Instance Quotes - Page 26

• Some mothers in today's world feel "cumbered" by home duties and are thus attracted by other more "romantic" challenges. Such women could make the same error of perspective that Martha made. The woman, for instance, who deserts the cradle in order to help defend civilization against the barbarians may well later meet, among the barbarians, her own neglected child.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Mother, Children, Home

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• Forgiveness works two ways, in most instances. People have to forgive themselves too. The powerful have to forgive themselves for their behavior. That should be a sacred process.

  Sidney Poitier

  Powerful, Two, People

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• I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.

  Mark Twain

  People, Mind, Religion

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4097, Delphi Classics

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• The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?

  Douglas Adams

  Civilization, Lunch, Survival

  Douglas Adams (2008). “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, p.146, Del Rey

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• But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far and superior to that of muscle and sinew. Let me tell you, if you don't know it from your own experience, that reading a good book, losing yourself in the interest of words and thoughts, is for some people (me, for instance) an incredible intensity of happiness.

  Isaac Asimov

  Book, Reading, People

  Isaac Asimov (2009). “I, Asimov: A Memoir”, p.58, Bantam

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• Just deleting vandalism on the Chuck Norris page," Radar said. "For instance, while I do think that Chuck Norris specializes in the roundhouse kick, I don't think it's accurate to say, 'Chuck Norris's tears can cure cancer, but unfortunately he has never cried.

  John Green

  Cancer, Thinking, Tears

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• Then there are some minor points that strike me as suggestive - for instance, the position of Mrs. Hubbard's sponge bag, the name of Mrs. Armstrong's mother, the detective methods of Mr. Hardman, the suggestion of Mr. MacQueen that Ratchett himself destroyed the charred note we found, Princess Dragomiroff's Christian name, and a grease spot on a Hungarian passport.

  Agatha Christie

  Christian, Mother, Princess

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• You are hard at work madam ," said the man near her. Yes," Answered Madam Defarge ; " I have a good deal to do." What do you make, Madam ?" Many things." For instance ---" For instance," returned Madam Defarge , composedly , Shrouds." The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, feeling it mightily close and oppressive .

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Feelings, Littles

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• Babies are made through an act that you will eventually find intriguing but for right now will just sort of horrify you, and also sometimes people do stuff that involves baby-making parts that does not actually involve making babies, like for instance kiss each other in places that are not on the face.

  John Green

  Baby, Real, Kissing

  John Green (2008). “An Abundance of Katherines”, p.14, Penguin

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• People can do great things. However, there are some things they just CAN'T do. I, for instance, have not been able to transform myself into a Popsicle, despite years of effort.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Years, People, Effort

  Brandon Sanderson (2016). “Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians”, p.179, Macmillan

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• Contrary to popular opinion, my dad was not a lazy man. He was not lazy at all, for instance, when it came to Going Places In His Truck. He was also very industrious about Preparing To Go Camping. And if something really interested him, he would work on it all day.

  Haven Kimmel

  Dad, Men, Lazy Man

  Haven Kimmel (2002). “A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana”, p.163, Broadway Books

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• For instance," said the boy again, "if Christmas trees were people and people were Christmas trees, we'd all be chopped down, put up in the living room, and covered in tinsel, while the trees opened our presents." "What does that have to do with it?" asked Milo. "Nothing at all," he answered, "but it's an interesting possibility, don't you think?

  Norton Juster

  Thinking, Boys, People

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• Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not. So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things. What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. And all music is.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Veterans Day, Want, Sacred Things

  Kurt Vonnegut (1973). “Breakfast of champions: or, Goodbye blue Monday!”, Dell

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• Traveling, I am finding, teaches you a lot of things about yourself. For instance, I never thought myself to be the kind of person who pees into a mostly empty bottle of Bluefin energy drink while driving through South Carolina at seventy-seven miles per hour - but in face I am that kind of person.

  John Green

  Faces, Energy, South Carolina

  John Green (2010). “Paper Towns”, p.177, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• My behavior is nonetheless, deplorable. Unfortunately, I'm quite prone to such bouts of deplorability--take for instance, my fondness for reading books at the dinner table.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Book, Reading, Tables

  Brandon Sanderson (2011). “Mistborn Trilogy”, p.291, Macmillan

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• I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Writing, Epic

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• Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.

  Ann Brashares

  Sister, Writing, People

  Ann Brashares (2012). “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Complete Collection”, p.461, Delacorte Press

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• ..she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. .. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Blue, Dust, Wind

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• There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely "like other people.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Nice, Intelligent, Ideas

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• My grandfather used to say: Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that -not to mention accidents- even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.

  Franz Kafka

  Fall, Happy Life, Journey

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• I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may . . .

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Fall, Eye, Thinking

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• Well, for instance, when I left her today, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said.

  Kate Chopin

  Strong, Wings, Arms

  Kate Chopin (2015). “The Awakening and Selected Short Stories”, p.141, First Avenue Editions

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• I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered –about her teeth for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things she had lost, *but whose inner glow has faded*. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.

  Willa Cather

  Thinking, Fire, Teeth

  Willa Cather (2012). “My Ántonia”, p.174, Courier Corporation

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• We are shaped not only by our current geography but by our ancestral one as well. Americans, for instance, retain a frontier spirit even though the only frontier that remains is that vast open space between the SUV and strip mall. We are our past.

  Eric Weiner

  Past, Space, Suvs

  Eric Weiner (2014). “The Geography of Bliss”, p.149, Random House

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• My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse—and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of—a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch: E doesn't equal mc2, it doesn't, it doesn't! I was lying, so there!

  Daniel Dennett

  Religious, Lying, Richard Feynman

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