Premature Quotes - Page 7

• You, O money, are the cause of a restless life! Because of you we journey toward a premature death; you provide cruel nourishment for the evils of men; the seed of our cares sprouts from your head.

  Propertius

  Money, Journey, Men

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• That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: "Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.

  Horace Walpole

  Religion, Genius, Lines

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• Artists should be aware that petty stroking could be the source of arrested productivity. An artist's job includes the avoidance of premature closure by the begged or gratuitous approval of others.

  Robert Genn

  Jobs, Artist, Approval Of Others

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• I am the father of twin sons that were born in Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Hospital in 1983. They were 13 weeks premature. Gerry weighed 1 pound 14 ounces, and Zachary 1 pound 11 ounces. They were the first male twins to ever survive at Pennsylvania Hospital.

  Buzz Bissinger

  Father, Son, Philadelphia

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• Irritable Judges suffer from a bad case of premature adjudication.

  John Mortimer

  Justice, Judging, Suffering

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• Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%.

  Donald Knuth

  Strong, Opportunity, Thinking

  "Computer Programming as an Art". Communications of the ACM, Volume 17, Issue 12, December 1974.

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• My career started young and I was really ambitious, and then I had success and I hung out with people who were much older. I think I might have been temporally misplaced, so I thought I was 40. It was a premature midlife crisis.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Thinking, Careers, People

  "Lucky me" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. January 9, 2009.

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• Premature burial works just fine as a cure for adolescence.

  George Alec Effinger

  Cures, Fine, Adolescence

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• Two premature babies was not a genetic thing; we were just unlucky.

  Sophie Ellis Bextor

  Baby, Two, Unlucky

  Interview with Nick Duerden, www.theguardian.com. July 15, 2011.

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• There is no question that al-Qaida operatives are currently active in Iraq. A premature exit before the threat they represent has been dealt with would endanger America and the prospects of eventual peace in the Middle East.

  Robert Foster Bennett

  Iraq, America, Middle East

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• Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence. Children grow up very fast but not very far. That is why it is possible for 14 year olds now to establish friendships with 26 year olds - because they know by the age of 14 all they are ever going to know.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Children, Growing Up, Years

  "Our Culture, What’s Left Of It". Interview with Jamie Glazov, archive.frontpagemag.com. August 31, 2005.

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• A premature attempt to explain something that thrills you will destroy your perceptivity rather than increase it, because your tendency will be to explain away rather than seek out.

  Edwin Land

  Science, Thrill, Increase

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• The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which, from the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, subsisted one thousand and fifty-eight years in a state of premature and perpetual decay.

  Edward Gibbon

  Son, Eight, Years

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.304, Modern Library

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• Giese was an unemotional man, but then in the study of Solaris emotion is a hindrance to the explorer. Imagination and premature theorizing are positive disadvantages in approaching a planet where-as has become clear-anything is possible... The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Men, Imagination, Facts

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• Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.

  Idries Shah

  Daughter, Independence, Conceit

  Idries Shah (1978). “Learning how to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way”, p.109, Octagon Press Ltd

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• Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions.

  George Sarton

  Mistake, Men, Errors

  George Sarton (1959). “A History of Science: Hellenistic science and culture in the last three centuries B.C”

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• Perhaps, if prematurely we dismiss ourselves from this world, all may even have to be suffered through again - the premature birth may not contribute to the production of another being, which must be begun again from the beginning.

  Florence Nightingale

  World, May, Birth

  Florence Nightingale (1993). “Cassandra and Other Selections from Suggestions for Thought”, NYU Press

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• He was born early. But he was born within a safe range of premature.

  Paul Reiser

  Safe, Comedy, Range

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• The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well dragged.

  Colson Whitehead

  Knuckles, Cases, Existence

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• The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes man.

  Karl Kraus

  Men, Ideals

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• My mother took too much, a great deal too much, care of me; she over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed me with premature lessons of prudence: she was so afraid that I should ever do a foolish thing, or not say a wise one, that she prompted my every word, and guided my every action. So I grew up, seeing with her eyes, hearing with her ears, and judging with her understanding, till, at length, it was found out that I had not eyes, ears or understanding of my own.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Wise, Mother, Eye

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1826). “Works of Maria Edgeworth: Tales of fashionable life. 1826.- -v. 7. Patronage. 1825”, p.2

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• Even the relatively small amount of trans fats are likely to be causing around 7,000 premature deaths from heart disease per year.

  Walter Willett

  Heart, Years, Disease

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• All Dickens's humour couldn't save Dickens, save him from his overcrowded life, its sordid and neurotic central tragedy and its premature collapse. But Dickens's humour, and all such humour, has saved or at least greatly served the world.

  Stephen Leacock

  Tragedy, World, Humour

  Stephen Leacock (2010). “My Remarkable Uncle”, p.114, New Canadian Library

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• In economics, unlike fiction and the theater, there is no harm in a premature disclosure of the plot: it is to see the changes just mentioned and others as an interlocked whole.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Plot, Fiction, Economics

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2015). “The New Industrial State”, p.7, Princeton University Press

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• Utopias are often just premature truths.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Utopia

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