Instance Quotes - Page 29

• You should know I disagree with a lot of traditional advice. For instance, they say the best revenge is living well. I say it’s acid in the face—who will love them now?

  Mindy Kaling

  Revenge, Advice, Faces

  Mindy Kaling (2011). “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)(Enhanced Edition)”, p.4, Crown/Archetype

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• Every letter was a love letter. Of course, as love letters went, this one could have been better. It was not very promising, for instance, that Madeleine claimed not to want to see him for the next half-century.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Half, Letters, Want

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• Kids know what's going on. They always respond to The Beatles, for instance. Doesn't matter when they were born, they always seem to respond. Show me a kid who innately doesn't like The Beatles, and I'll show you a bad seed.

  Mark Oliver Everett

  Kids, Matter, Born

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• What is less often noticed is that it is precisely the kind of moral instruction that parents are constantly trying to give their children — concrete, imaginative, teaching general principles from particular instances, and seeking all the time to bring the children to appreciate and share the parent's own attitudes and view of life… The all-embracing principles of conduct

  J. I. Packer

  Children, Attitude, Teaching

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• The expression "following suit" is a curious one, because it has nothing to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river, for instance, and you jumped in right after them, you would be following suit. You can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first.

  Daniel Handler

  Ocean, Mean, Expression

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• The next day, when I was sober, I thought again about the three of us, and about time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully.

  Julian Barnes

  Hurt, Blood, Next Day

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• Every time a crime was committed by a Muslim, that person's faith was mentioned, regardless of its relevance. When a crime is committed by a Christian, do they mention his religion? ... When a crime is committed by a black man, it's mentioned in the first breath: 'An African American man was arrested today...' But what about German Americans? Anglo Americans? A white man robs a convenience store and do we hear he's of Scottish descent? In no other instance is the ancestry mentioned.

  Dave Eggers

  Christian, Men, White Man

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• [T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Religious, Grace, Hats

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.57, Macmillan

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• I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes heroes, because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my voluntary acts have placed me face to face with death, I cannot recall a single one where any alternative step to that I took occurred to me until many hours later.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Believe, Hero, Alternatives

  Edgar Rice Burroughs (2015). “A Princess of Mars (Science Fiction Classic): From the Author of Tarzan of the Apes, Barsoom Series, Llana of Gathol, Pirates of Venus, The Land That Time Forgot & Pellucidar”, p.11, e-artnow

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• I don't mean to be insolent. I'm truthful. I tell the truth and the truth sometimes hurts. For instance, you have bad breath, Lieutenant. I can smell it from here. It must offend a lot of people. That's the truth. But how many people have told you that? Instead, they either lie or try to avoid your company.

  Robert Cormier

  Hurt, Lying, Mean

  Robert Cormier (2013). “Tenderness”, p.32, Delacorte Books for Young Readers

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• History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.

  Howard Zinn

  Lying, Past, Government

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• Every instance in my life, I've felt like the exact opposite of Superman. Except this time, this moment right now. I don't care. I don't feel like a weak, insipid sissy. Because right now I know I would save the girl. I know that I would rather risk the planet than let harm befall Eliza Wishart. I would save her in a second. Because I can imagine her and me huddled safe together while the earth falls under evil designs, but I can't imagine the world without her in it.

  Craig Silvey

  Girl, Fall, Opposites

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• The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers--its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks--are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power.

  Howard Zinn

  Military, Moving, Jail

  Howard Zinn (2010). “You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times”, p.151, Beacon Press

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• We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imagining of poets and dreamers of the past. It shows that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. For instance, how much more remarkable it is for us all to be stuck-half of us upside down-by a mysterious attraction, to a spinning ball that has been swinging in space for billions of years, than to be carried on the back of an elephant supported on a tortoise swimming in a bottomless sea.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Swimming, Men, Past

  Richard P. Feynman (2005). “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman”, p.76, Hachette UK

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• If you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives.

  Daniel Handler

  People, Trying, Peer Pressure

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• Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe ? Another act of willing?

  Albert Einstein

  Mean, Men, Light

  "Einstein's God: Albert Einstein's Quest as a Scientist and as a Jew to Replace a Forsaken God".

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• There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Flower, Smell, Rose

  "The Naval Treaty" (1893)

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• Everybody gets jolted. You, me, before we die we’ll all get nailed, lots of times. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get turned into witches. You can’t avoid getting zapped, but you can avoid passing the mean energy on. That’s the interesting thing about witches, the challenge of them-- learning not to hit back, or hit somebody else, when they zap you. You can bury the zap, for instance, like the gods buried the Titans in the center of the earth. Or you can be like a river when a forest fire hits it--phshhhhhhhhhhhh! Just drown it, drown all the heat and let it wash away.

  David James Duncan

  Mean, Rivers, Fire

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• To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that belief without the slightest misgiving.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Character, Men, Belief

  Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (2017). “The Idiot (English German edition illustrated): Der Idiot (Englisch Deutsch ausgabe illustriert)”, p.1109, Clap Publishing, LLC.

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• To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Reflection, Thinking, Errors

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• In the most basic terms it was about how when we experience art without critical awareness we consent to the ideas being promoted, either intentionally or unintentionally, by the filmmaker. For instance, if you watch a racist comedian and laugh at his jokes, you are consenting to the prejudices inherent within them. Similarly, if you watch a movie which perpetuates conventional ideas about race, gender, etc., you are consenting to them and not affecting change in any way.

  Simon Pegg

  Art, Race, Ideas

  Simon Pegg (2010). “Nerd Do Well”, p.126, Random House

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• The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.

  John Stuart Mill

  Truth, Ideas, Forever

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• If you don’t care about something, one way to demonstrate your feelings is to say the word and then repeat the word with the letters S-C-H-M replacing the first letters. Somebody who didn’t care about dentists, for instance could say ‘Dentist, schmentists.

  Daniel Handler

  Feelings, Care, Letters

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• There are many reasons, of course, why someone might snap their fingers and grin. If you heard some pleasing music, for instance, you might snap your fingers and grin to demonstrate that the music had charms that could soothe your savage breast. If you were employed as a spy, you might snap your fingers and grin in order to deliver a message in secret snapping-and-grinning code.

  Daniel Handler

  Order, Secret, Spy

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• 13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.

  Daniel Handler

  Cake, People, Tables

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