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Explanation Quotes

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Explanation Quotes

“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.”

IfsNeedsMeanHas BeensBookSometimesEyeRoomsSawsCuttingFingersCornersTricksExplanationGood BookPatheticDiversion
Author:Stephen Fry
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“I flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats of all sizes and colours scrapping in the middle of the room, and then they all shot past me with a rush and out of the front door; and all that was left of the mobscene was the head of a whacking big fish, lying on the carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted a written explanation and apology.”

IfsWayBigsWantedPastLyingLeftRoomsWrittenDoorsMiddleFrontsHundredShotsCatSizeFishesStaringExplanationColourApologyFlashFifteenCarpetMomentaryFront DoorsBig Fish
Book:Expecting Jeeves
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“Our lives are part of a unique adventure... Nevertheless, most of us think the world is 'normal' and are constantly hunting for something abnormal--like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don't realize the world is a mystery. As for myself, I felt completely different. I saw the world as an amazing dream. I was hunting for some kind of explanation of how everything fit together.”

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Book:The Solitaire Mystery
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“A game master or teacher who was primarily concerned with being close enough to the "innermost meaning" would be a very bad teacher. To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the "meaning" of music; if there is one it does not need my explanations. On the other hand I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the "meaning" but do not imagine that it can be taught.”

IfsNeedsDoeMadeSaidEnoughHandsWould BeGamesTeacherImagineExampleTaughtMastersMusicianConcernedExplanationScholarImagine ThatPupilsCandidBad Teacher
Book:The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
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“The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.”

WayMomentsRealityNextDecisionWalksActingStepsPlansMovementPromiseObviousNakedRationalSecureDesertExplanationGuaranteesJustifyPresent MomentDiscernmentAmbiguityObscurityPilgrimNext StepsPredeterminedUndefined
Author:Brennan Manning
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“The only people who can ever put ideas into context are people who don't care; the unbiased and apathetic are usually the wisest dudes in the room. If you want to totally misunderstand why something is supposedly important, find the biggest fan of that particular thing and ask him for an explanation. He will tell you everything that doesn't matter to anyone who isn't him. He will describe paradoxical details and share deeply personal anecdotes, and it will all be autobiography; he will simply be explaining who he is by discussing something completely unrelated to his life.”

PeopleIfsWantImportantIdeasMatterCareAsksRoomsShareFansParticularDetailsDon't CareExplanationAutobiographyExplainingWisestDiscussingParadoxicalAnecdotesApatheticUnbiasedBiggest Fan
Author:Chuck Klosterman
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“That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact. Why it did not upset I am unable to offer any reason. I have often thought about the matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural obstinacy of all things in this world. The boat may possibly have come to the conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that we had come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to disappoint us. That is the only suggestion I can offer.”

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Book:Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel
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“That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.”

PeopleWellsStillsSelfStoriesInterestWonderOpinionIssuesTeachingEventsSacredInspiredTerrorSupposed To BeExplanationBiographiesSelf InterestImmediacySmall TalkSketchy
Book:Dreams From My Father
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“They wouldn’t have believed me, and if they had they would have wanted me to explain. And I had no explanation, no answers. When you’re on a battleground, you don’t have the luxury of time to dwell on the various historical factors and sociopolitical influences that caused the war. You just keep your head down and try to survive it, to shove the pages back in the book, close the covers and pretend that nothing’s broken, nothing’s wrong.”

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Book:Good in Bed
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“Intelligent people know they are intelligent. They also know that one person cannot know all, hence a person is not stupid simply because he is ignorant of one thing or another. They know that, to another intelligent person, they will not appear stupid in asking for an explanation of what they do not know, and so their ignorance on any particular issue does not become an embarrassment.”

PeopleKnowsPersonsDoeIssuesOne ThingStupidIgnoranceParticularIntelligentAskingIntelligenceIgnorantExplanationEmbarrassmentNot StupidThat One PersonIntelligent Person
Author:Lynsay Sands
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“My parents didn't raise me to be religious. The closest we come to worship is the Trinity of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. I think the Merryweather cheerleaders confuse me because I missed out on Sunday School. It has to be a miracle. There is no other explanation. How else could they sleep with the football team on Saturday night and be reincarnated as virginal goddesses on Monday?”

ThinkingSchoolNightParentReligiousSleepTeamFootballWorshipMiracleRaisesExplanationSundayGoddessClosestSaturdayMondaySaturday NightTrinityFootball TeamCheerleaderVisaSunday SchoolAmerican Express
Author:Laurie Halse Anderson
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“If your friend is sick and dying, the most important thing he wants is not an explanation; he wants you to sit with him. He's terrified of being alone more than anything else. So, God has not left us alone.”

IfsWantImportantLeftDyingSickImportant ThingsExplanationTerrifiedSick And Dying
Book:The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity
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“The Universe was a silly place at best...but the least likely explanation for it was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that abstract somethings 'just happened' to be atoms that 'just happened' to get together in ways which 'just happened' to look like consistent laws and some configurations 'just happened' to possess self-awareness and that two 'just happened' to be the Man from Mars and a bald-headed old coot with Jubal inside.”

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Book:Stranger in a Strange Land
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“A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”

MenWayWellsLooksMadeSaidCountryStoriesShowsBodyFightingAsksLeftWhiteRoomsSonArmsDignityWindowRoundsExplanationSeatsCiviliansSleevesYour SonDodgersFighting OnFranciscansIwo Jima
Book:I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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“But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny. Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence. Hence to demythologize is to interpret myth, that is, to relate the objective representations of the myth to the self-understanding which is both shown and concealed in it.”

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Book:The Conflict of Interpretations
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“After she was gone there would be no one who knew the whole of her life. She did not even know the whole of it! Perhaps she should have written some of it down...but really what would have been the point in that? Everything passed, she would too. This perspective offered her an unexpected clarity she nearly enjoyed, but even with this new clarity the world offered no more explanation for itself than it ever had.”

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Book:Evening
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“Christ, how did you ever get this screwed up! his mind demanded of him. He knew the answer, but even that was not a full explanation. Different segments of the organism called John Terrance Kelly knew different parts of the whole story, but somehow they'd never all come together, leaving the separate fragments of what had ...once been a tough, smart, decisive and to blunder about in confusion - and despair! There was a happy thought.”

MindDifferentWholeStoriesTogetherChristAnswersDespairSmartToughLeavingConfusionExplanationOrganismsFragmentsBlundersScrewed UpHappy Thoughts
Author:Tom Clancy
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“Our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can't hold on to it, and the more time passes, the harder it gets...My father said that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains' nobility , the silence of the silence. We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.”

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Author:Salman Rushdie
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“The green thumb is equable in the face of nature's uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid the babble of the objective world, untroubled by its refusal to be reduced by our ideas of it, its indomitable rankness.”

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Author:Michael Pollan
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