Precision Quotes - Page 11

• I told Ing once that she dances like a German and she didn't like it, but it's true: she dances seriously, like lives are hanging in the balance, like precision dancing can save the starving children of India.

  Audrey Niffenegger

  Children, Dancing, Balance

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• And we remember the end of our combat mission and the emergence of a new dawn - the precision of our efforts against al Qaeda in Iraq, the professionalism of the training of Iraqi security forces, and the steady drawdown of our forces. In handing over responsibility to the Iraqis, you preserved the gains of the last four years and made this day possible.

  Barack Obama

  War, Responsibility, Years

  Remarks by the President and First Lady on the End of the War in Iraq at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. December 14, 2011.

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• I have an over-attachment to precision, which is why I've sold more magazines than any man alive.

  Felix Dennis

  Men, Magazines, Alive

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• No person will deny that the highest degree of attainable accuracy is an object to be desired, and it is generally found that the last advances towards precision require a greater devotion of time, labour, and expense, than those which precede them.

  Charles Babbage

  Degrees, Lasts, Measurement

  Charles Babbage, Anthony Hyman (1989). “Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage”, p.119, Cambridge University Press

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• I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.

  William Safire

  Color, Way, Welcome

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• Picture perfect, I paint a perfect picture bomb the hoochies wit' precision, my intentions to get richer.

  Tupac Shakur

  Perfect, Bombs, Intention

  Song: Gangster Party

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• There are things than cannot ever occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to loose their integrity in the frailty of realization.

  Bruno Schulz

  Integrity, Reality, Trying

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• I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use of language. Some of this storytelling reads as if it were spoken rather than written, stuffed with tired images that pop into the writer's head because they are so familiar. The top of the head is fit for growing hair, but not for generating fine prose.

  Sol Stein

  Book, Writing, Tired

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• The best conducting technique is that which achieves the maximum musical result with the minimum effort. The only general rule is to infuse all gestures with precision, clarity, and vitality.

  Fritz Reiner

  Effort, Musical, Technique

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• ... love and fear increase together with a precision almost mathematical: the greater the love is then the greater the fear is.

  Josephine Winslow Johnson

  Love Is, Together, Increase

  Josephine Winslow Johnson (1934). “Now in November”, p.71, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• There is a general kind of praying which fails for lack of precision. It is as if a regiment of soldiers should all fire off their guns anywhere. Possibly somebody would be killed, but the majority of the enemy would be missed.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Prayer, Gun, Fire

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1988). “Spurgeon at His Best: Over 2200 Striking Quotations from the World's Most Exhaustive and Widely-read Sermon Series”, Baker Publishing Group

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• Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection.

  Jennifer Egan

  Perfection, Problem, Clean

  Jennifer Egan (2010). “A Visit from the Goon Squad”, p.18, Anchor

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• The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh.

  Jennifer Egan

  Perfection, Problem, Mesh

  Jennifer Egan (2010). “A Visit from the Goon Squad”, p.18, Anchor

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• Vipassana: looking into something with clarity and precision, seeing each component as distinct, piercing all the way through so as to perceive the most fundamental reality of that thing.

  Henepola Gunaratana

  Reality, Vision, Fundamentals

  Bhante Gunaratana, Henepola Gunaratana (2011). “Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

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• Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?

  Lois Lowry

  Sunshine, Years, Giving

  Lois Lowry (2014). “The Giver Quartet”, p.82, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Suddenly Po shot into the courtyard from the north vestibule whooping. Katsa, seeing him, broke into a run and they tore at each other through the wash. Just before the moment of impact, Po shifted to one side, crouched, scooped Katsa up, and, with admirable precision, propelled them both sideways into the pool. ... Katsa and Po were trying to drown each other and, judging from their hoots of laughter, enjoying it immensely.

  Kristin Cashore

  Running, Laughter, Impact

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• The clock, for all its precision in measurement, is a blunt instrument for the psyche and for society. Schedules can replace sensitivity to the mood of a moment, clock time can ride roughshod over the emotions of individuals.

  Jay Griffiths

  Schedules, Measurement, Emotion

  "The 'leap second' is a timely reminder" by Jay Griffiths, www.theguardian.com. June 29, 2012.

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• A precision of composition and figuration is what I'm working toward. I've always felt viewers should have an experience without having to ask what the hell is was about.

  Eric Fischl

  Should Have, Hell, Composition

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• We live in a time of the greatest precision and of maximum contrasts: photomontage offers us a means to express this. It shows ideas: photography shows us objects.

  Herbert Bayer

  Photography, Mean, Ideas

  Herbert Bayer, Beaumont Newhall (1977). “Herbert Bayer: Photographic Works an Exhibition”

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• A living organism must be studied from two distinct aspects. One of these is the causal-analytic aspect which is so fruitfully applicable to ontogeny. The other is the historical descriptive aspect which is unravelling lines of phylogeny with ever-increasing precision. Each of these aspects may make suggestions concerning the possible significance of events seen under the other, but does not explain or translate them into simpler terms.

  Gavin de Beer

  Science, Two, Historical

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• Hours of preparation for something that is excecuted, with extreme precision, in a few minutes. Just as with a judo throw.

  Yves Klein

  Preparation, Hours, Minutes

  "Yves Klein, 1928 - 1962, Selected Writings". Book by Yves Klein, ed. J & J. pp. 55-57, 1974.

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• My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation.

  Maurice Ravel

  Cells, Ravens, Mathematical Equations

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• To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty

  John Ruskin

  Speak, Intimidation, Penalties

  John Ruskin (2015). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.42, John Ruskin

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• Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.

  e. e. cummings

  Comedian, Movement, Burlesque

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• Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

  E. B. White

  Fall, Writing, Knives

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.159, Cornell University Press

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