Proportion Quotes - Page 10

• If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Men, Risk

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.111, Xist Publishing

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• But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity.

  Thomas M. Disch

  Thinking, Quality, Toasters

  Thomas M. Disch (1986). “The brave little toaster: a bedtime story for small appliances”, Doubleday Books for Young Readers

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• I don't mess around with the men in the coven, especially my Shadowblades," she said with quiet finality. Flirting was one thing but anything more, it was a mistake of epic proportions. His eyes narrowed and he gave a slow shake of his head. "That is all right then. Because I want so much more than just to mess around.

  Diana Pharaoh Francis

  Mistake, Eye, Epic

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• Vous eprouves trop d'emotion, Hastings, It affects your hands and your wits. Is that a way to fold a coat? And regard what you have done to my pyjamas. If the hairwash breaks what will befall them?' 'Good heavens, Poirot,' I cried, 'this is a matter of life and death. What does it matter what happens to our clothes?' 'You have no sense of proportion Hastings. We cannot catch a train earlier than the time that it leaves, and to ruin one's clothes will not be the least helpful in preventing a murder.

  Agatha Christie

  Hands, Clothes, Life And Death

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• ...a writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his soul.

  Marcel Proust

  Water, Soul, Suffering

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• Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions, inside the walls of a hospital... Doubt is like dye. Once is spreads into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.

  Jodi Picoult

  Wall, Lying, Reality

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “Lone Wolf: A Novel”, p.74, Simon and Schuster

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• He was my first boyfriend, and I made him my everything - he was my new life, my new love, my new compass point. I guess that's the danger with firsts - you lose all sense of proportion.

  David Levithan

  New Life, Firsts, Compass

  David Levithan (2009). “Boy Meets Boy”, p.67, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• [Her] greatest fear, which was so huge and so black that it was of phobic proportions, was that people would laugh at her feelings.

  Steig Larsson

  Greatest Fear, People, Laughing

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• Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.

  Jane Austen

  Feelings, Opinion, Reason

  Jane Austen (2016). “Pride and Prejudice (Fourth Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.

  Frantz Fanon

  Mother, Country, Adoption

  Frantz Fanon (1967). “Black Skin, White Masks”, p.18, Pluto Press

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• What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.

  David Mitchell

  War, Law, Kitchen

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• What I know is, you have chance in life--of surviving it--if you tolerate loss well; manage not to be a cynic through it all; to subordinate, as Ruskin implied, to keep proportion, to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good, even if admittedly good is often not simple to find.

  Richard Ford

  Loss, Simple, Chance

  Richard Ford (2013). “Canada”, p.511, A&C Black

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• America is the only country where a significant proportion of the population believes that professional wrestling is real but the moon landing was faked.

  David Letterman

  Inspirational, Country, Witty

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• Keep time! How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives. I wasted time and now doth time waste me.

  William Shakespeare

  Sweet, Men, Waste

  'Richard II' (1595) act 5, sc. 5, l. 42

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• Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions: - (1) an elevated level of general well being which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities (2) a high degree of social atomization and , as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals; (3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life.

  Milan Kundera

  Book, Writing, Epidemics

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• Dreams are imperfections of sleep; even so is consciousness the imperfection of waking. Dreams are impurities in the circulation of the blood; even so it's consciousness a disorder of life. Dreams are without proportion, without good sense, without truth; so also is consciousness. Awake from dream, the truth is known: awake from waking. The truth is: The Unknown

  Aleister Crowley

  Dream, Sleep, Blood

  Aleister Crowley (1913). “Liber CCCXXXIII [i.e. Trecentesimus Tricesimus Tertius]: The Book of Lies, which is Also Falsely Called, Breaks : the Wanderings Or Falsifications of the One Thought of Frater Perdurabo, which Thought is Itself Untrue”

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• The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Ideas, People, Effort

  Dialogues (1954) (entry for 3 June 1943)

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• She's useful to me, I'm useful to her. As long as that continues, Rowan Street is safe from an old-lady smack down of epic proportions.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Epic, Long, Safe

  Kelley Armstrong (2013). “Omens: The Cainsville Series”, p.320, Random House Canada

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• Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.

  Andrew Solomon

  Depression, Grief, Bereavement

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Faith, Ties, People

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1862). “Democracy in America”, p.393

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• Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients; action, pleasure and indolence. And though these ingredients ought to be mixed in different proportions, according to the disposition of the person, yet no one ingredient can be entirely wanting without destroying in some measure the relish of the whole composition.

  David Hume

  Happiness, Different, Three

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.746, Delphi Classics

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• The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

  Mark Twain

  Happiness, Wisdom, Philosophy

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.2992, Delphi Classics

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• The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to the worth and value of its object.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Knowledge, Objects, Values

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1836). “Aids to reflection in the formation of a manly character on the several grounds of prudence, morality, and religion”, p.54

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• Look wide, beyond your immediate surroundings and limits, and you see things in their right proportion. Look above the level of things around you and see a higher aim and possibility to your work.

  Robert Baden-Powell

  Leadership, Looks, Levels

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• In proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the community of property and power. Among true and real friends, all is common; and, were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friends. The only perfect and genuine republic is that which comprehends every living being. Those distinctions which have been artificially set up, of nations, societies, families, and religions, are only general names, expressing the abhorrence and contempt with which men blindly consider their fellowmen.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Life, Real, Ignorance

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1988). “Shelley's Prose: Or the Trumpet of a Prophecy”

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