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Essentials Quotes

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Essentials Quotes

“Imagination transforms one substance into another. It changes what is into what might be, what was into what might have been. Straw becomes gold, gold straw, and neither is more real nor, I submit, more precious than the other. Pebbles turn into luminous pearls and pearls into little gray rocks, both solid and beautiful, both essential. Human beings take shape from clay, angels' wings are spun out of water, fire gives rise to the long tongues of demons, love emerges out of thin air, and the basic elements reconstitute themselves again and again.”

Source: The Man on the Ceiling

“Unity of command is essential to the economy of time. Warfare in the field was like a siege: by directing all one's force to a single point a breach might be made, and the equilibrium of opposition destroyed.”

Made War Might Force Economy Fields Essentials Unity Command Destroyed Opposition Warfare Equilibrium Breach Siege

Author:Napoleon Bonaparte

“In our imaginations the adults of our childhood remain extreme, essential - we might say radical since they are the roots that fed luxuriant later systems. Those first bohemians, for instance, stay operatic in memory even though were we to meet them today - well, what would we think, we who've elaborated our eccentricities with a patience, a professionalism they never knew?”

Thinking Firsts Wells Might Today Imagination Memories Childhood Essentials Adults Roots Our Children Extremes Instance Radical Feds Professionalism Eccentricity

Author:Edmund White

“In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement.”

“Had Mr. Gibbon lived in France, Spain, or Italy, he might with the fame reason have ranked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the worship of saints and angels among the essentials of Christianity, as the doctrines of the trinity and of the atonement.”

Reason Might Christianity Fame Essentials Worship Angel Saint Doctrine France Spain Atonement Trinity Transubstantiation

Book:An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

Source: An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

“There is no way anything of value can be done without some framework. It might well be that the framework is discarded or the rules opposed; that is not important. What is essential is that they exist so that one knows when one is in opposition to them.”

Knows Way Wells Important Done Might Values Essentials Planning Opposition Framework Discarded

Author:Margot Fonteyn

“There's always got to be room for what you might call benign corruption. Nobody blames a man who steals food to feed his starving children, but on the other hand, somebody who picks up a badge and takes an oath to serve and protect; we do expect a certain level of essential honesty.”

Men Children Hands Might Certain Levels Rooms Honesty Protect Essentials Picks Blame Corruption Stealing Starving Oath Badges Benign

Author:Denzel Washington

“A modest ring at the bell at length allayed her fears, and Miss Benton, hurrying into her own room and shutting herself up, in order that she might preserve that appearance of being taken by surprise which is so essential to the polite reception of visitors, awaited their coming with a smiling countenance.”

Source: THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK, AND SKETCHES BY

“The logic of all this seems to be that it is all right for young people in a democracy to learn about any civilization or social theory that is not dangerous, but that they should remain entirely ignorant of any civilization or social theory that might be dangerous on the ground that what you don't know can't hurt you ... a complete denial of the democratic principle that the general diffusion of knowledge and learning through the community is essential to the preservation of free government.”

Source: Freedom and Responsibility in the American Way of Life

“Determined secularists view these as residual inconsistencies that they have not yet go around to extirpating and that may not be worth bothering about... Form the secularist perspective it may be that the essential battles have been won and excessive zeal in pressing a final mopping-up operation might only excited further public hostility.”

May Has Beens Might Christian Form Religious Views Perspective Battle Essentials Finals Excited Determined Bother Operations Hostility Zeal Inconsistency Residual Mopping Mopping Up

Author:Richard John Neuhaus

“There was danger at times that women might not be judged by the highest standards, but more leniently because of their sex. "She is a remarkably good chemist--for a woman," you might hear a man say. It seemed to me essential, if the ablest young women scholars were to achieve the best work of which they were capable, that they should be held to the most rigorous standards. ...To advance, a woman must do at least as good work as her male colleagues, usually better.”

Ifs Men Should Might Young Sex Achieve Danger Essentials Highest Capable Standards Males Sexism Judged Scholar Good Work Young Women Colleagues Advancement Best Work Chemist

Author:Virginia Gildersleeve

“I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel disappears, because the novel is really one of the only places in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.”

Thinking World Needs Believe Humans Two Stories Might I Believe Term Answers Novel Written Essentials Absolutes Stranger Disappear Intimacy Places In The World Human Needs

Author:Jonathan Lethem

“The essential message of my life is that all of us have the capacity to attract to ourselves what seems to be missing in our lives. Whether it's a healing, a relationship, a promotion, or whatever form of abundance you want to manifest in your life, you have much more power to be able to manifest it than you might think.”

Thinking Want Seems Might Able Form Life Is Healing Our Lives Missing Essentials Messages Capacity Abundance Manifest Promotion

Author:Wayne Dyer

“Facing the darkness, admitting the pain, allowing the pain to be pain, is never easy. This is why courage - big-heartedness - is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey. But if we fail to let pain be pain - and our entire patriarchal culture refuses to let this happen - then pain will haunt us in nightmarish ways. We will become pain's victims instead of the healers we might become.”

Ifs Way Soul Bigs Might Happens Pain Spiritual Culture Easy Darkness Virtue Failing Journey Essentials Victim Refuse Allowing Healer Admitting Spiritual Journey

Author:Matthew Fox

“In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.”

“Drinking beer with friends is perhaps the most underestimated of all Reformation insights and essential to ongoing reform; and wasting time with a choice friend or two on a regular basis might be the best investment of time you ever make.”

Two Might Choices Essentials Bases Drinking Investment Insight Reform Beer Being The Best Wasting Time Ongoing Reformation Underestimated Drinking Beer Best Investment

Author:Carl R Trueman

“Playing inside the changes means playing enough of the important notes of the chord progression at important times. A good solo might be very free, but every once in a while it loops or hooks into an essential note that describes the harmonic change.”

Mean Important Enough Might Essentials Notes Solo Hook Chords Progression Loops

Author:Chuck Israels

“Conversion is essential, but it is a beginning, not an end. The believer in Jesus Christ is not simply rescued from the penalty of his sin; he is redeemed to love God and his neighbor so that others might come to know him.”

Knows Ends Might Jesus Christ Sin Essentials Jesus Christ Neighbor Believer Conversion God Love Penalties Redeemed

Author:Max Anders

“At least for me personally, drugs aren't an essential part of having a surreal experience, or what you might call a higher experience.”

Might Higher Drug Essentials Surreal

Author:Panda Bear

“I might take from the current political chaos a desire to somehow reflect its essential qualities in a story - the blatant lies that get accepted with repetition; the way mass media seems to be agitating people en masse; the way, particularly, that a relatively lucky and affluent and privileged population can be undone by a certain spoiled quality; that feeling when two decent people violently disagree, because they are arguing from two non-intersecting data sets - well, the list goes on.”

“The only thing I might have noticed [and this is pretty anecdotal] is that there is some tendency to need to be taught that 'writing is rewriting' - maybe more of a sense than was pervasive 10 years ago that the first or second pass of a story is sufficient. That is an idea that is easily dislodged, but I suspect it might have something to do with the turnaround time re: blogging and so on - this sense that there is some essential truth about a first draft that one runs the risk of "ruining" by coming back to it.”

Needs Writing Years Firsts Ideas Stories Might Running Risk Taught Essentials Years Ago Tendencies Sufficient Suspects Coming Back Blogging Rewriting Turnaround

Author:George Saunders

“When we fail to live up to our ideals, for instance, we might begin to wonder who we are - most people are aware of a discrepancy, I think. There are idiosyncrasies and foibles, but we're not sure if these are essential. Some people think they are the most essential things of all.”

People Ifs Thinking Might Wonder Failing Essentials Ideals Instance Not Sure Who We Are Idiosyncrasies Discrepancies Foibles

Author:Quentin S. Crisp

“For me, playwriting is and has always been like making a chair. Your concerns are balance, form, timing, lights, space, music. If you don't have these essentials, you might as well be writing a theoretical essay, not a play.”

Ifs Writing Wells Play Light Might Form Space Balance Essentials Concern Chairs Timing Essays Theoretical Playwriting

Author:Sam Shepard

“He was resentful against all those in authority over him, and this, combined with a lazy indifference toward his work, exasperated every master in school. He grew discouraged and imagined himself a pariah; took to sulking in corners and reading after lights. With a dread of being alone he attached a few friends, but since they were not among the elite of the school, he used them simply as mirrors of himself, audiences before which he might do that posing absolutely essential to him. He was unbearably lonely, desperately unhappy.”

Source: F. Scott Fitzgerald :This Side of Paradise followed by The Beautiful and Damned

“For a moment Clary thought she might fall; she felt as if something essential had been torn away from her, an arm or a leg, and she stared at Jace in blank astonishment-- what did he feel, did he feel nothing? She didn't think she could bear it if he felt nothing.”

Ifs Thinking Feels Moments Might Fall Felt Arms Bears Essentials Legs Blank Torn Jace Astonishment

Book:City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“Now he realized the truth: that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective office, it was like an inheritance of power - to certain people at certain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee but a responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentum might drag him down to ruin - the passing of the emotional wave that made it possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on an island of despair...Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrifice should be eternally supercilious.”

Source: The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works

“Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.”

Thinking Life Humans Wells Doe Might Lasts Suffering Space Minutes Grew Essentials Capacity Defined Bliss Contentment Good Life Interiors Human Experience

Author:Lance Armstrong

“With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.”

“Once I'm on my feet i realize escape might not be so simple, panic begins to set in. i can't stay here. flight is essential but i can't let my fear show. Winning means fame and fortune, losing mean certain death, The Hunger Games have begun . . .”

Mean I Can Shows Might Certain Games Winning Realizing Simple Feet Fame Essentials Losing Fortune Hunger Flight Panic Certain Death

Author:Suzanne Collins

“Love is essential; gregariousness is optional. Cherish your nearest and dearest. Work with colleagues you like and respect. Scan new acquaintances for those who might fall into the former categories or whose company you enjoy for its own sake. And don't worry about socializing with everyone else. Relationships make everyone happier, introverts included, but think quality over quantity.”

“If one had to define one essential gift with which a dancer needs to be endowed, there might be a rush of answers. A beautiful body, grace of line, graciousness of spirit, joy in the work, ability to please, unswerving integrity, relentless ambition towards some abstract perfection. Certainly all these factors determine a dancer's character, and every element exists in some combination within the performing artist's presence.”

“I think... it is somehow very useful, and maybe even essential, for a fine artist to have to somehow make his peace on the canvas with all the things he cannot do. That is what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call 'personality,' or maybe even 'pain.'”

Thinking Might Pain Artist Struggle Painting Serious Fine Personality Essentials Canvas Fine Arts Fine Artists

Book:Bluebeard: A Novel

Source: Bluebeard: A Novel

“Of these three essential factors, space might be said to be one with which biogeography is primarily concerned. However space necessarily interplays with time and form, therefore the three factors are as one of biogeographic concern.”

Said Might Form Science Three Space Evolution Essentials Concern Concerned Factors

Author:Leon Croizat

“Even Republicans seem to think that these undocumented Democrats could be made [GOP] voters...and what happens is that two out every three that would be legalized [and] become Democrats. And it's not 12 million. It's more like 20 million...But it isn't just the equation of 2/3 of over 20 million that will vote for the guy who opposes our conservative candidate whoever that might be, but it's also those who will leave us if we fail them...We have to go back and tie together and restore the pillars of American exceptionalism and the rule of law is essential.”

“Female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be.”

Giving Should Might Mother Courses Father My Own Attention Son Essentials Daughter Female Direct Educational Educate Female Education

Book:The Essential Jefferson

Source: The Essential Jefferson