Superfluous Quotes - Page 6

• We have these amazing gifts of music and mathematics and painting and Olympic running. I mean, we're the animal that is best of all the animals at long-distance running. Why? It is quite amazing. Superfluous gifts you don't really need to survive.

  Freeman Dyson

  Running, Distance, Mean

  "Legendary physicist Freeman Dyson talks about math, nuclear rockets, and astounding things about the universe". Interview with Elena Holodny, uk.businessinsider.com. September 9, 2016.

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• I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Happiness, Beautiful, Home

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Selections from the Journals”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

  William Shakespeare

  Blessed, Flames, House

  1596-7 Prince Harry to Falstaff. Henry IV Part One, act1, sc.2, l.6-12.

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• Very well,” he said with a small sigh. “Ladies today are so very capable. It breaks my hea rt, really.” He leaned in, almost as if sharing a secret. “No one likes to feel superfluous.” Grace just stared at him. “Rendered mute by my grace and charm,” he said, stepping back to allow them to exit. “It happens all the time. Really, I shouldn‟t be allowed near the ladies. I have such a vexing effect on you.

  Julia Quinn

  Grace, Secret, Today

  Julia Quinn (2008). “The lost duke of Wyndham”

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• Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.

  Alexander Pushkin

  Sacrifice, Winning, Play

  Alexander Pushkin (2012). “The Queen of Spades and Other Stories”, p.1, Courier Corporation

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• A kiss is the natures way to stop a conversation, when the words are superfluous

  Ingrid Bergman

  Kissing, Way, Conversation

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• Historical refutation as the definitive refutation.- In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God - today one indicates how the belief that there is a God arose and how this belief acquired its weight and importance: a counter-proof that there is no God thereby becomes superfluous.- When in former times one had refuted the 'proofs of the existence of God' put forward, there always remained the doubt whether better proofs might not be adduced than those just refuted: in those days atheists did not know how to make a clean sweep.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Atheist, Historical, Doubt

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• The dachshund is a perfectly engineered dog. It is precisely long enough for a single standard stroke of the back, but you aren't paying for any superfluous leg.

  Mary Doria Russell

  Dog, Long, Dachshunds

  Mary Doria Russell (2008). “Dreamers Of The Day”, p.38, Random House

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• Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests of necessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only be explained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  God, Law, Oneness

  Rabindranath Tagore (2016). “SĀDHANĀ - The Realisation of life”, p.64, Rabindranath Tagore

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• Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Spiritual, Prayer, Real

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2017). “The Brothers Karamazov (English Russian Edition illustrated): Братья Карамазовы (англо-русская редакция иллюстрированная)”, p.747, Clap Publishing, LLC.

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• No theory ever benefited by the application of data, Amy. Data kills theories. A theory has no better time than when it's lying there naked, pure, unsullied by facts. Let's just keep it that way for a while." "So you don't really have a theory?" "Clueless." "You lying bag of fish heads." "I can fire you, you know. Even if Clay was the one that hired you, I'm not totally superfluous to this operation yet. I'm kind of in charge. I can fire you. Then how will you live?" "I'm not getting paid." "See, right there. Perfectly good concept ruined by the application of fact.

  Christopher Moore

  Lying, Clueless, Fire

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• When I was an adolescent, I was obsessed with having many commercial things, cars, clothes, stupid things. Now that I have all that, I understand that the superfluous things can turn to you into a very stupid idiot-type. In East Germany there were very few things, but there was also a feeling of solidarity that no longer exists. Now we are up to the neck in consumption, the ego, the individualism. Now before friendship, it is merchandise.

  Till Lindemann

  Stupid, Clothes, East Germany

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• When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - in which case all comment is superfluous - or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Truth, Stupid, May

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• Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to be shaped and cleaned, cleaned as severely as a dog cleans a bone, cleaned until there's not a shred of anything superfluous.

  Maya Angelou

  Dog, Writing, Ideas

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• The best of artists hath no thought to show which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include; to break the marble spell is all the hand that serves the brain can do.

  Michelangelo

  Artist, Hands, Brain

  John Addington Symonds, Michelangelo Buonarroti (2002). “The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti: Based on Studies in the Archives of the Buonarroti Family at Florence”, p.110, University of Pennsylvania Press

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• In nature, all is managed for the best with perfect frugality and just reserve, profuse to none, but bountiful to all; never employing on one thing more than enough, but with exact economy retrenching the superfluous, and adding force to what is principal in everything.

  Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

  Nature, Money, Perfect

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• Everything in the Universe was as the Creator willed it - nothing superfluous, nothing lacking - a harmony.

  Joseph Hertz

  Harmony, Lacking, Creator

  Joseph Herman Hertz (1996). “ספר חמשה חומשי תורה עם ההפטרות: נדפס על פי המסורה ומתורגם אנגלית”

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• It is for the superfluous things of life that men sweat.

  Seneca the Elder

  Motivational, Men, Sweat

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• What is charm then? The free giving of a grace, the spending of something given by nature in her role of spendthrift ... something extra, superfluous, unnecessary, essentially a power thrown away.

  Doris Lessing

  Giving, Grace, Roles

  'Particularly Cats' (1967) ch. 9

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• If, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of superfluous aloofness from the world of real men who do the world's real work, then it has harmed that individual.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Real, Men, Intellectual Arrogance

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• Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other; nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking; and the result is a structure of absolute balance and solid composure.

  Muhammad Asad

  Islamic, Perfect, Support

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• My writing model is my mother, who is a writer as well. She always valued clarity and simplicity above all else. If someone doesn't understand what you're writing, then everything else you do is superfluous. Irrelevant. If any thoughtful, curious reader finds what I do impenetrable, I've failed.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Mother, Writing, Thoughtful

  Goodreads interview, www.goodreads.com. December, 2008.

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• I don't aspire, but I would be very happy if one of my poems suddenly offered someone a shady rest stop, a breather in our interminable march under the murderous, scorching heat of the superfluous.

  Kiki Dimoula

  Would Be, Heat, March

  Source: blog.yupnet.org

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• None of us older writers had gone through such a school. We are all self-taught. And, of course, there is always, in such a school, the danger of goose-stepping, uniformed ranks. But the Serapion Brethren have already, it seems to me, outgrown this danger. Each of them has his own individuality and his own handwriting. The common thing they have derived from the studio is the art of writing with ninety-proof ink, the art of eliminating everything that is superfluous, which is, perhaps, more difficult than writing.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Writing

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• The superfluous is very necessary.

  Voltaire

  Wisdom

  'Le Mondain' (1736) v.22

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