Proportion Quotes - Page 8

• To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

  Douglas Adams

  Brain, Satisfaction, Size

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, p.53, Pan Macmillan

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• What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep, when I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.

  Marquis de Sade

  Would Be, Causes, Chaos

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• The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  People, Together, Useless

  Kurt Vonnegut (1973). “Breakfast of champions: or, Goodbye blue Monday!”, Dell

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• The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul - desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would change. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic.

  Truman Capote

  Character, Average, Years

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• We're out of cocktail olives, it's a tragedy of historic proportions, but we're coping because we're Americans.

  Dean Koontz

  Tragedy, Cocktails, Olives

  Dean Koontz (2007). “The Darkest Evening of the Year: A Novel”, p.219, Bantam

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• What is real to me is the power of our awareness when we are focused on something beyond ourselves. It is a shaft of light shining in a dark corner. Our ability to shift our perceptions and seek creative alternatives to the conondrums of modernity is in direct proportion to our empathy. Can we imagine, witness, and ultimately feel the suffering of another?

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Real, Dark, Light

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• All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them.

  Mortimer Adler

  Book, Light

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• A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Desire, Rational

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.39, Psychology Press

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• We grow in direct proportion to the amount of chaos we can sustain and dissipate

  Ilya Prigogine

  Chaos, Grows, Direct

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• The architect had not stopped to bother about columns and porticos, proportions or interiors, or any limitation upon the epic he sought to materialize; he had simply made a servant of Nature - art can go no further.

  Lew Wallace

  Art, Nature, Epic

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• Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

  William Wordsworth

  Writing, Artist, Taste

  Letter to Lady Beaumont, 21 May 1807

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• Sticklers never read a book without a pencil at hand, to correct the typographical errors. In short, we are unattractive know-all obsessives who get things out of proportion and are in continual peril of being disowned by our exasperated families.

  Lynne Truss

  Book, Errors, Hands

  Lynne Truss (2011). “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”, p.5, HarperCollins UK

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• Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. I can't be punished any more. I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me.

  Samuel Beckett

  Wall, Nice, Feet

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Endgame and Act Without Words”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Hurt, Insignificant Things

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.116, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I have no pity! I have no pity! The more worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain.

  Emily Bronte

  Crush, Pain, Energy

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.475, Penguin

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• My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.

  Libba Bray

  Epidemics, Misery, Reaching

  Libba Bray (2010). “A Great and Terrible Beauty”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Life, Biblical, Two

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, p.192, Simon and Schuster

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• As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning's thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, 'I do not believe in God', when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence.

  Michael Palin

  Atheist, Morning, Believe

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• As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Spiritual, Atheist, Evil

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo”, p.33, Vintage

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• In order to be successful in any undertaking, I think the main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as one loses himself in this way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work.

  Booker T. Washington

  Successful, Thinking, Order

  Booker T. Washington (1972). “Papers: The Autobiographical Writings”, p.311, University of Illinois Press

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• How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?

  John Maynard Keynes

  Men, Cities, Long

  John Maynard Keynes (2016). “Indian Currency and Finance: The Economist”, p.58, 北戴河出版

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• The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable proportion of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this. The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem. This is: Change. Read it through again and you'll get it.

  Douglas Adams

  Clogging Up, Criminals, Problem

  Douglas Adams (2009). “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”, p.81, Pan Macmillan

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• Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yard-stick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years.

  Ian Caldwell

  Lonely, Distance, Years

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• Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story ... Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it.'' —Sherlock Holmes on John Watson's "pamphlet", "A Study in Scarlet".

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Stories, Causes, Facts

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• Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged - well, one can't do all these things at once, worse luck, because they're so contradictory. It's then that proportion comes in - to live by proportion. Don't begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

  E. M. Forster

  Humble, People, Luck

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.580, Delphi Classics

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