Precarious Quotes - Page 5

• Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.

  Edward Gibbon

  Men, Might, Lasts

  Edward Gibbon (1788). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”, p.37

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• For Aristotle, goodness is a kind of prospering in the precarious affair of being human.

  Terry Eagleton

  Kind, Affair, Being Human

  "Ideas for modern living: virtue" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2010.

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• Your love for me is founded in a sentiment. My love for you is founded in the body. A precarious interchange.

  Mason Cooley

  Feelings, My Love For You, Body

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• Whether we are aware of it or not, every act of trust carries with it a shiver of fear. A favorable situation can become dangerous. Deep down we know that life is insecure and precarious. However, if we do trust, the shiver carries with it a philosophical optimism: Life, with all its traps and horrors,  is good The bet is implicit in trust itself. If we could be sure of everyone and everything, trust would have no value - like money, if it were suddenly limitless, or sunshine, if there were always fine weather, or life, if we were to live forever

  Piero Ferrucci

  Philosophical, Sunshine, Insecure

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• To my parents, writing seemed precarious and not the best idea.

  Chad Harbach

  Writing, Ideas, Parent

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• Interference is a terrific page-turner, but it's also a haunting, powerful look at the way families and friendships entangle us all. Berry is a sharp-eyed, engaging writer, and she deftly captures the terrors, ruptures and intimacies of one seemingly ordinary neighborhood, always finding a precarious beauty in her characters' lives. This is a book that is terrifying, startling, and very hard to put down.

  Rebecca Godfrey

  Powerful, Book, Character

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• I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

  Edward Gibbon

  Taken, Future, Recovery

  'Memoirs of My Life' (1796) ch. 8 (on the completion of 'Decline and Fall')

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• Courage, of all national qualities, is the most precarious; because it is exerted only at intervals, and by a few in every nation; whereas industry, knowledge, civility, may be of constant and universal use, and for several ages, may become habitual to the whole people.

  David Hume

  Courage, People, Quality

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.706, Delphi Classics

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• We are in an extremely precarious and urgent situation that compels immediate action

  David Karoly

  Action, Climate Change, Situation

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• If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate, you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

  Winston Churchill

  Peace, Freedom, War

  Winston Churchill (1986). “The Gathering Storm”, p.312, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• An estimated value is a precarious measure of justice, compared with the specific thing.

  William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield

  Justice, Values

  "Fisher v. Prince", 3 Burr. Part IV. 1365, 1762.

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• Aspiring black leaders are often asked to transcend race, even though no one ever asked, say, Hillary Clinton to transcend gender. This is a precarious race straddle that most members of the breakthrough generation seem to reject. Even the most well meaning white Obama supporters seem to take deep satisfaction in this idea. Obama, they insisted, could be raceless, a reasurringly optimistic view of America's deepest burden that ignores countless peices of evidence to the contrary.

  Gwen Ifill

  Optimistic, Views, Ideas

  Gwen Ifill (2009). “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama”, p.167, Anchor

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• I Lived on the street when i was a kid, i wasn’t even at school, so i had a whole different set of experiences for those formative years. I was gone… i was in a very precarious place when i was younger.

  Jared Leto

  School, Kids, Years

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• The international monetary order is more precarious by far today than it was in 1929. Then, gold was international money, incorruptible, unmanageable, and unchangeable. Today, the U.S. dollar serves as the international medium of exchange, managed by Washington politicians and Federal Reserve officials, manipulated from day to day, and serving political goals and ambitions. This difference alone sounds the alarm to all perceptive observers.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Ambition, Order, Differences

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• In this world we are in precarious position, balanced midway between material and spiritual hungers. We find heaven to be a delicate state of consciousness that can be lost in a single moment of forgetfulness.

  Harold Klemp

  Life, Spiritual, Single Mom

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• The life of a professional golfer is precarious at best. Win, and they carry you to the clubhouse on their shoulders. Lose, and you pay the caddies in the dark.

  Gene Sarazen

  Dark, Golf, Winning

  Gene Sarazen (1950). “Thirty Years of Championship Golf: The Life and Times of Gene Sarazen”

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• Let us consider, brethren, we are struggling for our best birthrights and inheritance, which being infringed, renders all our blessings precarious in their enjoyments, and, consequently triffling in their value. Let us disappoint the Men who are raising themselves on the ruin of this Country. Let us convince every invader of our freedom, that we will be as free as the constitution our fathers recognized, will justify.

  Samuel Adams

  Country, Father, Struggle

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• Ownership is not a general feature of our society, determining its character. On the contrary, dependence on a precarious wage at the will of others is the general feature of our society.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Character, Our Society, Ownership

  Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.23, IHS Press

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• Liberalism regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situation, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Travel, Adventure, Guarantees That

  Morris Raphael Cohen (1993). “The Faith of a Liberal”, p.438, Transaction Publishers

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• Perhaps bacteria may tentatively be regarded as biochemical experiments; owing to their relatively small size and rapid growth, variations must arise much more frequently than in more differentiated forms of life, and they can in addition afford to occupy more precarious positions in natural economy than larger organisms with more exacting requirements.

  Marjory Stephenson

  Science, Growth, Variation

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• Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?

  Bill Watterson

  People, Faces, Life Is

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• This is a hard and precarious world, where every mistake and infirmity must be paid for in full.

  Clarence Day

  Mistake, World, Infirmity

  Clarence Day, Jr. (2004). “This Simian World”, p.69, 1st World Publishing

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• Obviously, the anti-ERA people are tickled about my ordeal because it proves that the ERA breaks up families. When they point out that feminism is a dangerous thing, I just say marriage is pretty precarious too.

  Sonia Johnson

  People, Feminism, Eras

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• I think these are very precarious times for women, it seems. So many of your rights are under assault.

  Richard L. Hanna

  Thinking, Rights, Assault

  "Richard Hanna, GOP Congressman, Tells Women To Give Their Money To Democrats" by Laura Bassett, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 22, 2012.

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• An abundance of some good things is perfectly compatible with the scarcity of others; that life is everywhere precarious, man everywhere small.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Nature, Men, Scarcity

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1977). “The desert year”, Penguin Books, 1977

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