Fifty Quotes - Page 12

• It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

  Mark Twain

  Hands, Play, Sound

  Mark Twain (1961). “Twain: Wit and Wisecracks”

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• I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Book, Years, Names

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• You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.

  Jodi Picoult

  Love, Inspirational, Marriage

  Jodi Picoult (2014). “Mercy”, p.84, Simon and Schuster

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• What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.

  Joseph Heller

  Country, War, Fighting

  Joseph Heller (2010). “Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.323, Simon and Schuster

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• The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow.

  Terry Pratchett

  Lonely, Echoes, Ice

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “Reaper Man: (Discworld Novel 11)”, p.342, Random House

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• There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag-and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

  Doris Lessing

  Book, Reading, Doors

  Doris Lessing (2012). “The Golden Notebook”, p.18, HarperCollins UK

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• I thought Marcus was going to be in my life forever. Then I thought I was wrong. Now he’s back. But this time I know what’s certain: Marcus will be gone again, and back again and again and again because nothing is permanent. Especially people. Strangers become friends. Friends become lovers. Lovers become strangers. Strangers become friends once more, and over and over. Tomorrow, next week, fifty years from now, I know I’ll get another one-word postcard from Marcus, because this one doesn’t have a period signifying the end of the sentence. Or the end of anything at all.

  Megan McCafferty

  Love, Next Week, Years

  Megan McCafferty (2010). “The Complete Jessica Darling Series: Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds, Fourth Comings, Perfect Fifths”, p.1233, Crown

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• not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, The hundred & fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.

  Walt Whitman

  Fall, Dumb, Hundred

  Walt Whitman (2012). “Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition”, p.51, Courier Corporation

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• The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own.

  Mitch Albom

  Wise, Children, Men

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• So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really.

  Haruki Murakami

  Girl, Crazy, Mean

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• I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity.

  Barack Obama

  Appreciation, Book, Cutting

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.9, Canongate Books

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• I've hurt you terribly my love, and I'll hunt you again during the next fifty years. And you are going to hurt me, Ian-never I hope as much as you are hurting me now. But if that's the way it has to be, then I'll endure it, because the only alternative is to live without you, and that is no life at all. And the difference is that I know it, and you don't... not yet.

  Judith McNaught

  Hurt, Years, Differences

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• It had never occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work til it was coarse in the grain like an overripe turnip, could be beautiful. But is was so, and after all, he thought, why not?

  George Orwell

  Beautiful, Why Not, Body

  George Orwell (1982). “Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four: Text, Sources, Criticism”, Harcourt

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• It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date. It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit. It just has to be.

  David Levithan

  Valentine, Usual, Three

  David Levithan (2014). “How They Met and Other Stories”, p.156, Egmont UK

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• Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.

  John Knowles

  Powerful, Mean, Past

  John Knowles (2014). “A Separate Peace”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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• Harry looked around; there was Ginny running toward him; she had a hard blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her. After several long moments, or it might have been half an hour-or possibly several sunlit days- they broke apart.

  J. K. Rowling

  Running, Thinking, Worry

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• People are islands,' she said. 'They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate. Even if they've been married for fifty years.

  Ian Fleming

  Relationship, Islands, Years

  Ian Fleming (2002). “Casino Royale”

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• Hello, Harry" said George, beaming at him. "We thought we heard your dulcet tones." "You don't want to bottle up your anger like that, Harry, let it all out," said Fred, also beaming. "There might be a couple of people fifty miles away who didn't hear you.

  J. K. Rowling

  Couple, People, Bottles

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, p.67, Pottermore

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• Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven—where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play with—he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken legs and a separated shoulder, feeling like, well, he'd jumped off the New Brunswick train bridge.

  Junot Diaz

  Eight, Bridges, Play

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• I believe the poor fierce-eyed child had figured out that with a mere fifty dollars in her purse she might somehow reach Broadway or Hollywood - or the foul kitchen of a diner (Help Wanted) in a dismal ex-prairie state, with the wind blowing, and the stars blinking, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen, and everything soiled, torn, dead.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Stars, Children, Believe

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.263, Vintage

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• You know, some people say life is short and that you could get hit by a bus at any moment and that you have to live each day like it's your last. Bullshit. Life is long. You're probably not gonna get hit by a bus. And you're gonna have to live with the choices you make for the next fifty years.

  Chris Rock

  Life Is Short, Humor, Cherish Every Moment

  "I Think I Love My Wife". www.imdb.com. 2007.

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• Hippogriff, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Horse, Animal, Eagles

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.51, Courier Corporation

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• Oh, you mysterious girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; you must come into the open then. If the mouth has fallen sourly yours the blame: all the meanness your youth concealed have been gathering in your face. But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in your twilight like evening primroses.

  James M. Barrie

  Girl, Sweet, Kindness

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• I think it's a bit like coming to the end of a book. The plot's in its thickest, all the characters are in a mess, but you can see that there aren't fifty pages left, and you know that the finish can't be far off.

  Herman Wouk

  Book, Character, Thinking

  HERMAN WOUK (1955). “MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR”

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• What if we gave fifty percent of our discretionary budget to the world’s poor and then counted on the moral power of that action to protect us?

  Anne Lamott

  What If, World, Action

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