Description Quotes - Page 7

• Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension, and even anger.

  David Deutsch

  Suggestions, May, Cynicism

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• I heard the opening bar of 'Help' as I headed down Polk Street. Every single time I've heard that tune I've taken it as some message from God, a warning of things to come, a perfect description of my mashed-potato character

  Oscar Zeta Acosta

  Taken, Character, Perfect

  Oscar Zeta Acosta (2013). “Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo”, p.51, Vintage

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• If there would be a recipe for a poem, these would be the ingredients: word sounds, rhythm, description, feeling, memory, rhyme, and imagination. They can be put together a thousand different ways, a thousand, thousand...more.

  Karla Kuskin

  Memories, Imagination, Feelings

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• Art is revelation instead of information, expression instead of description, creation instead of imitation or repetition. Art is concerned with the HOW, not the WHAT; not with literal content, but with the performance of the factual content. The performance - how it is done - that is the content of art.

  Josef Albers

  Art, Expression, Done

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• Abstract understanding doesn't mean arbitrary sloshing and messing. Abstract art is controlled visual magic based on laws and methodology. Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery rather that obvious description. Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feelings before your understanding. Abstraction within realism adds zest and excitement to otherwise dull subject matter. Abstract understanding takes time and patience.

  Robert Genn

  Art, Mean, Zest

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• Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God, nothing seems to me more surprising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth and the result thereof. Take that Poppy seed, for instance: it lies in your palm, the merest atom of matter, hardly visible, a speck, a pin's point in bulk, but within it is imprisoned a spirit of beauty ineffable, which will break its bonds and emerge from the dark ground and blossom in a splendor so dazzling as to baffle all powers of description.

  Celia Thaxter

  Beauty, Lying, Dark

  Celia Thaxter (2008). “An Island Garden”, p.3, Applewood Books

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• I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view - I change it every month - and so I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.

  Anton Chekhov

  Love, Religious, Philosophical

  Anton Chekhov (2009). “Selected Stories of Anton Chekov”, p.11, Modern Library

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• Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the authority, and take the journey of self-discovery. Love, and don't be caught in opinions and ideas about what love is or should be. When you love, everything will come right. Love has its own action.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Love, Book, Blessing

  "Commentaries on Living".

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• My description of wisdom has nothing to do with benevolence and righteousness, it is to do with being wise in one's own virtue, nothing more. My description of being has nothing to do with benevolence and righteousness, it is that one should be led by one's innate nature, nothing more.

  Zhuangzi

  Wise, Wisdom, Virtue

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• If I describe a sunny morning in May (the buds, the wet-winged flies, the warm sun and cool breeze), I am also implying the perishing quality of a morning in May, and a good description of May sets up the possibility of a May disaster.

  Clark Blaise

  Morning, Quality, Bud

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• I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business.

  William Wilberforce

  Mean, Reflection, People

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• What appear to us to be causal explanations are in fact just stories—descriptions of what happened that tell us little, if anything, about the mechanisms at work.

  Duncan J. Watts

  Stories, Littles, Facts

  Duncan J. Watts (2011). “Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer”, p.27, Crown Business

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• Don't be limited by your job description.

  Stacey Snider

  Jobs

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• It is a great delusion to suppose that flesh-meat of any kind is essential to health. Considerably more than three parts of the work in the world is done by men who never taste anything but vegetable, farinaceous food, and that of the simplest kind. There are more strength-producing properties in wholemeal flour, peas, beans, lentils, oatmeal, roots, and other vegetables of the same class, than there are beef or mutton, poultry or fish, or animal food of any description whatever.

  Catherine Booth

  Men, Animal, Oatmeal

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• How good is Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel anyway? ... to me, Daniel's brilliance has nothing to do with the big numbers he puts up more or less every week. Howie Long once gave a great explanation of what it was like to get beat by quarterback legend Joe Montana. He said it was like getting knocked out in a pillow fight. You never felt the blow. And you were all kinds of mad afterward. That's as good as any description of Daniel. ... So what does Daniel do? Something right. On every play. In chess, grandmasters will tell you that it's the most innocuous-looking moves that are deadliest.

  Joe Posnanski

  Moving, Fighting, Blow

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• Suicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense and unpalliated. There is no morphine equivalent to ease the acute pain, and death, not uncommonly, is violent and grisly. The suffering of a suicidal is private and inexpressible, leaving family members, friends and colleagues to deal with an almost unfathomable kind of loss, as well as guilt. Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Pain, Suicidal

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2011). “Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide”, p.24, Vintage

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• I have no decision-making role at all in my job description. I would have liked an explanation as to why I was moved from first base coach to the ambassadorship, but none was ever given.

  Mookie Wilson

  Jobs, Decision, Roles

  Mookie Wilson, Erik Sherman (2014). “Mookie: Life, Baseball, and the '86 Mets”, p.134, Penguin

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• I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting.

  James A. Michener

  Ocean, Moon, Islands

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• "You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace." I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl. That's part of the job description, Mr. Maxfield."

  Tammara Webber

  Girl, Jobs, Contradiction

  "Easy". Book by Tammara Webber, May, 2012.

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• Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Subjects, Objects, Enslavement

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• What do they do in these [private] clubs, anyway? Sit around saying things like 'Thank God I'm here. No Jews! What fun! This is living, huh? Look! No Jews! I don't know when I've had a better time. And no women! Just men! And no blacks! Just whites! White men! White men who are not Jewish! It doesn't get any better than this.' To some people, apparently, this is a perfect description of injustice. To me, this is a perfect description of a gay bar in Iceland.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Fun, Gay, Men

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• We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

  Mario Cuomo

  Believe, Order, Government

  1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 16 July 1984, San Francisco, CA

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• A famous, very often quoted phrase says: "That government is best, which governs least." I do not believe this to be a correct description of of the functions of a good government. Government ought to do all the things for which it is needed and for which it is established. Government ought to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of gangsters, and it should defend the country against foreign enemies. These are the functions of government within a free system, within the system of the market economy.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Country, Believe, Government

  Ludwig Von Mises (2006). “Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow”, p.37, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• The world doesn't yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed and our experiences of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened, just passed. Re recollect, recollect, recollect.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Yield, World, Steps

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• Bertrand Russell would not have wished to be called a saint of any description; but he was a great and good man.

  A.J. Ayer

  Men, Good Man, Saint

  A. J. Ayer (1988). “Bertrand Russell”, p.155, University of Chicago Press

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