Length Quotes - Page 33

• For lawful power is still superior found, When long driven back, at length it stands the ground.

  John Dryden

  Long, Driven, Found

  1681 Absalom and Achitophel, pt.1, l.1024-5.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much indeed to be regretted, party disputes are now carried to such a length, and truth is so enveloped in mist and false representation, that it is extremely difficult to know through what channel to seek it. This difficulty to one, who is of no party, and whose sole wish is to pursue with undeviating steps a path which would lead this country to respectability, wealth, and happiness, is exceedingly to be lamented. But such, for wise purposes, it is presumed, is the turbulence of human passions in party disputes, when victory more than truth is the palm contended for.

  George Washington

  Wise, Country, Party

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1836). “The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts; with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.40

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it.

  Garrison Keillor

  Humor, Prove It, Spaniards

  Garrison Keillor (1990). “We Are Still Married: Stories and Letters”, p.14, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Long, Giving, Imagination

  "Aphorisms and Reflections" by John Lancaster Spalding, (pp. 180-181), 1901.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.

  John Cage

  Views, Sound, Doe

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.28, Wesleyan University Press

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Truth, Lying, Writing

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.8, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I actually will always stop and watch [Friends episodes], not for the whole thing, but usually because I've forgotten a lot of the episodes. It's sort of fun for a second, I'm like, what's this one? And sometimes it comes back to me. I always know what year it was by what length my hair was or what color.

  Jennifer Aniston

  Fun, Hair, Color

  9 Copy quote

• [Footnote:] Pliny the Elder described a Whale called "Balaena or Whirlpool, which is so long and broad as to take up more in length and breadth than two acres of ground." This brings up again the old question: Are the classics doomed? Our ancestors believed that four years of this sort of information would inevitably produce a President, or at least a Cabinet Member. It didn't seem to work out that way.

  Will Cuppy

  Years, Whales, Two

  "The Whale". "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes". Book by Will Cuppy, 1931.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one really knew the sciences except the Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, by reason of his length of life and experience, as well as of his studiousness and zeal. He knew mathematics and perspective, and there was nothing which he was unable to know; and at the same time he was sufficiently acquainted with languages to be able to understand the saints and the philosophers and the wise men of antiquity but his knowledge of languages was not such as to enable him to effect translations until the latter portion of his life.

  Roger Bacon

  Wise, Men, Length Of Life

  "Opus Tertium". Book by Roger Bacon, p. 91, 1267.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• We construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come; presently she is dead to us, and we live on, prisoners within the walls which were intended only for her.

  Marcel Proust

  Wall, Doe, Prisoner

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.253, Modern Library

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.

  Isaac Asimov

  Way, Rope, Chance

  Isaac Asimov (1991). “Great Tales of the Golden Age of Science Fiction”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human mind. They realize that, whether they like it or not, they are simply going to have to put up with what to them are excruciatingly slow mental processes, that we humans have embarrassingly low I.Q.'s, and that probably because of these defects, we have an infuriating inability to understand, let alone follow, even the simplist and most explicit of directions.

  Cleveland Amory

  Cat, Mind, Inability

  Cleveland Amory (2002). “The cat who came for Christmas ; The cat and the curmudgeon ; The best cat ever”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:And as the last slow sudden drops are shedFrom sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Sweet, Smart, Heart

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Clive Wilmer (2014). “Selected Poems”, p.24, Routledge

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Prudent readers will do well to hold Three Weeks at arm's length, unless they want to be cut by flying adjectives.

  Elinor Glyn

  Cutting, Flying, Want

  4 Copy quote

• Corruption is a tree, whose branches are Of an immeasurable length: they spread Ev'rywhere; and the dew that drops from thence Hath infected some chairs and stools of authority.

  John Fletcher

  Tree, Dew, Branches

  13 Copy quote

• Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity.

  Lee Salk

  Attitude, Children, Parent

  9 Copy quote

• The Now, that indivisible point which studs the length of infinite line Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all , the puny all thou callest thine.

  Richard Francis Burton

  Lines, Infinite, Ends

  Sir Richard Francis Burton (1894). “The Kasîdah (couplets) of Hâjî Abdû Al-Yazdi: A Lay of the Higher Law”

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Calmly take what ill betideth;
  Patience wins the crown at length:
  Rich repayment him abideth
  Who endures in quiet strength.
  Brave the tamer of the lion;
  Brave whom conquered kingdoms praise;
  Bravest he who rules his passions,
  Who his own impatience sways.

  Johann Gottfried Herder

  Passion, Winning, Brave

  "'Die wiedergefundenen Söhne' ('The Recovered Sons', 1801)". The Monthly Religious Magazine, Volume 10, p. 445, 1853.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lying is a crime the least liable to variation in its definitions. A child will upon the slightest temptation tell an untruth as readily as the truth. That is, as soon as he can suspect that it will be to his advantage; and the dread that he afterward has of telling a lie is acquired principally by his being threatened, punished, and terrified by those who detect him in it, till at length, a number of painful impressions are annexed to the telling of an untruth, and he comes even to shudder at the thought of it.

  Joseph Priestley

  Children, Lying, Numbers

  Joseph Priestley (1831). “The Theological and Miscellaneous Works. Ed. with Notes by John Towill Rutt”, p.196

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• But come, hear my words, for truly learning causes the mind to grow. For as I said before in declaring the ends of my words: Twofold is the truth I shall speak; for at one time there grew to be the one alone out of many, and at another time it separated so that there were many out of the one; fire and water and earth and boundless height of air, and baneful Strife apart from these, balancing each of them, and Love among them, their equal in length and breadth.

  Empedocles

  Fire, Air, Water

  48 Copy quote

• A spade may be made of any size, and if the same number of strokes be made in the hour, the requisite exertion will vary nearly as the cube of the length of the blade.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Numbers, May, Cubes

  William Stanley Jevons (1871). “The Theory of Political Economy”, p.192

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The whole result of continued labour is not often consumed and enjoyed in a moment; the result generally lasts for a certain length of time. We must then conceive the capital as being progressively uninvested.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Lasts, Moments, Results

  William Stanley Jevons (1970). “The Theory of Political Economy”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus, in a crucial way, the Kansas hearings repeat the pattern set by the Scopes Trial, which has been repeated many times since, namely, evolutionists escaped critical scrutiny by not having to undergo cross-examination. In this case, they accomplished the feat by boycotting the hearings. I therefore await the day when the hearings are not voluntary but involve subpoenas that compel evolutionists to be deposed and interrogated at length on their views.

  William A. Dembski

  Kansas, Views, Trials

  "The Vise Strategy: Squeezing the Truth out of Darwinists" by William Dembski, uncommondescent.com. May 11, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am a technophile, so there is no such thing as a first draft. The first draft plunges on, and about a quarter of the way through it I realise I'm doing things wrong, so I start rewriting it. What you call the first draft becomes rather like a caterpillar; it is progressing fairly slowly, but there is movement up and down its whole length, the whole story is being changed. I call this draft zero, telling myself how the story is supposed to go.

  Terry Pratchett

  Zero, Progress, Stories

  Source: www.theguardian.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think there's some generational difference between some of the older members of the press and this younger president [Bill Clinton]. I think the older members are not quite on the same wave length, and in general. I think it's been very devastating to the president.

  David Gergen

  Thinking, Differences, President

  "David Gergen and Mark Shields on Bill Clinton's 100 Days". "PBS Newshour" with Jim Lehrer, www.pbs.org. April 29, 1993.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source