Trimming Quotes

• The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.

  Dean Koontz

  Hands, Pieces, Literature

  Dean Koontz (2007). “Fear Nothing: A Novel”, p.193, Bantam

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• There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan.

  Herman Melville

  Political, Intellectual, Patriotism

  "Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War". Book by Herman Melville, 1860.

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• When you have less revenue coming in the door, you have more money going out the door. You have to find ways of trimming.

  Mike Lee

  Doors, Going Out, Way

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• Many a family tree needs trimming

  Kin Hubbard

  Family, Tree, Needs

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• Concision in art is a necessity and an elegance. The verbose painter bores: who will get rid of all these trimmings?

  Edouard Manet

  Art, Elegance, Painter

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• Gandalf: Confound it all, Samwise Gamgee. Have you been eavesdropping? Sam: I ain't been droppin' no eaves sir, honest. I was just cutting the grass under the window there, if you'll follow me. Gandalf: A little late for trimming the verge, don't you think? Sam: I heard raised voices. Gandalf: What did you hear? Speak. Sam: N-nothing important. That is, I heard a good deal about a ring, and a Dark Lord, and something about the end of the world, but... Please, Mr. Gandalf, sir, don't hurt me. Don't turn me into anything... unnatural.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Hurt, Cutting, Dark

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• For most singers the first half of the career involves extending one's repertoire, the second half trimming it.

  Ethan Mordden

  Music, Careers, Half

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• Whether or not you agree that trimming and cooking are likely to lead on to downright forgery, there is little to support the argument that trimming and cooking are less reprehensible and more forgivable. Whatever the rationalization is, in the last analysis one can no more than be a bit dishonest than one can be a little bit pregnant. Commit any of these three sins and your scientific career is in jeopardy and deserves to be.

  Charles Thomas Jackson

  Science, Careers, Support

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• Religion is like the fashion, one man wears his doublet slashed, another lashed, another plain; but every man has a doublet; so every man has a religion. We differ about the trimming.

  John Selden

  Fashion, Men, Religion

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• We have a small, tight family. I left home at a young age and the best thing for me was to go home at Christmas-time and spend time with my family and friends. It's kind of funny, most people do turkey and all the trimmings, but we would have a big seafood festival because it's the only time of the year that we'd eat it. We never really went caroling, but once in a while we'd got out for a sleigh ride

  Jimmy Roy

  Funny Christmas, Home, Years

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• A genuine revival means a trimming of personal lamps.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  Mean, Lamps, Revival

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 521, 1895.

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• Excess in apparel is another costly folly. The very trimming of the vain world would clothe all the naked ones.

  William Penn

  Excess, World, Naked

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.28, Courier Corporation

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• The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?

  Jerry Pournelle

  Writing, Rose, Sitting

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• Learning isn't acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired.

  Criss Jami

  Information, Acquiring Knowledge, Clutter

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.61, Criss Jami

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• My mother’s been living alone for over ten years. She gets up at six every morning. She makes herself a coffee. She waters her plants. She listens to the news on the radio. She drinks her coffee. She has a quick wash. An hour later, at seven, her day is over. Two months ago a neighbour told her about your blog, and she asked me to buy her one of those thingummyjigs – by a thingummyjig she meant a computer. And since then, thanks to your trimmings, your ribbon bows, your tie-backs for curtains, she’s rediscovered the joys of life. So don’t tell me you don’t know any answers.

  Gregoire

  Mother, Morning, Coffee

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• I try to look nice. I comb my hair, I tie my tie, I put on a jacket, but I draw the line when it comes to trimming my eyebrows. You work with what you got.

  Andy Rooney

  Nice, Hair, Eyebrows

  "Great lines from "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney". www.cnn.com. November 5, 2011.

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• Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. but to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one's own life.

  Alicia Markova

  Dance, Moving, Fall

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• The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

  George Eliot

  Lying, Eye, Artist

  George Eliot (1869). “Silas Marner and Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.73

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• I have noticed that most men when they enter a barber shop and must wait their turn, drop into a chair and pick up a magazine. I simply sit down and pick up the thread of my sea wanderings, which began more than fifty years ago and is not quite ended. There is hardly a waiting room in the east that has not served as my cockpit, whether I was waiting to board a train or to see a dentist. And I am usually still trimming sheets when the train starts or drill begins to whine.

  E. B. White

  Men, Waiting Rooms, Years

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• I'm married. I have three children. I have a mortgage to pay. The plumbing breaks and the yard needs trimming. However, what my wife and children need most from me is my passion for them.

  John Eldredge

  Children, Passion, Wife

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• When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I dont see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of the painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe.

  Charley Harper

  Lying, Artist, Color

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• As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These "humanitarian parts" are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its "antirent and anticapital parts," means to get rid of the poodle.

  Daniel De Leon

  Mean, Divorce, Cutting

  "Trimming the Poodle". "The Daily People" Newspaper, November 2, 1908.

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• A straight dark-green Manchu gown, with black trimmings, is my favorite. For it just about takes off those fifteen pounds I don't need and adds those three inches I do.

  Buwei Yang Chao

  Dark, Clothes, Black

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• Rule of thumb: The more trimmings an insurance plan has and the harder someone is pitching it, the faster you should run.

  Andrew Tobias

  Running, Thumbs, Pitching

  "The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know". Book by Andrew Tobias, 1982.

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• I hate the fearful trimming of possibilities that age brings.

  Diane Ackerman

  Hate, Age, Possibility

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Deep Play”, p.116, Vintage

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