Fragile Quotes - Page 23

• It is strange how fragile this man-creature is.....in one second he's just garbage. Garbage, that's all.

  Nelson Algren

  Men, Garbage, Strange

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• The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better.

  Atul Gawande

  Opportunity, Medicine, Way

  Atul Gawande (2010). “Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science”, p.251, Profile Books

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• I've decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it.

  Erma Bombeck

  Dog, Hate, Book

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• Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty-but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That's where life is; that's were all the good stuff is.

  Loren Acton

  Life, Drama, Moving

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• The world looks marvelous from up here, so peaceful, so wonderful and so fragile. Everybody, all of us down there, not only in Israel, have to keep it clean and good.

  Ilan Ramon

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

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• Before getting to my mother's house, I would always think of her on the porch or even on the street, sweeping. She had a light way of sweeping, as if removing the dirt were not as important as moving the broom over the ground. Her way of sweeping was symbolic; so airy, so fragile, with a broom she tried to sweep away all the horrors, all the loneliness, all the misery that had accompanied her all her life.

  Reinaldo Arenas

  Mother, Loneliness, Moving

  Reinaldo Arenas (2010). “Before Night Falls”, p.142, Profile Books

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• The United Nations system is still the best instrument for making the world less fragile.

  Carlo Azeglio Ciampi

  World, Instruments, United Nations

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• Generally, I play the kind of ethereal, fragile-on-the-outside-but-hard-and-damaged-on-the-inside type.

  Adelaide Clemens

  Play, Kind, Type

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Saddam spent 35 years stealing and wasting money, and all of these systems are very fragile and brittle, and you try to fix one thing and something else gets in trouble.

  Paul Bremer

  Years, Trying, Trouble

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• The tale of the Monkey Girl gave me wat I needed most at a critical time in my life: the image of the creative and complex woman, unique to herself but willing to share those considerable gifts with a man capable of intuiting the wealth of her worth hidden beneath the skin. But more than that, the Monkey Girl also suggested that I need not be afraid of the fragile happily-ever-after, that I had resources of my own, and that I would not have to contort myself into a restrictive social role for fear of losing that fairytale ending.

  Midori Snyder

  Girl, Unique, Men

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• The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

  Carl Sagan

  Mistake, Ignorance, Errors

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.76, Ballantine Books

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• At twenty you have many desires which hide the truth, but beyond forty there are only real and fragile truths - your abilities and your failings.

  Gerard Depardieu

  Real, Age, Desire

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• Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage-good teaching-than a bill forcing our honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Teacher, Teaching, Science

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• If you neglect those who are currently poor and stable, you may create more poor and unstable people. There has been a tremendous concentration of donor interest in countries that are seen as particularly fragile - but it becomes harder to mobilise money for sub-Saharan, plain poor countries.

  Helen Clark

  Country, People, May

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• I do see a lot of the hard end of ecology, and my feeling is that we live on a super-exciting planet but a super-fragile one.

  Bear Grylls

  Feelings, Ends, Planets

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• It is hard to imagine that, having downgraded the US, S & P will not follow suit on at least one of the other members of the dwindling club of sovereign AAAs. If this were to materialise and involve a country like France, for example, it could complicate the already fragile efforts by Europe to rescue countries in its periphery.

  Mohamed El-Erian

  Country, Europe, Effort

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• Bismarck's genius, as well as his great flaw, was the same as that of another outstanding nineteenth-century politician of the German-speaking world, Prince Clemens Metternich. Both men were artificers, able to hold off the future by building a fragile present out of pieces of the past.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Past, Men, Genius

  Robert D. Kaplan (2014). “Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History”, p.54, Picador

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• It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Should, Deals

  Donald Judd (1987). “Complete Writings, 1975-1986”

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• Shadow boxes become poetic theater or settings wherein are metamorphosed the elements of a childhood pastime. The fragile, shimmering globules become the shimmering but more enduring planets—a connotation of moon and tides—the association of water less subtle, as when driftwood pieces make up a proscenium to set off the dazzling white of sea foam and billowy cloud crystallized in a pipe of fancy.

  Joseph Cornell

  Moon, Sea, White

  Joseph Cornell, Pasadena Art Museum (1967*). “An exhibition of works”

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• People are mostly focused on defending the computers on the Internet, and there's been surprisingly little attention to defending the Internet itself as a communications medium. And I think we probably do need to pay some more attention to that, because it's actually kind of fragile.

  Danny Hillis

  Motivation, Communication, Inspiration

  "The Internet could crash. We need a Plan B". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February 2013.

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• I had eventually come to understand that friendship was a delicate, gradual process that mustn’t be rushed or seized upon but allowed and encouraged to take its course over time. I pictured it as a butterfly, simultaneously beautiful and fragile, that once afloat belonged to the air and any attempt to grab at it would only destroy it.

  Daniel Tammet

  Beautiful, Butterfly, Air

  Daniel Tammet (2007). “Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant”, p.141, Simon and Schuster

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• The Old Ones knew that life is not rare, but precious; not fragile, but vulnerable. Life is as deep as the seas in which it was born, as strong as the mountains that give it shelter, as universal as the stars themselves.

  Ben Bova

  Strong, Stars, Sea

  Ben Bova (2008). “Mars Life”, p.313, Macmillan

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• To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.

  Tom Bissell

  Believe, Magic, Stories

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• The state of our state is fragile, but I know our spirit and love for Nevada is not.

  Kenny Guinn

  And Love, Spirit, States

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• Sometimes fear grips me that these fragile moments of life will fade away. It seems that I write against erasure.

  Assia Djebar

  Fear, Writing, Feminist

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