Tricks Quotes - Page 23

• Because you can't argue with all the fools in the world. It's easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention.

  Christopher Paolini

  Smart, Humor, World

  Christopher Paolini (2014). “The Inheritance Cycle Complete Collection: Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance”, p.151, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Art, Humorous, Light

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.40, Beacon Press

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• The trick is this: keep your eye on the ball. Even when you can't see the ball.

  Tom Robbins

  Eye, Balls

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.487, Bantam

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• God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowelless being of the Testaments - the vehement glorymonger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice - the fiery huckster with his burning bushes and his wonder wands. Nowadays God knows what He wants and He knows who He wants.

  Nick Cave

  Voice, Bags, Burning

  "And the Ass Saw the Angel". Book by Nick Cave, 1989.

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• The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.

  Wendy Wasserstein

  Happiness, Issues, Self

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• I flicked my eyes over to Steve again and saw him straighten. He would need a diversion just to start. “Explanations?” I bellowed. “Explanations? There’s your explanation…there!” I stabbed a finger dramatically towards the far corner of the room. Pathetic, really. I mean, talk about the oldest trick in the book. But it’s a good book, and the trick would have been cut from subsequent editions if it didn’t sometimes work.

  Stephen Fry

  Book, Mean, Eye

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• It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

  Joseph Heller

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Truth

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.336, Simon and Schuster

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• I do think that women could make politics irrelevant; by a kind of spontaneous cooperative action the like of which we have never seen; which is so far from people’s ideas of state structure or viable social structure that it seems to them like total anarchy — when what it really is, is very subtle forms of interrelation that do not follow some heirarchal pattern which is fundamentally patriarchal. The opposite to patriarchy is not matriarchy but fraternity, yet I think it’s women who are going to have to break this spiral of power and find the trick of cooperation.

  Germaine Greer

  Thinking, Opposites, Ideas

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• My Chicken can do a special trick! "And what is that?" She can lay an egg! "And what's so special about THAT?!" Well, Can YOU lay an egg?

  Shirley Temple

  Eggs, Special, Chickens

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• When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death: "Thru Time I'll save my love!" he said. . . yet Beauty vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead. . . -Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair: "Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his sonnet there". . . So all my words, however true, might sing you to a thousandth June, and no one ever know that you were Beauty for an afternoon.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Wise, Art, Eye

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “This Side of Paradise”, p.184, Xist Publishing

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• GOING TO WALDEN It isn't very far as highways lie. I might be back by nightfall, having seen The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water. Friends argue that I might be wiser for it. They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper: How dull we grow from hurrying here and there! Many have gone, and think me half a fool To miss a day away in the cool country. Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish, Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

  Mary Oliver

  Country, Lying, Book

  Mary Oliver (1972). “The River Styx, Ohio, and other poems”

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• How to please the public - that's the test, But nowadays I find I'm in a fix; I know they're not accustomed to the best, But they've all read so much they know the tricks. How can we give then something fresh and new That's serious, but entertaining too?

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Giving, Tests, Serious

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2016). “The Essential Goethe”, p.250, Princeton University Press

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• Time can play all sorts of tricks on you. In the blink of an eye, babies appear in carriages, coffins disappear into the ground, wars are won and lost, and children transform, like butterflies, into adults.

  Brian Selznick

  Life, Baby, Children

  Brian Selznick (2015). “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”, p.250, Scholastic

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• Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost.

  Gaston Leroux

  Heart, Play, Unhappy

  Gaston Leroux (2016). “THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Mystery & Horror Series): Gothic Classic Based on True Events at the Paris Opera”, p.201, e-artnow

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• Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. The words made me laugh in delight.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Laughing, Magic, Singing

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.24, A&C Black

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• I feel something very small growing inside me as I look at her, and I realize in one absolutely clear moment that I don't like her at all. 'You know what?' I say. 'Forget it. I'll do the list by myself.' She stands up, swings her stupid hair about and tries to look offended. It's a trick that works with guys, but it makes no difference to the way I feel about her.

  Jenny Downham

  Stupid, Hair, Swings

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• You can't make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a world from it.

  Sarah Dessen

  Giving, World, Persons

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• They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time, but since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around.

  Bill Watterson

  Secret, Figures, Right Time

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• If I hadn't learned my lesson, I would have wished we could stay there forever. But I knew better now. We'd seen what we'd come to see. The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch as it all rises upwards, black and blue into the even bluer sky.

  Alice Hoffman

  Blue, Sky, Forever

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• It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.

  Tom Stoppard

  Baby, Best Love, Love Is

  Tom Stoppard (2013). “Tom Stoppard Plays 5: The Real Thing; Night & Day; Hapgood; Indian Ink; Arcadia”, p.207, Faber & Faber

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• This is exactly what i wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasn't like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.

  Sarah Dessen

  Commitment, Giving, Just Friends

  Sarah Dessen (2008). “Lock and Key”, p.52, Penguin

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• The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.

  Stephen King

  Long, Teach, Wells

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft”, p.92, Simon and Schuster

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• Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Birthday, Happiness, Confidence

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• I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.

  Graham Greene

  School, Eye, Men

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

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• As the water pounded on my back, I reflected that I must be pretty simple. It didn't take much to make me happy. A long night with a dead guy had done the trick.

  Charlaine Harris

  Simple, Night, Water

  Charlaine Harris (2009). “Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set”, p.871, Penguin

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