Proportion Quotes - Page 18

• In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

  David Hume

  Wise, Men, Facts

  David Hume (1784). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.118

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• I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I'm likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination.

  Andrew Motion

  Beautiful, Extraordinary Person, Imagination

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• We cannot, without depraving our minds, endeavour to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Husband, Mind, Lovers

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2014). “Posthumous Works: of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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• The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Long, Secret

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• Existence permeates sexuality and vice versa, so that it is impossible to determine, in a given decision or action, the proportion of sexual to other motivations, impossible to label a decision or act ‘sexual’ or ‘non-sexual’ . There is no outstripping of sexuality any more than there is sexuality enclosed within itself. No one is saved and no one is totally lost.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Motivation, Decision, Vices

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• The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.

  Ann Beattie

  Style, Admiration, Similarity

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• If global warming is not contained, the West will face a choice of a refugee crisis of unimaginable proportions, or direct complicity in crimes against humanity.

  George Monbiot

  Refugee Crisis, Choices, Humanity

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• A skyscraper is at the same time a triumph of the machine and a tremendous emotional experience, almost breath-taking. Not merely its height but its mass and proportions are the result of an emotion, as well as of calculation.

  George Gershwin

  Emotional, Triumph, Machines

  "Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources". Book editing by Daniel Albright (University of Chicago Press), essay "The Composer in the Machine Age" (1933), 2004.

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• A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor people poor. Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty.

  Philip Agee

  Country, Mean, People

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• Charter schools have a far higher proportion of teachers who are not certified.

  Maggie Gallagher

  Teacher, School, Higher

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• Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share.

  Henri Matisse

  Passion, Glowing, Expression

  "Notes d'un Peintre". "La Grande Revue", as translated by Jack Flam in "Matisse on Art" (1995), December 25, 1908.

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• The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts.

  George Muller

  Christian, Spiritual, Vigor

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• Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.

  Joseph Addison

  Art, Exercise, Science

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...”, p.371

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• The concentration and reciprocal effect of industry and agriculture conjoin in a growth of productive powers, which increases more in geometrical than in arithmetical proportion.

  Friedrich List

  Agriculture, Growth, Increase

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• There is usually an inverse proportion between how much something is on your mind and how much it´s getting done!

  David Allen

  Mind, Done, Inverse

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• People's intelligence tends to be in inverse proportion to their number. People don't tend to get smarter as they get into bigger groups.

  Robyn Hitchcock

  Numbers, People, Groups

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• If you do not want the State to act like a criminal, you must disarm it as you would a criminal; you must keep it weak. The State will always be criminal in proportion to its strength; a weak State will always be as criminal as it can be, or dare be, but if it is kept down to the proper limit of weakness - which, by the way, is a vast deal lower limit than people are led to believe - its criminality may be safely got on with.

  Albert J. Nock

  Believe, People, Weakness

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• The corruption of freedom is in proportion to the moral deterioration of the people. For a people who have lost their sense of self-respect have no need for freedom. And the income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact.

  Frank Chodorov

  Moral Fiber, Self, People

  Frank Chodorov (2007). “Income Tax: Root of All Evil”, p.75, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• When you are angry, you make bad decisions in direct proportion to the level of your anger.

  W. E. B. Griffin

  Decision, Levels, Angry

  W. E. B. Griffin (2004). “By Order of the President”, Putnam Adult

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• In most societies birth has been an experience in whichwomen draw together to help each other and reinforce bonds in the community. Now that eradication of pain with effective anesthesia is often the only issue in any discussion of birththe sacramental and social elements which used to be central to women's experience of birthseem, for an increasing proportion of women, to be completely irrelevant.

  Sheila Kitzinger

  Pain, Issues, Community

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• There's no set designer like your own self; you furnish the mise-en-scène, the wardrobe, the physical proportions of the actor, and the setting. Then radio is doing something that television very rarely achieves.

  Norman Corwin

  Self, Actors, Television

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• Violence in our society has reached epidemic proportions. ... Violence in the media for entertainment purposes has been established as a major contributing factor.

  Deborah Prothrow-Stith

  Epidemics, Media, Purpose

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• The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct proportion to the intensity to which others are trying to prove him wrong.

  Harry Segall

  Trying, Individual, Intensity

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• The poorer is a family, the greater is the proportion of the total outgo which must be used for food... The proportion of the outgo used for food, other things being equal, is the best measure of the material standard of living of a population.

  Ernst Engel

  Population, Standards, Used

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• The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth. For all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of the face; true proportions, the beauty of architecture; true measures, the beauty of harmony and music.

  Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

  Truth, Honesty, World

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