Function Quotes - Page 12

• Man has to pick up the use of his functions as he goes along- especially the function of Love.

  E. M. Forster

  Men, Use, Picks

  E.M. Forster (2012). “A Room with a View”, p.166, Courier Corporation

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• Happiness is a quality of the soul...not a function of one's material circumstances.

  Aristotle

  Soul, Quality, Circumstances

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• The degree to which a surviving parent copes is the most important indicator of the child's long-term adaptation. Kids whose surviving parents are unable to function effectively in the parenting role show more anxiety and depression, as well as sleep and health problems, than those whose parents have a strong support network and solid inner resources to rely on.

  Hope Edelman

  Strong, Children, Sleep

  Hope Edelman (2014). “Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss, 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.18, Hachette UK

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• You can still function as a living ruin.

  Henry Rollins

  Ruins, Stills

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• All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Men

  "Selections from the Prison Notebooks". Book by Antonio Gramsci, 1971.

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• I am a Prince," he replied, being rather dense. "It is the function of a Prince—value A—to kill monsters—value B—for the purpose of establishing order—value C—and maintaining a steady supply of maidens—value D. If one inserts the derivative of value A (Prince) into the equation y equals BC plus CD squared, and sets it equal to zero, giving the apex of the parabola, namely, the point of intersection between A (Prince) and B (Monster), one determines value E—a stable kingdom. It is all very complicated, and if you have a chart handy I can graph it for you.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Zero, Order, Cds

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• Who? Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask.

  Alan Moore

  Men, Mask, Form

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• To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.

  Umberto Eco

  Reading, Mean, Games

  "Six Walks in the Fictional Woods". Book by Umberto Eco, 1994.

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• If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.

  Erich Fromm

  Christian, Mean, Reflection

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.57, Open Road Media

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• What if all those strange and unexplainable bends in history were the result of supernatural interference? At which point I asked myself, what's the weirdest most eccentric historical phenomenon of them all? Answer:the Great British Empire. Clearly, one tiny little island could only conquer half the known world with supernatural aid. Those absurd Victorian manners and ridiculous fashions were obviously dictated by vampires. And, without a doubt, the British army regimental system functions on werewolf pack dynamics.

  Gail Carriger

  Fashion, Army, Islands

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• ...loneliness is not a function of solitude.

  David Foster Wallace

  Loneliness, Solitude

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.145, Hachette UK

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• Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted rodents, which attracted cats. (No evidence that such a thing happened with the Mayans, though a number of wild cats are native to the area.) I don't think this is accurate. It is certainly not the whole story. Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.

  William S. Burroughs

  Dog, Cat, Thinking

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• If someone should ask, "how should an Opposition function?" the best answer would be, "in the manner of a traditional mother-in-law who watches the performance of household work by a daughter-in-law and follows her about with her comments.

  R.K. Narayan

  Daughter, Mother, Law

  R. K. Narayan (1988). “A Writer's Nightmare: Selected Essays, 1958-1988”, p.88, Penguin Books India

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• Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Artist, Alchemist

  Thomas Merton, Patrick Hart (1985). “The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton”, p.379, New Directions Publishing

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• For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.

  John Steinbeck

  Men, Thinking, Doe

  John Steinbeck (2001). “Novels, 1942-1952”

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• These problems have been here so long that the only way I’ve been able to function at all is by learning to ignore them. Else I would be in a constant state of panic, unable to think or act constructively.

  Mark Bowden

  Thinking, Long, Would Be

  Mark Bowden (2011). “Worm: The First Digital World War”, p.186, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• We repeat again: strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion, judgment and principle must still function like a ship’s compass, which records the slightest variations however rough the sea.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Powerful, Character, Sea

  Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Howard, Peter Paret (1989). “On War”, p.107, Princeton University Press

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• Revealingly, the central function of the Constitution as law--the supreme law--was to impose limitations not on the behavior of ordinary citizens but on the federal government. The government, and those who ran it, were not placed outside the law, but expressly targeted by it. Indeed, the Bill of Rights is little more than a description of the lines that the most powerful political officials are barred from crossing, even if they have the power to do so and even when the majority of citizens might wish them to do so.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Powerful, Law, Rights

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• Can true function arise from basic dysfunction?

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Dysfunction, Arise

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• There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.

  Neil Gaiman

  Pain, Loss, Unique

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• The last clear definite function of men—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.

  John Steinbeck

  Men, Mind, Needs

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• Zuzana arched an eyebrow. She was a master of the eyebrow arch, and Karou envied her for it. Her own eyebrows did not function independently of each other, which handicapped her expressions of suspicion and disdain.

  Laini Taylor

  Expression, Eyebrows, Arches

  Laini Taylor (2011). “Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.11, Hachette UK

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• She [Susanna] realized she was still hugging the wall. Pride propelled her two steps forward. As she advanced, something bleated at her, as though chastising her for trespassing. She stopped midstep and peered at it. "Did you know there's a lamb in here?" "Never mind it. That's dinner." She gave it a smile and a friendly pat. "Hullo, Dinner. Aren't you a sweet thing." "It's not his name, it's his...function.

  Tessa Dare

  Sweet, Wall, Pride

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• How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary. See yourself in your opponents. They will bring you to understand the Game. To accept the fact that the Game is about managed fear. That its object is to send from yourself what you hope will not return.

  David Foster Wallace

  Running, Mirrors, Games

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.128, Hachette UK

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• ...Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is, there wouldn’t even be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact function of this lack.

  Jacques Lacan

  Lying, Desire, Rooms

  Jacques Lacan, Jacques-Alain Miller (1988). “The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book 2: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 19541955”, p.223, CUP Archive

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