Tolerable Quotes - Page 2

• The New Yorker has always dealt with experience not by trying to understand it but by prescribing the attitude to be adopted toward it. This makes it possible to feel intelligent without thinking, and it is a way of making everything tolerable, for the assumption of a suitable attitude toward experience can give one the illusion of having dealt with it adequately.

  Robert Warshow

  Attitude, Intelligent, Thinking

  Robert Warshow (1962). “The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre & Other Aspects of Popular Culture”, p.75, Harvard University Press

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• I hated the bangs in the war: I always felt a silent war would be more tolerable.

  Pamela Hansford Johnson

  War, Bangs, Would Be

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• Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

  Francis Pharcellus Church

  Christmas, Virginia, Should Have

  "Is There a Santa Claus?". The New York Sun, September 21, 1897.

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• But if it's tolerable mediocrity, and you're like, 'Well, you know it could be worse. At least I'm getting paid.' Then you wind up in a job that is slowly killing your soul and you're allowing that to happen. Comfort can be a very, very dangerous thing.

  Tim Ferriss

  Jobs, Wind, Soul

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• The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Sweet, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.615, Library of America

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• So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Religious, War, Japan

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• I have never considered it my business to disabuse someone of a belief that makes life tolerable for them.

  Robert Breault

  Belief

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• Good-humor makes all things tolerable

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Tolerance, Good Humor, All Things

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• Many men of science and poets have in their own manner, by various ways and means, and aided by others, sought unceasingly to create a more tolerable world for everyone.

  Eyvind Johnson

  Mean, Men, Way

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• It is my disposition to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself.

  Thomas Jefferson

  War, Political, Made

  Thomas Jefferson (1943). “Thomas Jefferson: selections from his writings edited, with an introduction”

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• The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by.

  Sebastian Junger

  Soldier, Brotherhood, Battle

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• The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Struggle, Government, Survival

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Michael K. Honey (2011). “All Labor Has Dignity”, p.101, Beacon Press

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• What has happened here [aftermath of 9/11] is not war in its traditional sense. This is clearly a crime against humanity. War crimes are crimes which happen in war time. There is a confusion there. This is a crime against humanity because it is deliberate and intentional killing of large numbers of civilians for political or other purposes. That is not tolerable under the international systems. And it should be prosecuted pursuant to the existing laws.

  Benjamin B. Ferencz

  War, Numbers, Law

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• A cultivated mind is one to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties.

  John Stuart Mill

  Exercise, Mind, Taught

  John Stuart Mill (1870). “Utilitarianism”, p.20

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• Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Life, Literature

  "Discussion". Book by Jorge Luis Borges, 1932.

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• It is only Christianity, the great bond of love and duty to God, that makes any existence valuable or even tolerable.

  Horace Bushnell

  Love, Excellence, Religion

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• Good manners can render even virtue tolerable.

  Mason Cooley

  Good Man, Virtue, Manners

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• Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.

  Thomas Huxley

  Ignorance, Twenties, Finals

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.66, University of Georgia Press

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• To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition; provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Writing, Creativity, Mind

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.553

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• We may have an excellent ear for music, without being able to perform in any kind; we may judge well of poetry, without being poets, or possessing the least of a poetic vein; but we can have no tolerable notion of goodness without being tolerably good.

  Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

  Judging, Veins, Ears

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• Once I stopped drinking and I'd be going out on dates, or hanging out with guys, I'd realize, "Oh, maybe I don't like them that much!" I think the drinking was to make these guys more tolerable.

  Alison Rosen

  Drinking, Thinking, Guy

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• With just a little effort, life can be more or less exceptionally tolerable.

  Gene Simmons

  Effort, Littles

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• We must learn the difficult lesson that the future of Mankind will only be tolerable when our course, in world affairs as in others, is based upon justice and law rather than the threat of naked power.

  Albert Einstein

  Law, Justice, Naked

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.301, Princeton University Press

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• People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?
  A man cannot know himself better than by attending to the feelings of his heart and to his external actions, from which he may with tolerable certainty judge "what manner of person he is." I have therefore determined to keep a daily journal.

  James Boswell

  Heart, Kids, Men

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• Long accustomed to the use of European manufactures, [the Cherokee Indians] are as incapable of returning to their habits of skinsand furs as we are, and find their wants the less tolerable as they are occasioned by a war [the American Revolution] the event of which is scarcely interesting to them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  War, Long, Interesting

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