Splendid Quotes - Page 15

• We have it in us to be splendid.

  Maya Angelou

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• South Africa is the most beautiful place on earth. Admittedly, I am biased but when you combine the natural beauty... and the fact that the region is a haven for Africa's most splendid wildlife... Then I think that we have been blessed with a truly wonderful land.

  Nelson Mandela

  Beautiful, Blessed, Thinking

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• Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is not novel... We find it in the delightful myth of Antaeus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid... Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic - and this we know it is, for certain - then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

  Nikola Tesla

  Men, Ideas, Space

  "Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency". Nikola Tesla's Address to the Institution of Electrical Engineers, February 1892.

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• We are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Mystery, Ifs

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• Always read with a pen in your hands, not beside you on the table, but actually in your hand, ready, armed ... Put a question mark by everything you find suspect. Underline anything you really appreciate. Feel free to write 'splendid,' but also, 'I don't believe a word of it.' And even 'bullshit.'

  Tim Parks

  Believe, Writing, Hands

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• Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject.

  Albert Camus

  Feelings, Sisyphus, Universe

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.10, Vintage

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• Size will hurt returns. Look at Berkshire Hathaway - the last five things Warren has done have generated returns that are splendid by historical standards, but now give him $100 billion in assets and measure outcomes across all of it, it doesn't look so good. We can only buy big positions, and the only time we can get big positions is during a horrible period of decline or stasis. That really doesn't happen very often.

  Charlie Munger

  Hurt, Giving, Historical

  Charlie Munger's opening remarks at the 2005 Wesco Financial Annual Meeting, www.tilsonfunds.com. May 4, 2005.

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• Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Skills, Genius, Fine

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• I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true.

  Leslie Charteris

  Laughter, Believe, Fighting

  "The Last Hero".

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• Why, flowers are violent, cruel, terrible and splendid... like love!

  Octave Mirbeau

  Flower, Like Love, Violent

  "Torture Garden".

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• Give me artificial flowers - porcelain and metal glories - neither fading nor decaying, forms unaging. Flowers of the splendid gardens of another place, where Forms and Styles and Knowledge dwell. I love flowers made of glass or gold, true Art's true gifts, their painted hues more beautiful than nature's, worked in nacre and enamel, with perfect leaves and branches.

  C.P. Cavafy

  Love, Beautiful, Art

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• For a mile up and down the open fields before us the splendid lines of the veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia swept down upon us. Their bearing was magnificent. They came forward with a rush, and how our men did yell, 'Come on, Johnny, come on!'

  Rufus Dawes

  War, Army, Men

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• We of America are especially fitted to visualize and to understand the marvellous transformation of a wilderness into a land of splendid cities.

  James Henry Breasted

  Land, Cities, America

  James Henry Breasted (1919). “The Origins of Civilization”

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• Heredity is a splendid phenomenon that relieves us of responsibility for our shortcomings.

  Doug Larson

  Family, Responsibility, Unity

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• The Country Doctor Revisited is a fine achievement. Purporting to be an overview of the practice of medicine in rural areas, it is a splendid portrait of the practice of medicine everywhere. The special conditions that prevail in the countryside as opposed to the cities are examined, and each of these is illustrated by a case history that is as compelling as it is informative. It is presented in a highly readable form that would be accessible to the general public as well as to the deliverers of health care. I recommend it most highly.

  Richard Selzer

  Country, Doctors, Practice Of Medicine

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• And yet, or just for this reason, it's so fascinating to be a woman. It's an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that's never boring. You'll have so many things to engage you if you're born a woman. To begin with, you'll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you'll have to struggle to explain that it wasn't sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple, what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience.

  Oriana Fallaci

  Beautiful, Girl, Struggle

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• It's such a pleasure to write down splendid words—almost as though one were inventing them.

  Rupert Hart-Davis

  Writing, Pleasure, Inventing

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• What shall I say of the gallantry with which these Marines have fought! Of the slopes of Hill 142; of the Mares Farm; of the Bois de Belleau and the Village of Bouresches stained with their blood, and not only taken away from the Germans in the full tide of their advance against the French, but held by my boys against counter attacks day after day and night after night. I cannot write of their splendid gallantry without tears coming to my eyes.

  James Harbord

  Taken, Eye, Writing

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• One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner . . . and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Philosophy, Men, Ideas

  "Whitewashing Black History Month" by Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. February 1, 2012.

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• Splendid,' Abbé Patin said with a sheepish grin, pulling up alongside. 'There is nothing quite so thrilling as riding in fear of one's life.

  Sandra Gulland

  Riding, Said, Thrilling

  Sandra Gulland (2009). “Mistress of the Sun: A Novel”, p.79, Simon and Schuster

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• I gazed upon the earth and saw that a body, in its tender faithlessness, had located it in the sky. A splendid scarf of blood, looming above the abyss.

  Joë Bousquet

  Blood, Sky, Saws

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• Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

  Joseph Addison

  Graduation, Education, Depressing

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• SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Life, Ocean, Musical

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.215, University of Georgia Press

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• As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor. Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead Which, the more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Mother, Children, Sleep

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1988). “Selected Poems”, p.322, Penguin

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• The inhabitants of Coventry, for example, continued to imagine that their sufferings were due to the innate villainy of Adolf Hitler without a suspicion that a decision, splendid or otherwise, of the British War Cabinet, was the decisive factor in the case.

  Martin Caidin

  War, Decision, Suffering

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