Defined Quotes - Page 39

• R is a velocity of measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being, and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It is therefore clearly as almost infinite variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility, this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers, and even death.

  Douglas Adams

  Stress, Two, Variables

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts Volume 2: The Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases”, p.111, Pan Macmillan

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• A friend of mine once defined love as finding someone you can talk to late into the night

  James Patterson

  Love, Night, Finding Someone

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• How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.

  E. M. Forster

  Country, Home, Men

  E. M. Forster (2010). “A Passage to India”, p.136, RosettaBooks

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• I mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Real, Fall, Mean

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• So generation after generation of men in love with pain and passivity serve out their time in the Zone, silent, redolent of faded sperm, terrified of dying, desperately addicted to the comforts others sell them, however useless, ugly or shallow, willing to have life defined for them by men whose only talent is for death.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Pain, Men, Dying

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.580, Penguin

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• Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.

  Ron Paul

  Believe, Government, Safety

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• Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Names, Patriotism, Ambitious

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.160, 谷月社

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• I think I hoped for something more. Maybe I even hoped that I could find in Richard what I had with Ben. But it is suddenly very clear: Richard is not fallin in love with me and I'm not falling in love with Richard. We are not creating anything permanent or special. We are only having fun together. It is a fling- a fling just like he said last night- a fling with an ending yet to be determined. I feel relieved to have it defined

  Emily Giffin

  Falling In Love, Fun, Night

  "Baby Proof". Book by Emily Giffin, June, 2006.

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• For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.

  Audre Lorde

  Men, Feelings, Poet

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.39, Crossing Press

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• Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Reader, Knows

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.123, Vintage Canada

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• The past did affect the present and the future, in ways you could see and a million ones you couldn't. Time wasn't a thing you could divide easily; there was no defined middle or beginning or end. I could pretend to leave the past behind, but it would not leave me.

  Sarah Dessen

  Past, Way, Ends

  Sarah Dessen (2008). “Just Listen”, p.338, Penguin

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• I find it a huge strain to be responsible for my tastes and be known and defined by them.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Taste, Responsible, Strain

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Strong Motion: A Novel”, p.171, Macmillan

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• Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

  Karen Horney

  Self, Deception, May

  Karen Horney (2013). “Our Inner Conflicts: A CONSTRUCTIVE THEORY OF NEUROSIS”, p.135, Routledge

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• Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.

  Truman Capote

  Reading, Two, Orange

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• In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Clear Goals, Excellence, Loyal

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• We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

  Douglas Adams

  Humorous, Profound, Doubt

  Douglas Adams (2010). “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.158, Del Rey

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• Is the human condition not defined by an endless struggle to control the ego's subterfuges?

  Roméo Dallaire

  Struggle, Ego, Subterfuge

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• We are not defined by the family into which we are born, but the one we choose and create. We are not born, we become.

  Tori Spelling

  Family, Born

  Tori Spelling (2008). “sTORI Telling”, p.271, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.

  John McCain

  Fighting, Causes, Life Is

  John McCain, Mark Salter (2000). “Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir”, p.373, Random House

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• Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Love, Heartbreak, Sarcastic

  Isaac Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1861). “Curiosities of literature”, p.119

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• If smallness was fortune, then I had come across a treasure, infinitesimal and beyond value. I felt lucky. You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it. The objects you valued defined you.

  Pat Conroy

  Lucky, Treasure, Fortune

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Lords of Discipline: A Novel”, p.273, Open Road Media

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• I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

  Oscar Wilde

  Animal, Men, Definitions

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 2 (1891)

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• Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.

  Unknown

  Government, Liberty, Libertarian

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• Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.

  A. S. Byatt

  Vocabulary, Circles, Lines

  FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Aug 04, 2013

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• Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

  Toni Morrison

  Definitions, Beloved

  Toni Morrison (2014). “Beloved”, Random House

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