Incapable Quotes - Page 2

• The ... problem that confronts homosexuals is that they set out to win the love of a "real" man. If they succeed, they fail. A man who "goes with" other men is not what they would call a real man. The conundrum is incapable of resolution, but that does not make homosexuals give it up.

  Quentin Crisp

  Real, Men, Winning

  5 Copy quote

• Envy is more incapable of reconciliation than hatred is.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Envy, Hatred, Reconciliation

  5 Copy quote

• I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural.

  Jack Nicholson

  Believe, People, Envy

  Source: www.esquire.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

  Constantin Stanislavski

  Artist, Feelings, Acting

  Constantin Stanislavski (2013). “Building a Character”, p.216, A&C Black

  49 Copy quote

  Show source

• In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Believe, Blessing, Thinking

  On the Constitution (1787)

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one's mind incapable of definite purpose.

  Harper Lee

  Believe, Mind, Purpose

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.

  Zhuangzi

  Wisdom, Fun, Stupid

  8 Copy quote

• I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos -- and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo. I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth.

  Frantz Fanon

  Song, Heart, Intelligent

  Frantz Fanon (2008). “Black Skin, White Masks”, p.27, Grove Press

  249 Copy quote

  Show source

• Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Writing, Calm, Restraint

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.110, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?' 'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.

  Ray Bradbury

  Husband, Oxygen, People

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “The Martian Chronicles”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.

  David Sedaris

  Inanimate Objects, Fool, Ridiculous

  David Sedaris (2000). “Me talk pretty one day”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God.

  Lactantius

  Perfect, Suffering, Titles

  Lactantius (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Lactantius (Annotated Edition)”, p.25, Jazzybee Verlag

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think it's just a lack of ability, we're incapable of writing hits.

  Kenny Hickey

  Writing, Thinking, Ability

  5 Copy quote

• There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses,--only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jesus, Eye, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.60, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Humans are incapable of securely storing high-quality cryptographic keys, and they have unacceptable speed and accuracy when performing cryptographic operations. (They are also large, expensive to maintain, difficult to manage, and they pollute the environment. It is astonishing that these devices continue to be manufactured and deployed. But they are sufficiently pervasive that we must design our protocols around their limitations.)

  Charlie Kaufman

  Keys, Design, Quality

  "Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World". Book by Charlie Kaufman, Radia Perlman and Mike Speciner, April 22, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Defining, Nervous, English Language

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.114, Hachette UK

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What, then, is the basic difference between today's computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to seebut not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern--a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Intelligent, What Matters, Differences

  Rudolf Arnheim (2004). “Visual Thinking”, p.73, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. . . .

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Spring, Thinking, Musical

  8 Copy quote

• There has been in our time a lack of reliance on language and a lack of experimentation which are frightening to anyone who sees them as symptoms. We know the phenomenon of stage-fright: it holds the player shivering, incapable of speech or action. Perhaps there is an audience-fright which the play can feel, which leaves him with these incapacities.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Player, Speech, Action

  4 Copy quote

• The style, which is something I take to heart, is getting on my nerves horribly. It frustrates and torments me. I have days when Iam sick about it and nights when it gives me a fever. The more I go at it the more I find myself incapable of conveying the Idea.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Work, Heart, Night

  4 Copy quote

• Creativity is very much like literacy. We take it for granted that nearly everybody can learn to read and write. If a person can't read or write, you don't assume that this person is incapable of it, just that he or she hasn't learned how to do it. The same is true of creativity.

  Ken Robinson

  Motivational, Writing, Learning

  Ken Robinson Ph.D., Lou Aronica (2009). “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything”, p.43, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• More than a decade after our fellow citizens began bedding down on the sidewalks, their problems continue to seem so intractable that we have begun to do psychologically what government has been incapable of doing programmatically. We bring the numbers down--not by solving the problem, but by deciding it's their own damn fault.

  Anna Quindlen

  Numbers, Government, Faults

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps I overemphasized the value of keeping busy.... I liked to imagine that I was incapable of doing nothing for afternoons myself, but maybe what disturbed me was that I was capable of it. I feared this was a knack one could get the hang of rather readily, and it was therefore now lurking in my house waiting for me to pick it up like a winter flu.

  Lionel Shriver

  Winter, Waiting, House

  4 Copy quote

• In our common parlance we speak of the man "with no tea" in him, when he is insusceptible to the serio-comic interests of the personal drama.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Men, Understanding, Tea

  "The Book of Tea". Book by Okakura Kakuzo, 1906.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most innocent man, pressed by the awful solemnities of public accusation and trial, many be incapable of supporting his own cause. He may be utterly unfit to cross-examine the witnesses against him, to point out the contradictions or defects of their testimony. And to counteract it by properly introducing it and applying his own.

  William Rawle

  Men, Innocent Man, Trials

  4 Copy quote