obedience

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.216, Modern Library

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• But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men- men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order- do we call it? - fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard or His forgiveness we must forever implore?

  Joshua Chamberlain

  Men, Air, Hands

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• The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Attitude, Men, Keys

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.177, Penguin

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• Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.

  W. H. Auden

  Selfish, Stupid, Voice

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• Spirit, who are you?' Andy demanded. Bobby remained silent, his entire body strained, his lips tightly together, his eyes bulging out. He was taking frantic, short breaths through his nose. His face was crimson. Spirit,' said Andy, 'I command you to tell us who you are in Jesus' name!' Don't you mention that name!' the spirit hissed and then cursed. I will mention that name again and again,' said Hank. You know that name has defeated you.

  Frank Peretti

  Jesus, Eye, Defeated You

  Frank Peretti (2012). “This Present Darkness: A Novel”, p.373, Simon and Schuster

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• Today a great shot for freedom was heard. I think it stands a chance of being heard forever. It marls a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. The beginning of the return to a statues of dignity we have not known for two thousand years. Yes, today was the first step back. My battle is done. Now I turn the command over to the soldiers.

  Leon Uris

  Thinking, Years, Two

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• He knew very well that love could be like the most beautiful singing, that it could make death inconsequential, that it existed in forms so pure and strong that it was capable of reordering the universe. He knew this, and that he lacked it, and yet as he stood in the courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia, watching diplomats file quietly out the gate, he was content, for he suspected that to command the profoundest love might in the end be far less beautiful a thing than to suffer its absence.

  Mark Helprin

  Beautiful, Strong, Singing

  Mark Helprin (2005). “A Soldier of the Great War”, p.155, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

  Albert Einstein

  Hate, Military, Civilization

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.10, Broadway Books

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• Rather than arriving five hours late and flustered, it would be better all around if he were to arrive five hours and a few extra minutes late, but triumphantly in command.

  Douglas Adams

  Arriving, Would Be, Hours

  Douglas Adams (2014). “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

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• There's a scientific hypothesis that every person's name is a primary suggestive command that contains the entire script of their life in highly concentrated form. . . . According to this point of view, there is only a limited number of names, because society only needs a limited number of human types. Just a few models of worker and warrior ants, if I could put it like that. And everybody's psyche is preprogrammed at a basic level by the associative semantic fields that their first name and surname activate.

  Victor Pelevin

  Warrior, Views, Names

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• I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Independent, Law, Generations

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• It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Suggestions, Population, Dull

  Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.35, IHS Press

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