Superfluous Quotes - Page 4

• Man finds happiness only in the superfluous. Under communism, he has only the essentials. How abominable and ridiculous!

  Nelson Rodrigues

  Men, Essentials, Finding Happiness

  "As 30 melhores entrevistas da Playboy: agosto 1975-agosto 2005" by Luiz Rivoiro, (p. 132), 2005.

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• Of Captain Elliot, already so well known to the government, it would be almost superfluous to speak; in this action, he evinced his characteristic bravery and judgment; and, since the close of the action, has given me the most able and essential assistance.

  Oliver Hazard Perry

  Government, Bravery, Essentials

  Oliver Hazard Perry, Citizen of Massachusetts (1834). “A review of a pamphlet purporting to be Documents in relation to the differences which subsisted between the late Commodore Oliver H. Perry, and Captain Jesse D. Elliott”, p.24

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• I confess that Magic teacheth many superfluous things, and curious prodigies for ostentation; leave them as empty things, yet be not ignorant of their causes. But those things which are for the profit of men -- for the turning away of evil events, for the destroying of sorceries, for the curing of diseases, for the exterminating of phantasms, for the preserving of life, honor, or fortune -- may be done without offense to God or injury to religion, because they are, as profitable, so necessary.

  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

  Men, Evil, Ignorant

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• Contentment empties the heart of all superfluous carriage, thus leaving it entirely for Allah.

  Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni

  Heart, Leaving, Contentment

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• After I write, I have nothing to say. The commentary afterwards is superfluous. I write. And that's enough.

  Yasmina Reza

  Writing, Enough, Commentary

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• Although the formulations of science now offer the most advanced knowledge of nature, men continue to use obsolete forms of thought long discarded by scientific theory. In so far as these obsolete forms are superfluous for science, the fact that they persist violated the principle of the economy of thought, that characteristic trait of the bourgeois temper.

  Max Horkheimer

  Men, Long, Principles

  "Critical Theory: Selected Essays" by Max Horkheimer, (p. 133), 1982.

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• Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Funny, Baby, Book

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• It would be superfluous to receive by faith, things that can be known by natural reason

  Thomas Aquinas

  Would Be, Reason, Natural

  Saint Thomas Aquinas, Catholic Way Publishing (2014). “The Summa Theologica: Complete Edition”, p.4959, Catholic Way Publishing

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• The superfluous blossoms on a fruit tree are meant to symbolize the large way God loves to do pleasant things.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Tree, Way, Fruit

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.19

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• All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humor, of honor, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men.

  Rose Macaulay

  Men, Profound, Honor

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• Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,
  Till pitying Nature signs the last release,
  And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.

  Samuel Johnson

  Age, Lasts, Lag

  Samuel Johnson, Thomas Park (1811). “The Poetical Works of Samuel Johnson: Collated with the Best Editions”, p.27

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• Complications take many forms, including an imbalanced lifestyle, toxic relationships, hidden emotional debts, resistance, indecision, addictions, and negative conditioned beliefs. When our life is overly complicated, we're weighed down by superfluous things at every level.

  Deepak Chopra

  Emotional, Addiction, Toxic

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• A movie is better than real life because in the movies only the bad guys die. Or you can pick the good movies where the bad guys die and only those. If you get tricked and a good person dies in the movie then you can rewrite it in your head so the good person lives and the part about death is superfluous.

  Kathryn Erskine

  Real, Guy, Good Movie

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• It is superfluous to try by the standards of theory, a part of the constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable" . . . the equal vote allowed to each state, is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual states, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty.

  James Madison

  Hands, Political, Trying

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• We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Mean, Simple

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.154, Harvard University Press

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• My idea was to cut shape into the hair, to use it like fabric and take away everything that was superfluous.

  Vidal Sassoon

  Cutting, Ideas, Hair

  "The Surprising Story Of The ’Anti-Fascist Warrior Hairdresser’ Vidal Sassoon" by Tiffany Gabbay, www.businessinsider.com. May 9, 2012.

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• Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.

  Paul Klee

  God, Sarcasm, Men

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.122, Univ of California Press

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• Google is so strange. It promises everything, but everything isn’t there. You type in the words for what you need, and what you need becomes superfluous in an instant, shadowed instantaneously by the things you really need, and none of them answerable by Google.

  Ali Smith

  Google, Promise, Needs

  Ali Smith (2011). “There but for the”, p.100, Penguin UK

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• What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, superfluous, labor of verification.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Years, Long, Twenties

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

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• From what I have said of the natives of New Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon earth but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans, being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous, but

  James Cook

  Reality, People, Earth

  James Cook (1897). “Captain Cook's Voyages Round the World”

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• When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless

  John Henry Newman

  Mean, Men, Hopeless

  'Faith and Reason, contrasted as Habits of Mind' (Epiphany, 1839), in 'Oxford University Sermons' (1843) no. 10

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• The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.

  Horace

  Reality, Order, Mind

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• What if it is for life's sake that we must die? In truth we are not individuals; and it is because we think ourselves such that death seems unforgivable. We are temporary organs of the race, cells in the body of life; we die and drop away that life may remain young and strong. If we were to live forever, growth would be stifled, and youth would find no room on earth. Death, like style, is the removal of rubbish, the circumcision of the superfluous. In the midst of death life renews itself immortally.

  Will Durant

  Strong, Struggle, Thinking

  "Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God".

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• We can hardly expect the nation-state to make itself superfluous, at least not overnight. Rather what we must aim for is really nothing more than caretakers of a bankrupt international machine which will have to be transformed slowly into a new one. The transition will not be dramatic, but a gradual one. People will still cling to national symbols.

  Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

  People, Transition, Machines

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• The custom of Mother Church in baptizing infants is certainly not to be scorned, nor is it to be regarded in any way as superfluous, nor is it to be believed that its tradition is anything except apostolic.

  Saint Augustine

  Mother, Baptism, Church

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