Unusual Quotes - Page 12

• It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Wise, Fathers Day

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.121, Courier Corporation

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• Of course, like all the informal inhabitants of the University the roaches were a little unusual, but there was something particularly unpleasant about the sound of billions of very small feet hitting the stones in perfect time. Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column. The Librarian jumped it. The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tapdancing over a bag of crisps.

  Terry Pratchett

  Feet, Perfect, Sound

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• the lesson of Buffett was: To succeed in a spectacular fashion you had to be spectacularly unusual.

  Michael Lewis

  Fashion, Lessons, Succeed

  Michael Lewis (2015). “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (movie tie-in)”, p.52, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Why no aggressive action?" Foaly squirmed in a harness built for two-legged creatures. "Oh yes, why no aggressive action? How I long for aggressive action." "I live for aggressive action!" thundered Orion squeakily which was unusual. "Oh, how I pray that dragon will turn 'round that I may smite it." "Smite it with what?" wandered Foaly "Your secret birthmark?" "Don't you mock my birthmark, which I may or may not have.

  Eoin Colfer

  Dragons, Two, Long

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• Americans are not used to being bombed in their beds, but if you come from anywhere outside America, it's not highly unusual.

  Mira Nair

  America, Bed, Used

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• Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.

  Edward Teller

  Science, Technology, Discovery

  Edward Teller, Judith Schoolery (2009). “Memoirs: A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics”, p.42, Basic Books

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• I will admit he is unusual, but that is perhaps the closest I could come to complimenting him.

  Patrick deWitt

  Compliment, Closest

  Patrick deWitt (2011). “The Sisters Brothers”, p.8, Granta Books

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• He would look so young. They were both so young. Tessa knew it was unusual to marry at seventeen and eighteen, but they were racing a clock. The clock of Jem's life, before it wound down.

  Cassandra Clare

  Racing, Looks, Clock

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.940, Simon and Schuster

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• It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun. Yet is it any more unusual to find grace in the texture and softly carved silhouette of a bun than to reflect lovingly on the hackles of a fishing fly? Or the arrangements and textures on a butterfly's wing? Not if you are a McDonalds's man.

  Ray Kroc

  Butterfly, Men, Mcdonalds

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• What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.

  Joni Mitchell

  Song, Keys, Movement

  "It's a Joni Mitchell concert, sans Joni". Interview With Matt Diehl, articles.latimes.com. April 22, 2010.

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• Every woman who vacates a place in the teachers' ranks and enters an unusual line of work, does two excellent things: she makes room for someone waiting for a place and helps to open a new vocation for herself and other women.

  Frances E. Willard

  Teacher, Teaching, Two

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• One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.

  Thomas Mann

  Clever, Stupid, Men

  Thomas Mann (1953). “The magic mountain: Der Zauberberg”, Vintage

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• A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself.

  Roberto Burle Marx

  Garden, Artist, Color

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• We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground.

  Leon Panetta

  Believe, Law, Punishment

  "Obama's CIA Pick Has Confirmation Hearings". Interview with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. February 5, 2009.

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• This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Reading, People, Giving

  V. S. Naipaul (2012). “Literary Occasions: Essays”, p.188, Pan Macmillan

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• The Greeks already understood that there was more interest in portraying an unusual character than a usual character - that is the purpose of films and theatre.

  Isabelle Huppert

  Character, Greek, Theatre

  Interview with Christopher Cook, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2001.

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• Actually, 3D is really the most normal thing because it's how those of us with two eyes usually see the world. TVs are the unusual things in 2D!

  Shigeru Miyamoto

  Eye, Unusual Things, Two

  "Shigeru Miyamoto: A rushed game is forever bad". Interview with Simon Parkin, www.theguardian.com. April 27, 2012.

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• People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Hands, Order

  Isaac Asimov (1976). “The planet that wasn't”, Doubleday Books

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• Success does not mean happiness: it means an unusual number of industrious enemies.

  E. W. Howe

  Success, Mean, Numbers

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• With respect to the death penalty, I believe that a majority of the Supreme Court will one day accept that when the state punishes with death, it denies the humanity and dignity of the victim and transgresses the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That day will be a great day for our country, for it will be a great day for our Constitution.

  William J. Brennan

  Country, Believe, Punishment

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• On that Sunday morning the first thing that impressed the people who approached the tomb was the unusual position of the one and a half to two ton stone that had been lodged in front of the doorway.

  Josh McDowell

  Easter, Morning, Sunday

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• To sing the ballad with a knowingness about what you are talking about. If it's somebody else's lyric, and the message is a little unusual for you, it requires that you learn that new message.

  Al Jarreau

  Talking, Littles, Messages

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• I’d forgotten to keep blasting a song in my mind. I remedied my mistake, but the lyrics to “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” seemed too close to home at the mo-ment. “Culture Club?” Now his mouth curled downward. “And you accuse me of practicing cruel and unusual punishment.

  Jeaniene Frost

  Song, Hurt, Mistake

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• Nicholas Benedict did have an exceptional gift for knowing things (more exceptional, in fact, than most adults would have thought possible), and yet not even he could know that this next chapter was to be the most unusual-and most important-of his entire childhood. Indeed, the strange days that lay ahead would change him forever, though for now they had less substance than the mist through which he ran.

  Trenton Lee Stewart

  Knowing, Childhood, Forever

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• I cast unusual people in my movies.

  Albert Brooks

  People, Casts

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