Dexterity Quotes

• It is only by prudence, wisdom, and dexterity that great ends are attained and obstacles overcome. Without these qualities nothing succeeds.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Quality, Overcoming, Succeed

  Napoleon Bonaparte “Napoleon in his own words from the French of Jules Bertaut”, Рипол Классик

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• It is only with prudence, sagacity, and much dexterity that great aims are accomplished, and all obstacles surmounted. Otherwise nothing is accomplished.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Obstacles, Accomplished, Aim

  Napoleon Bonaparte “Napoleon in his own words from the French of Jules Bertaut”, Рипол Классик

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• It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Character, Reflection, Words Of Wisdom

  On Old Age VI (transl. W. A. Falconer)

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• Some of my Arcanum bunkmates taught me a card game called dogs-breath. I returned the favor by giving an impromptu lesson in psychology, probability, and manual dexterity. I won almost two whole talents before they stopped inviting me back to their games.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Dog, Games, Two

  "The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, Book 1)". Book by Patrick Rothfuss, March 27, 2007.

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• When she goes about her kitchen duties, chopping, carving, mixing, whisking, she moves with the grace and precision of a ballet dancer, her fingers plying the food with the dexterity of a croupier.

  Craig Claiborne

  Moving, Food, Dancing

  "Food and Drink: A Book of Quotations". Book by Susan L. Rattiner, September 19, 2012.

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• One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to achieve certain unlimited dexterity. A well formed technique, it seems to me, can control and vary a beautiful sound quality.

  Frederic Chopin

  Beautiful, Keys, Hands

  "Chopin : Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils". Book by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, 1986.

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• He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say.

  Walter Benjamin

  Events, May, Submissive

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland (1996). “Selected Writings: 1913-1926”, p.482, Harvard University Press

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• Art, if it is successful in the task of questioning reality, if it is good painting and not merely a performance of dexterity, will be an affirmation of God.

  Patrick Swift

  Art, Successful, Reality

  Patrick Swift (1993). “PS -- of Course: Patrick Swift, 1927-1983”

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• Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing of her gallèd eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

  William Shakespeare

  Eye, Wicked, Tears

  William Shakespeare (2011). “Hamlet”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

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• Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand.

  Anthony Powell

  Hands, Emotion, Seduction

  Anthony Powell (2014). “Afternoon Men: A Novel”, p.83, University of Chicago Press

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• He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say. He is impelled by inertia, rather than curiosity, and nothing is more unlike the submissive apathy with which he hears his fate revealed than the alert dexterity with which the man of courage lays hands on the future.

  Walter Benjamin

  Fate, Men, Hands

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland (1996). “Selected Writings: 1913-1926”, p.482, Harvard University Press

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• I hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life. Portraiture may be all right for a man in his youth, but after forty I believe that manual dexterity deserts one, and, besides, the color-sense is less acute. Youth can better stand the exactions of a personal kind that are inseparable from portraiture. I have had enough of it.

  John Singer Sargent

  Hate, Believe, Men

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• This laudable quality is commonly known by the name of Manners and Good-breeding, and consists in a Fashionable Habit, acquir'd by Precept and Example, of flattering the Pride and Selfishness of others, and concealing our own with Judgment and Dexterity.

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Pride, Names, Quality

  Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.37, Jazzybee Verlag

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• For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and divers others.

  Francis Bacon

  Nature, Science, History

  Francis Bacon (2010). “Bacon's Advancement of Learning and the New Atlantis”, p.107, Lulu.com

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• Dexterity is one of the chief weapons of diplomacy; governments rely more upon the supremacy of this instrument, when in the hands of a skillful diplomatist, than in the soundness or justice of their claims.

  James Ellis

  Government, Hands, Justice

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• Some aim to be deft, others to be laboriously careful. Neither dexterity nor conscientiousness is enough.

  Chai Lu

  Enough, Aim, Competence

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• Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Quilts, Feet, Hands

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• Have you ever noticed how few sitting places you find in private gardens? How seldom the versatility and importance of benches is considered? True gardeners, with their peerless taste, dexterity and inspired planting, never stop . . . To sit is almost an offence, a sign of depravity and an outrage towards every felicitous refinement that has gone into making a garden.

  Mirabel Osler

  Garden, Benches, Taste

  "The garden bench". Book by Mirabel Osler, 1991.

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• So easy are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them; and can with gentleness and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Believe, Ignorance, Men

  Thomas Hobbes (1750). “The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...”, p.145

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• Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr. Fusspot's mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor, making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine.

  Terry Pratchett

  Dog, Trying, Faces

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Making Money: (Discworld Novel 36)”, p.141, Random House

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• In my view there is a level of human knowledge that involves just getting it right aptly. This "animal" epistemic level is an inferior level in just the way of Diana's long shot in the dark while drunk. That shot is inferior in a certain respect if too poorly selected as a hunter's archery shot, even if not quite as poorly selected as would be a shot aimed at the moon. Even if Diana's too risky shot turns out to be apt by attaining success through sublime archery dexterity, it is still inferior in the particular respect of being so risky and hence so poorly selected.

  Ernest Sosa

  Dark, Animal, Moon

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• A big business man was telling Henry Ford about a coach driver of super-expertness with his whip. The driver was telling how he could flick a fly off his horse's ear with his whip-and, a fly alighting just then, he promptly did so. Next he spied a grasshopper beside the road, and he flicked it off with equal dexterity. A little further along the road the passenger noticed an insect on a bush, and nudged the driver to get him. Not on your life, replied the master of the whip. That there insect is a hornet sitting on his nest with an organization behind him. I leave him alone.

  B. C. Forbes

  Horse, Business, Men

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• In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.

  Edward Gibbon

  Hands, Cities, History

  Edward Gibbon (1846). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.113

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• I've never had my dexterity called into question, but I think if that was ever the case, I could acquit myself by tossing a ball back and forth horizontally between my hands.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Thinking, Hands, Balls

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• If a shot aimed at aptness succeeds aptly, it is then fully apt, since it is not only apt but also aptly apt. But the full aptness of such an attempt is entirely compatible with its being a horrible murder, if the "hunter" is an assassin and the prey his victim. That hunter's shot may still be outstandingly, fully apt, if it manifests the agent's competence in both archery dexterity and shot selection.

  Ernest Sosa

  Archery, Assassins, May

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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