Description Quotes - Page 30

• There is some confusion as to what magic actually is. I think this can be cleared up if you just look at the very earliest descriptions of magic. Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as “the art”. I believe this is completely literal. I believe that magic is art and that art, whether it be writing, music, sculpture, or any other form is literally magic.

  Alan Moore

  Art, Believe, Writing

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• Professional is not a label you give yourself - it's a description you hope others will apply to you.

  David Maister

  Inspiring, Giving, Labels

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• The terrain of the mysteries is the ordinary. To seek out mystery, we don't have to go anywhere. We must simply change our preception, our description, our consciousness of where we are.

  Starhawk

  Ordinary, Mystery, Consciousness

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• No prosaic description can portray the grandeur of 40 miles of rugged mountains rising beyond a placid lake in which each shadowy precipice and each purple gorge is reflected with a vividness that rivals the original.

  Herbert Hoover

  Lakes, Purple, Mountain

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• Politically Incorrect was the name of the show Bill Maher hosted in the 1990s. It's also an apt description of the man himself. Now host of - HBO's hit show Real Time, I find Maher to be one of the sharpest observers of American politics and life in general out there. It doesn't mean I always agree with him. I always find him funny, though.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Real, Mean, Men

  "Fareed Zakaria: 'Bill Maher One of the Sharpest Observers of American Politics Out There'". www.newsbusters.org. December 5, 2010.

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• If we were magically shrunk and put into someone's brain while she was thinking, we would see all the pumps, pistons, gears and levers working away and we would be able to describe the workings completely, in mechanical terms, thereby completely describing the thought processes of the brain. But that description would not contain any mention of thought! It would contain nothing but descriptions of pumps, pistons, levers!

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Thinking, Brain, Would Be

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• The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.

  John Henry Newman

  Heart, Mean, Men

  John Henry Newman, Gerard Tracey (1999). “The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman: Tract 90 and the Jerusalem Bishopric, January 1841-April 1842”, p.555, Oxford University Press

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• The word 'Italy' is a geographical expression, a description which is useful shorthand, but has none of the political significance the efforts of the revolutionary ideologues try to put on it, and which is full of dangers for the very existence of the states which make up the peninsula.

  Klemens von Metternich

  Expression, History, Effort

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• Repentance is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose; it is simply a description of what going back is like.

  C. S. Lewis

  Demand, Repentance, Ifs

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.60, HarperCollins UK

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• Searching for a better description of this rotting sadness, I came upon the concept of acedia. In Christian theology, it’s an antecedent to sloth, the least sexy of the seven deadly sins. Thomas Aquinas winnowed it down for me: acedia is sorrow so complete that the flesh prevails completely over the spirit. You don’t just turn your back on the world, you turn your back on God. You don’t care, and you don’t care that you don’t care.

  Mishka

  Christian, Sexy, Sadness

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• To me, self-description is a calamity.

  Jasper Johns

  Self Esteem, Self, Calamity

  "What Does a Jasper Johns Flag Stand For?" by John Seed, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 2, 2017.

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• We can all reduce our life to a description that makes people feel sorry for ourselves or we can expand our life to a dimension where we connect and give to others.

  Tony Robbins

  Sorry, People, Giving

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• I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Typewriters, Hands

  Ernest Hemingway (2008). “The Good Life According to Hemingway”, Ecco

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• While the scientist, on the one hand, is concerned with giving a faithful description of facts, on the other, he has the equally important task of construing them in relation to some explanatory conjecture. Similarly the historian has a double duty: both of reporting the past as nearly as possible as it passed or was lived through by men at the time (without doctoring up events to fit later developments or some more "enlightened reading" of them); and second, of interpreting their import in the light of a present hypothesis.

  Marie Taylor Collins Swabey

  Reading, Science, Past

  Marie Taylor Collins Swabey (1954). “The judgment of history”

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• Early on, I settled on the first-person strategy as a way to deal with exposition and world-description issues. As long as the book is, it could have been far longer had I gone with an omniscient third-person narrator, or multiple point-of-view characters, since either of those would have enabled me to impart much more detailed information about the history and geography of the world.

  Neal Stephenson

  Book, Character, Issues

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• "Sinner" is a present-tense description of everyone, including those who have put their faith in Christ. Of course, those who have called Jesus "Lord" are justified, meaning that they are no longer guilty. Also, they have been given the Spirit, which makes them slaves to Christ rather than to sin. But we all are sinners. Perfection awaits eternity.

  Edward T Welch

  Jesus, Perfection, Spirit

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• f you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals - if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

  Ronald Reagan

  Believe, Heart, Thinking

  "Reason" Magazine, July 1, 1975.

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• It is impossible to describe a landscape so validly as to exclude all other descriptions, for no one can see the landscape in all its aspects at the same time, and no single view can prevent the existence and validity of other equally possible views.

  Frithjof Schuon

  Views, Landscape, Impossible

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• His rage passes description - the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Long, Rich, Rage

  J R R Tolkien (1973). “The Hobbit: The Enchanting Prelude to The Lord of the Rings”

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• All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism, self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Grief, Sacrifice, Reality

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• The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets.

  James Madison

  Party, Opportunity, Numbers

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1831). “The Federalist on the New Constitution”, p.48

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• An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.

  Charles Darwin

  Mind, Would Be, Agnostic

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.11757, Delphi Classics

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• How extraordinary was my life an incident may illustrate... [As a youth] I was fascinated by a description of Niagara Falls. I had perused, and pictured in my imagination a big wheel run by the Falls. I told my uncle that I would go to America and carry out this scheme. Thirty years later I saw my ideas carried out at Niagara and marveled at the unfathomable mystery of the mind.

  Nikola Tesla

  Running, Uncles, Fall

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• Just listen,” she said. “You can’t kill him in cold blood.” “Whyever not?” Ye gods grant me patience. “Because he’ll be dead,” she said as patiently as she could, “and Lady Clara’s reputation will be stained forever. Do not, I pray you, do anything, Lord Longmore. Leave this to us.” “Us.” “My sisters and me.” “What do you propose? Dressing him to death? Tying him up and making him listen to fashion descriptions?

  Loretta Chase

  Fashion, Blood, Forever

  Loretta Chase (2012). “Scandal Wears Satin”, p.37, Harper Collins

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• I think 'vegan' is a beautiful word. It is more than just a description for our diet. I see it as a visible template for an ethical, healthy, responsible, and rational life. Because it describes our character, it says we do not take the life of another living being to satisfy our wants.

  Philip Wollen

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

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