Sheer Quotes - Page 5

• When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.

  Karl Marlantes

  War, Writing, Feet

  "A Vietnam Epic Uncovers Old Wounds: An Interview with Karl Marlantes". Interview with Evan James, www.motherjones.com. April 30, 2010.

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• One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer terror.

  William Kenneth Hartmann

  Science, Sometimes, Physics

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• The sheer folly of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought. Nuclear capability must be reduced to zero, globally, permanently. There is no other option.

  Queen Noor of Jordan

  Zero, Trying, Nuclear

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• God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him; He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him... When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.

  Oswald J. Smith

  Mean, People, Missionary

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• Let a man go down as low as possible; there must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Faith, Men, Curves

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Practical Vedanta Philosophy”, p.10, editionNEXT.com

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• We like to imagine that in history, truth will prevail through sheer persuasive power. Sadly, this is not the case. Truth needs champions.

  Llewellyn Rockwell

  Champion, Truth Will Prevail, Needs

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• The happiest people spend much time in a state of flow - the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Inspirational, People, Cost

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• Two out of every three goals you score come from checking. One out of every three comes from sheer finesse.

  Harry Sinden

  Sports, Two, Goal

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• These days no one can make money on the goddamn airline business. The economics represent sheer hell.

  C. R. Smith

  Airline Business, Aviation, Making Money

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• Every country possesses, it seems, the sort of cuisine it deserves, which is to say the sort of cuisine it is appreciative enough to want. I used to think that the notoriously bad cooking of the English was an example to the contrary, and that the English cook the way they do because, through sheer technical deficiency, they had not been able to master the art of cooking. I have discovered to my stupefaction that the English cook that way because that is the way they like it.

  Waverley Root

  Country, Art, Food

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• I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.

  Thornton Wilder

  Military, Rose, Soldier

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• In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Ideas, Issues

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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• We drove for the sheer fun of driving because there wasn't that much money to be made.

  Richard Petty

  Fun, Racing, Driving

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• The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.

  Kenneth Tynan

  Writing, Play, Effort

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• A man does a lot of praying in an enemy prison. Prayer, even more than sheer thought, is the firmest anchor.

  Jeremiah Denton

  Prayer, Men, Anchors

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• Sometimes, you just have to go in there and bowl people over with your sheer force of will.

  Jennifer Yuh Nelson

  Inspirational, People, Force Of Will

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• It is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit.

  Socrates

  Men, May, Limits

  "Memorabilia" by Xenophon, 3.7.8,

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• My ambition was to become the best climber and I never did. I think that goal was a wrong goal. A better one is to put more emphasis on enjoyment and on getting a rounded experience and on things like friendship, rather than on sheer achievement.

  Royal Robbins

  Ambition, Thinking, Climbing

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• We trust things more when they look like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value of it.

  Robert Scoble

  Looks, Done, Values

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• In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought.

  Lytton Strachey

  Character, Quality, Genius

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.44, Delphi Classics

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• It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in chains, it is an enormity to flog one, sheer murder to slay one: what, then, shall I say of crucifixion? It is impossible to find the word for such an abomination.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Citizens, Impossible, Murder

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• The ever increasing intensity of despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is proportionate to this increase: the greater the degree of consciousness, the more intensive the despair. This is everywhere apparent, most clearly in despair at its maximum and minimum. The devil's despair is the most intensive despair, for the devil is sheer spirit and hence unqualified consciousness and transparency; there is no obscurity in the devil that could serve as a mitigating excuse. Therefore, his despair is the most absolute defiance. . . .

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Despair, Devil, Degrees

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• . . . as far as the regime is concerned, well, the play is sheer terror for them. Because they feel, How dare - how dare anybody lift his or her voice in criticism against us? We have the guns. Their level of paranoia and power-drunkenness is unbelievable.

  Wole Soyinka

  Gun, Play, Voice

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• Today, [theatre's] more likely to be consciously not aimed at the public, but at a more sophisticated or educated public. . . . The result is that some of the sheer humanity has leaked out of the enterprise.

  Arthur Miller

  Humanity, Theatre, Crafts

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• [A] sick mind cannot be cured by the sheer force of persuasion.

  Vincent de Paul

  Wisdom, Sick, Mind

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1985). “Correspondence, Conferences, Documents: Apr. 1650-July 1653”

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