Proportion Quotes - Page 4

• Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero, and-we must now add-generally extending far and wide beyond him, so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential ingredient in tragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and especially of pity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the direction taken by tragic pity, will naturally vary greatly.

  A. C. Bradley

  Taken, Hero, Suffering

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• It is impossible that a genius - at least a literary genius - can ever be discovered by his intimates; they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions; they can't perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own.

  Mark Twain

  Differences, Focus, Genius

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.141, Courier Corporation

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• In the Western world, countries that were once the crucible of freedom are slipping remorselessly into a thinly disguised serfdom in which an ever higher proportion of your assets are annexed by the state as superlandlord. Big government is where nations go to die - not in Keynes' 'long run,' but sooner than you think.

  Mark Steyn

  Running, Country, Thinking

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• I find that the standard of living does not go up in proportion with the cost of living. The trick in life is to do things that are fun all the time.

  Warren Buffett

  Fun, Cost Of Living, Doe

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• The more you wish to be, the wiser you are; while the wish to have is apt to be foolish in proportion to its largeness.

  Lafcadio Hearn

  Wish, Wiser You, Foolish

  Lafcadio Hearn (2014). “Exotics and Retrospectives”, p.147, LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

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• In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen by less than half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who do choose. The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long terms of irresponsibility. In the Executive, the Governor is entirely independent of the choice of the people, and of their control; his Council equally so, and at best but a fifth wheel to a wagon. In the Judiciary, the judges of the highest courts are dependent on none but themselves.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Independent, Long, People

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way”, p.23, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Numbers, Office, Long

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.416, Simon and Schuster

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• [Cameras] tend to turn people into things and the photograph extends and multiplies the human image to the proportions of mass-produced merchandise and, [in the age of photography] the world itself becomes a sort of museum of objects that have been encountered before in some other museum and to say that the camera cannot lie is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practiced in its name.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Photography, Lying, Museums

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• I am certainly not a blogger. Quite a large proportion of them are nuts and extremists - with the honourable exception of the culture secretary.

  Kenneth Clarke

  Nuts, Culture, Exception

  "Press regulation 'needs state support'" by Owen Bowcott, www.theguardian.com. January 16, 2012.

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• Nice teeth is a turn on for me. If you open your mouth and it looks like a battle of epic proportions, I don't like it.

  Dane Cook

  Nice, Epic, Battle

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• I like to go to England, and I'll tell you why. I like to go to a country where I am considered the best-looking person. It's as simple as that. Hollywood, kind of a crushing ego blow - 'Hey Buddy Holly, you are so old, have you not perished in a plane crash?' But not in England, good God, not there. In England, God bless that dinky island, there it's, 'Good God, look at him. He has all his teeth and his ears are in proportion to his head.' I'm Brad bloody Pitt on that island.

  Greg Proops

  Crush, Country, Blow

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• I'm interested in producing truncated shapes in proportion to the frame and composition, shapes that are preferably luminous. I'm not interested in the full-figure. I want to abstract forms.

  Ralph Gibson

  Want, Shapes, Abstract

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• Portrait photography never had any charms for me, so I sought my subjects from the house-tops, and finally from the hill-tops and about the surrounding country; the taste strengthening as my successes became greater in proportion to the failures.

  William Henry Jackson

  Country, Photography, House

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• As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.

  Samuel Johnson

  Practice, Speech, Opinion

  Samuel Johnson (1833). “A Dictionary of the English Language in which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers, to which are Prefixed, a History of the Language and an English Grammar”, p.23

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• A politicians willingness to listen to good advice rises in inverse proportion to how badly he thinks he is doing.

  Patrick Caddell

  Thinking, Advice, Politician

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• I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value.

  Booker T. Washington

  Believe, Race, Done

  Booker T. Washington (2012). “Up from Slavery”, p.137, Courier Corporation

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• Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Men, Wealth, Labor

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• I shared this idea that fashion starts with a movement, an allure: elusive, defined through perfect proportions.

  Hedi Slimane

  Fashion, Ideas, Perfect

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• I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income,for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Believe, School, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.50, Graphic Arts Books

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• Mr. Dalton's permanent reputation will rest upon his having discovered a simple principle, universally applicable to the facts of chemistry - in fixing the proportions in which bodies combine, and thus laying the foundation for future labors... his merits in this respect resemble those of Kepler in astronomy.

  Humphry Davy

  Simple, Foundation, Principles

  Sir Humphry Davy (1840). “The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy: Discourses delivered before the Royal Society, and Agricultural lectures, pt. 1”

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• To reduce the interpretation of the causality of all kinds of climate changes and of global warming to one variable, CO2, or to a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is impossible to accept. Elementary rationality and my decades-long experience with econometric modelling and statistical testing of scientific hypotheses tell me that it is impossible to make strong conclusions based on mere correlation of two (or more) time series.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Strong, Two, Long

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• You can have faith in writing itself. That's where to place your faith, in the same way that a pole vaulter places his faith in the laws of physics. He will go up in direct proportion to the strength with which he pushed off, and he will come down every time.

  Nancy Pickard

  Writing, Law, Have Faith

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• He is so infinitely blessed, that every perception of His blissful presence imparts a gladness to the heart. Every degree of approach to Him is, in the same proportion, a degree of happiness.

  Susanna Wesley

  Blessed, Heart, Perception

  John Kirk, Susanna Wesley (1864). “The Mother of the Wesleys: A Biography”, p.268

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• There is likely to be beauty wherever proportion exists.

  Austin O'Malley

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• When the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him... a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Numbers, House

  Walden ch. 2 (1854)

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