Definitions Quotes - Page 28

• Oh just wait. It takes a lot of time, that's all...You'll have come to a certain kind of appreciation that moves beyond all the definitions of love you've ever had. A certain richness happens only later in life. I guess its' a kind of mellowing. p 80 talking about marriage and husbands

  Elizabeth Berg

  Appreciation, Husband, Moving

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• Yet human experience and the practice of communication have shown throughout the ages that definitions are an illusion, like having a speech defect and trying to say love but unable to get the word out, or, better, having a tongue in one's head but unable to feel love.

  Jose Saramago

  Love, Communication, Practice

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• Passion is not friendly. It is arrogant, superbly contemptuous of all that is not itself, and, as they very definition of passion implies the impulse to freedom, it has a might intimidiating power. It contains a challenge. It contains an unspeakable hope.

  James A. Baldwin

  Passion, Challenges, Friendly

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• A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.

  Tom Stoppard

  Dream, Butterfly, Two

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• I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings.

  Gloria E. Anzaldúa

  Dark, Light, Giving

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• It is said that life begins when the fetus can exist apart from its mother. By this definition, many people in Hollywood are legally dead.

  Jay Leno

  Life, Mother, People

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your views and policies that you are sure that anyone who opposed them must be either stupid and decieved or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance.

  Orson Scott Card

  Stupid, Eye, Views

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• Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.

  Wallace Stevens

  Dark, Light

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.183, Vintage

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• Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward.

  Ann Patchett

  Generations, Next, Belief

  Ann Patchett (2012). “Run”, p.93, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Believe, Errors, Degrees

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.52, Harvard University Press

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• A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children

  Markus Zusak

  Love, Children, Leaving

  Markus Zusak (2016). “The Book Thief: 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.31, Random House

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• No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it--to remain children of light.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Children, Light, Giving

  Albert Schweitzer (1979). “Reverence for Life”, p.78, Ardent Media

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• Later, her first intense, serious love affair, yes then she'd lost something more tangible, if undefinable: her heart? her independence? her control of, definition of, self? That first true loss, the furious bafflement of it. And never again quite so assured, confident.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Heart, Loss, Self

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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, Wonder

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 2 (1891)

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• [The Head of Radio Three] had been ensnared by the Music Director of the college and a Professor of Philosophy. These two were busy explaining to the harassed man that the phrase "too much Mozart" was, given any reasonable definition of those three words, an inherently self-contradictory expression, and that any sentence which contained such a phrase would be thereby rendered meaningless and could not, consequently, be advanced as part of an argument in favour of any given programme-scheduling strategy.

  Douglas Adams

  Philosophy, College, Men

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• The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.

  Sarah Vowell

  Government, Patriot, Skeptical

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.158, Simon and Schuster

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• Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Thinking, Creatures

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• He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom.

  Peter De Vries

  Eye, Vanity, People

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• All right, then, her first rule for the rest of her days: no more looking outside for definitions. She might not have any clue who she was, but better to be lost and searching than shoved into a social box by someone else.

  J.R. Ward

  Might, Firsts, Clue

  J.R. Ward (2007). “Lover Revealed: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.165, Penguin

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• Perhaps there is supranatural: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.

  William P. Young

  Reality, Data, Normal

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• at least nine-tenths of all the original reality ever created lies outside the multiverse, and since the multiverse by definition includes absolutely everything that is anything, this puts a bit of a strain on things. Outside the boundaries of the universe lie the raw realities, the could-have-beens, the might-bes, the never-weres, the wild ideas, all being created and uncreated chaotically like elements in fermenting supernovas. Just occasionally where the walls of the worlds have worn a bit thin, they can leak in.

  Terry Pratchett

  Wall, Lying, Reality

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• Some guys-a lot of guys-don't believe what they are seeing, especially if it gets in the way of what they want to eat or drink or believe. Me, I don't believe in God. But if i saw him, I would. I wouldn't just go around saying, "Jesus, that was a great special effect." The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing.

  Stephen King

  Jesus, Believe, Guy

  Stephen King (2016). “Thinner”, p.291, Simon and Schuster

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• and then she asks me how many sexual partners I've had and I say one or two depending on your definition of what I did to Custer . . .

  Sherman Alexie

  Two, Partners, Custer

  Sherman Alexie (2003). “The business of fancydancing: the screenplay”, Hanging Loose Pr

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• Obsessed? I don't know what the word means. I know there were times when I couldn't think of anything else. I used to stay in every weeknight in the hope that he might get free and call me. It felt like I had a disease I didn't want to get rid of. I suppose that's a definition of obsession, yes.

  Sarah Dunant

  Mean, Thinking, Disease

  Sarah Dunant (2001). “Mapping the Edge: A Novel”, p.163, Random House

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• If you and I are friends, there is an expectancy that exists within our relationship. When we see each other or are apart, there is an expectancy of being together, of laughing and talking. The expectancy has no concrete definition; it is alive and dynamic and everything that emerges from our being together is a unique gift shared by no one else.

  William P. Young

  Unique, Talking, Laughing

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