Sheer Quotes - Page 16

• Do you ever find yourself bursting into a sort of lunatic laughter at the sheer prettiness of things?

  Beverley Nichols

  Laughter, Finding Yourself, Bursting

  Beverley Nichols (2009). “Rhapsody in Green: The Garden Wit and Wisdom of Beverley Nichols”, p.112, Timber Press

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• The public loves to create a hero....Sometimes I think they do it for the sheer joy of knocking him down from the highest peak. Like a child who builds a house of blocks and then destroys it with one vicious kick.

  Grace Metalious

  Children, Block, Hero

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• Or perhaps is is that time doesn't heal wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones - the angle of your hips, the sharpness of your shoulders, as well as the luster of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the openness of your smile - has collapsed under the weight of your griefs.

  Thrity Umrigar

  Lying, Grief, Eye

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• Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

  Abba Eban

  Men, Rejection, Missing

  Abba Solomon Eban (1968). “Forward to peace: text of the address in the twenty-third plenary session of the Gerneral Assembly of the United Nations, Monday, 8 October, 1968”

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• More leaders have been made by accident, circumstance, sheer grit, or will than have been made by all the leadership courses put together.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Leader, Together, Grit

  Warren G. Bennis, Patricia Ward Biederman (2009). “The Essential Bennis”, p.206, John Wiley & Sons

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• Nobody knows what you want except you. And nobody will be as sorry as you if you don't get it. Wanting some other way to live is proof enough of deserving it. Having it is hard work, but not having it is sheer hell.

  Lillian Hellman

  Sorry, Hard Work, Deserving It

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• Today I live on an island, in a house that is sad, hard, severe, that I built for myself, solitary on a sheer rock over the sea: a house that is the spectre, the secret image of prison. The image of my nostalgia. Maybe I never desired, not even then, to escape from jail. Man is not meant to live freely in freedom, but to be free inside a prison.

  Curzio Malaparte

  Men, Islands, Rocks

  Curzio Malaparte (2007). “Woman Like Me”, p.7, Troubador Publishing Ltd

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• Laurie Lewis' songs combine passion and sheer craft in a way you don't hear very often. Whatever country music is supposed to be, she's at the center of it.

  Utah Phillips

  Country, Song, Passion

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• You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.

  Nelson Algren

  Writing, Blow, Creative

  "Nonconformity: Writing on Writing". Book by Nelson Algren, 1996.

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• Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street.

  James Thurber

  Sad, Death, Desire

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• In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Writing, Political Language

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• Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on Earth!  I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him.  Mayhap in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning.  But if not, if only I may see Him, touch His garments, smile into His eyes - ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself.

  Jim Elliot

  Stars, Children, Eye

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• As far as I was concerned, the Panthers were 'baaaaaad.' The Party was more than bad; it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking onto the California Senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them.

  Assata Shakur

  Party, Self, California

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• As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it's laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe - we are happiest when we are creating.

  Gary Hamel

  Stupid, Writing, Garden

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• Certainly, historically, there has been more attention given in the international media to Indian English-language writers than to Pakistani English-language writers. But that, in my opinion, was justified by the sheer number of excellent writers coming from India and the Indian diaspora.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Numbers, Media, Diaspora

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• I've talked to a number of actors who have gained weight for roles, and just the sheer physical toll it puts on one's knees and shoulders - no one wants to do it again. I'm 57 and I don't think I'm going to take on any job or go on vacation again and see to it that I can gain 30 pounds.

  Tom Hanks

  Jobs, Thinking, Vacation

  "Tom Hanks: type 2 diabetes diagnosis means end of weightier roles" by Mark Brown, www.theguardian.com. October 9, 2013.

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• I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.

  Heinrich Heine

  Book, Reading, Blessing

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• I've discovered that sheer quantity doesn't necessarily make for a heavier sound; if anything, overdubs make guitars sound mushier.

  James Hetfield

  Guitar, Sound, Quantity

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• The major force in world history is sheer dumbness.

  Eric Wolf

  Military, World, Force

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• The world is incomprehensible. We won't ever understand it; we won't ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Motherhood, Secret, World

  Carlos Castaneda (1971). “A Separate Reality.Further Conversations with Don Juan”

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• We have to create a world in which there are no unknown, hostile aliens at the other end of any missiles, and that is going to take a tremendous amount of sheer hard work. The only force which can break down those barriers is the force of love, the force of truth, soul-force.

  Betty Williams

  Hard Work, Soul, World

  Betty Williams' Nobel Lecture in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1977.

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• Emerson,' I said, choosing my words with care, 'it is a sheer drop from the cleft down to the base of the cliff. If you are bent on breaking your arm or your leg or your neck or all three, find a place closer to home so we won't have to carry you such a distance.

  Barbara Mertz

  Distance, Home, Three

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• Human nerves quickly get accustomed to the most unusual conditions and circumstances and I noticed that quite a number of men actually fell asleep from sheer exhaustion in the trenches, in spite of the roaring of the cannon about us and the whizzing of shrapnel over our heads.

  Fritz Kreisler

  Men, Numbers, Roaring

  Fritz Kreisler (2014). “Four Weeks In The Trenches; The War Story Of A Violinist [Illustrated Edition]”, p.21, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• The dissolution of the pictorial into sheer texture, into apparently sheer sensation, into an accumulation of repetitions, seems to speak for and answer something profound in contemporary sensibility.

  Clement Greenberg

  Profound, Texture, Answers

  Clement Greenberg (1971). “Art and Culture: Critical Essays”, p.157, Beacon Press

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• You have to have a sense of humor if you follow politics. Otherwise, the sheer fraudulence of it all will get you down.

  Thomas Sowell

  Political, Sense Of Humor, Ifs

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