Precise Quotes - Page 11

• we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death

  Julian Barnes

  Looks, Gestures, Language

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• True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.

  David Foster Wallace

  Cheer, Exercise, Years

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “The Pale King”, p.19, Penguin UK

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• Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life.

  W. G. Sebald

  Mean, Reality, Understanding

  W. G. Sebald (2016). “The Rings of Saturn”, p.106, New Directions Publishing

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• I do shodo magic,” Dali said. “I curse through calligraphy. I have to write the curse out on a piece of paper and I can’t move while I do it. One smudge, and I might kill the lot of us.” Oh good. “But don’t worry.” Dali waved her arms. “It’s so precise, it usually doesn’t work at all.” Better and better.

  Ilona Andrews

  Moving, Writing, Worry

  Ilona Andrews (2010). “Magic Strikes: A Kate Daniels Novel: 3”, p.168, Hachette UK

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• Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other's presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant. You have also grown a little stupid.

  Louis de Bernieres

  Stupid, Love Is, Long

  Louis de Bernieres (2012). “Corelli's Mandolin: A Novel”, p.399, Vintage

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• I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Expression, Able, Common

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays”, p.98, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• You said he was a soldier. You don't suppose...?" "Oh, Gods." Ignata blinked. "You think something could be wrong down there?" All of them looked at William, who chose this precise moment to slide the wet shirt back on his back, which required him to flex, raising his arms. "That would be a shame," Cerise murmured.

  Ilona Andrews

  Thinking, Soldier, Would Be

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• Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.

  Paul Valery

  Men, Ideas, Doing Nothing

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• The end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth century are remarkable for the small amount of scientific movement going on in this country, especially in its more exact departments. Mathematics were at the last gasp, and astronomy nearly so; I mean in those members of its frame which depend upon precise measurement and systematic calculation. The chilling torpor of routine had begun to spread itself over all those branches of Science which wanted the excitement of experimental research.

  John Herschel

  Country, Mean, Science

  "Memoir of Francis Baily".

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• When do these three days expire?" "That's what pisses me off. I don't know. He was annoyingly vague." "The nerve. Threatening you and not being precise about it.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Three, Nerves, Threatening

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.841, Dell

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• And I too wanted to be. That is all I wanted; and this is the last word. At the bottom of all these attempts which seemed without bounds, I find the same desire again: to drive existence out of me, to rid the passing moments of their fat, to twist them, dry them, purify myself, harden myself, to give back at last the sharp, precise sound of a saxophone note. That could even make an apologue: there was a poor man who got in the wrong world.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Men, Giving, Desire

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• And so, from the first, we separated our pleasure. She lay on the rug and I lay at right angles to her so that only our lips might meet. Kissing in this way is the strangest of distractions. The greedy body that clamors for satisfaction is forced to content itself with a single sensation and, just as the blind hear more acutely and the deaf can feel the grass grow, so the mouth becomes the focus of love and all things pass through it and are re-defined. It is a sweet and precise torture.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Sweet, Kissing, Focus

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• THING TO TRY: If you are asked to describe a suspect to a police sketch artist, describe in precise detail, the features of the police sketch artist. This is one of the rare instances where two people can do one self-portrait.

  Demetri Martin

  Artist, Self, Two

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• Delirium: 'What's the name of the word for the precise moment when you realize that you've actually forgotten how it felt to make love to somebody you really liked a long time ago?' Dream: 'There isn't one.' Delirium: 'Oh. I thought maybe there was.'

  Neil Gaiman

  Dream, Names, Long

  "Sandman: Brief Lives: 3". Comic book by Neil Gaiman, 1994.

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• She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this 'must'. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Sweet, Pain, Men

  Yevgeny Zamyatin “We”, Two-Gunner Pulp Press

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• Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. I'm not saying that's what they really are. I'm just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you.

  Zadie Smith

  Girl, Fall, Dark

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• I have a lot of aggression in me that needs to come out in a not-very-precise or articulate way.

  Christina Aguilera

  Needs, Way, Aggression

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• Good art however 'immoral' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Mean, Bears

  Ezra Pound (1968). “Literary Essays of Ezra Pound”, p.44, New Directions Publishing

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• This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science. It's, on its best day, is a crude art. We make mistakes; I make mistakes. With more than 50 years as a journalist, I have at least had the opportunity to blow more stories, make more mistakes than maybe anybody in television.

  Dan Rather

  Art, Mistake, Blow

  "Larry King Live", edition.cnn.com. June 2, 2005.

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• Innate sensuousness rarely has any desire for accuracy, no desire for precise information. It basks in sunshine, bathes in color, dwells in a sense of the impressive and the gorgeous, and rests there. Accuracy is not necessary except in the case of aggressive, acquisitive natures, when it manifests itself in a desire to seize. True controlling sensuousness cannot be manifested in the most active dispositions, nor again in the most accurate.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Sunshine, Color, Desire

  Theodore Dreiser (2015). “The Financier”, p.95, Booklassic

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• Whatseems to take place outside ideology (to be precise, in the street), in reality takes place in ideology. What really takes place in ideology seems therefore to take place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, 'I am ideological.'

  Louis Althusser

  Believe, Character, Reality

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• It is not enough to say we were born to be Republicans, it's more precise to say Republicanism is part of our DNA.

  Dolours Price

  Dna, Republican, Enough

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• The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro.

  Ansel Adams

  Glowing, Land, Sky

  Ansel Adams, Karen E. Haas, Rebecca A. Senf (2005). “Ansel Adams: in the Lane Collection”, Museum of Fine Arts Boston

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• André Kertész has two qualities that are essential for a great photographer: an insatiable curiosity about the world, about people, and about life, and a precise sense of form.

  Brassai

  Two, People, Curiosity

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• Be precise. A lack of precision is dangerous when the margin of error is small.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Funny, Errors, Precision

  Donald Rumsfeld (2001). “Public Statements of Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, 2001”

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