Best moments & ifs Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 3

“My books are based on the "what if" principle. "What if you became invisible?" or "What if you did change into your mother for one day?" I then take it from there. Each book takes several months in the long process of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting, and each has its own set of problems. The one thing I dislike about the writing process is the sometimes-loneliness of it all. Readers only get to see the glamour part of a bound book, not some of the agonizing moments one has while constructing it.”

“The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.”

Ifs Thinking Men Moments Greater Worst Serious Accidents Misfortunes Remedy Nevertheless Consolation Sufferers Contingency

Book:The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)

Source: The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)

“Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of "déjà vu," when you are used to existence, you become an adult.”

Ifs World Inspirational Giving Children Moments Feelings Used Night Existence Magic Childhood Creation Adults Miracle Rose Astonishing Magic Of Childhood

Author:Eugene Ionesco

“Kicking leaves you momentarily on one foot, and for that moment you are in a very weak position. If you were to be swept off your feet, you would be finished. This is why lifting your feet off the ground is crazy.”

Ifs Moments Would Be Feet Crazy Position Weak Finished That Moment Lifting Kicking Feet Off The Ground

Author:Morihei Ueshiba

“Man passes; he knows that he is dust; nothing is more evident than his frailty. If he should for a single moment forget it, what a chorus of voices would recall it to him! And yet, in the drop of existence which he absorbs, he takes in ages through memory and ages through presentiment. In the moments as they pass, he dimly sees eternity, and more than this, he possesses it by anticipation.”

Ifs Knows Men Should Moments Age Voice Memories Forget Existence Eternity Dust Anticipation Recalls Evident Forget It Chorus Single Mom Frailty

Author:Charles Wagner

“The fear of AIDS imposes on an act whose ideal is an experience of pure presentness (and a creation of the future) a relation to the past to be ignored at one's peril. Sex no longer withdraws its partners, if only for a moment, from the social. It cannot be considered just a coupling; it is a chain, a chain of transmission, from the past.”

Ifs Moments Past Social Sex Creation Pure Ideals Relation Aids Partners Chains Ignored Peril Transmission Coupling

Author:Susan Sontag

“If faith, then new birth; if new birth, then sonship; if sonship, then "an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Christ." But if you have not got your foot upon the lowest round of the ladder, you will never come within sight of the blessed face of Him who stands at the top of it, and who looks down to you at this moment, saying to you, "My child, wilt thou not at this time cry unto me, 'Abba, Father?”

Ifs Looks Children Moments Faces Father Christ Feet Cry Birth Sight Blessed Rounds My Children Lowest Ladders Joints Heirs Abba Abba Father

Book:Sermons preached in Union chapel, Manchester

Source: Sermons preached in Union chapel, Manchester

“If it is permitted to the enlightened but baffled Statesman, when deserted and fallen from his place, to appeal from the voices of the moment to the judgment of more impartial times, with what right can we call in question the loftier form of the same prophetic trust which looks to a present God rather than to future men?”

Ifs Men Looks Moments Form Voice Judgment Appeals Fallen Enlightened Statesmen Prophetic Deserted Baffled

Author:James Martineau

“There's no doubt that the squad needs strengthening if we are to get back up among the top three because they are operating on another level to us at the moment.”

Ifs Needs Moments Three Levels Doubt No Doubt Get Back Strengthening Squad

Author:Steven Gerrard

“If you don't fully take every moment and love every moment and every person that you're with, your life will be over before you realise.”

Ifs Persons Moments And Love Realising

Author:Jessica Chastain

“A few moments before the sun sets, the dark Earth shadow begins to rise in the east... It is nothing less than the shadow of the entire Earth, cast upward onto the atmosphere itself... I saw it over the great plains, and I felt as if I could sense the Earth pivoting silently under my feet.”

Ifs Moments Earth Felt Dark Sun Saws Feet Shadow Casts East Atmosphere If I Could Sun Set

Author:James Elkins

“When the artist observes nature... it is as if nature communicated, through the sensitivity of the artist at that moment, one of its secrets.”

Ifs Moments Artist Secret Communication That Moment Sensitivity

Author:Bruno Munari

“As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion....if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I've discovered in life. And you can have it, since it's been of no use to me.”

Ifs Feels Moments Use Next Emotion Let Me Feel Better Maxims Wrong Things

Author:Amor Towles

“The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on.”

Ifs Firsts Moments Seems Goes On Taste Hunger Bitter Hardship Bites Unbearable

Book:Four Novels of George Eliot

Source: Four Novels of George Eliot

“Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectableasthe Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.”

“Losing ... really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck? If you're willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are.”

Ifs Looks Doe Self Sometimes Moments Shows Winning Loss Willing Losing Performances Blame Luck Who You Are Valuable Complaining Behave Internals Defining Bad Luck

Author:Lance Armstrong

“Women always think that if they tell a man not to be pompous that will shut him up, but I am an old hand at that game. I know that if a man bides his time his moment will come.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Men Moments Hands Games Pompous

Author:Robertson Davies

“In playwriting, you've got to be able to write dialogue. And if you write enough of it and let it flow enough, you'll probably come across something that will give you a key as to structure. I think the process of writing a play is working back and forth between the moment and the whole. The moment and the whole, the fluidity of the dialogue and the necessity of a strict construction. Letting one predominate for a while and coming back and fixing it so that eventually what you do, like a pastry chef, is frost your mistakes, if you can.”

“A novel it's different. It's kind of exhilarating not to have to cut to the bone constantly. Oh, well I can go over here for a moment. I can say what I think the guy was thinking or what the day looked like or what the bird was doing. If you do that as a playwright, you're dead.”

Ifs Thinking Wells Kind I Can Different Moments Guy Novel Cutting Bird Bones Playwright Exhilarating Oh Well

Author:David Mamet

“What is a great man who has made his mark upon history? Every time, if we think far enough, he is a man who has looked through the confusion of the moment and has seen the moral issue involved; he is a man who has refused to have his sense of justice distorted; he has listened to his conscience until conscience becomes a trumpet call to like-minded men, so that they gather about him, and together, with mutual purpose and mutual aid, they make a new period in history.”

Ifs Thinking Men Made Enough Moments Together Purpose Justice Moral History Issues Involved Periods Conscience Mark Aids Confusion Great Men Mutual Trumpets Moral Issues Mutual Aid

Author:Jane Addams

“If we think that we can secure our country by just talking tough without acting tough and smart, then we will misunderstand this moment and miss its opportunities. If we think that we can use the same partisan playbook where we just challenge our opponent's patriotism to win an election, then the American people will lose. The times are too serious for this kind of politics.”

People Ifs Thinking Kind Country Moments Use Opportunity Winning Loses Challenges Acting Talking Missing Serious Smart Tough Election Our Country Secure Opponents Partisans Playbooks

Author:Barack Obama

“If you put a pistol against my head and ask which I think is worse, Muslims or Mexicans, I'd have to think a moment, then I'd say the Muslims because they've broken my balls.”

Ifs Thinking Moments Asks Broken Balls Pistols

Author:Oriana Fallaci

“In my lowest moments, the only reason I didn't commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn't be able to drink any more if I was dead.”

Ifs Reason Moments Able Drink Suicide Drinking Alcohol Commit Lowest Alcoholism

Author:Eric Clapton

“For I've finally realized that I could be infinitely better than before, definitely stronger. I'll face whatever comes my way, I'll savor each moment of the day, love as many people as I can along the way. Help someone who's given up, even if it's just to raise my eyes and pray.”

People Ifs Way I Can Moments Helping Eye Faces Given Praying Stronger Raises My Way Given Up

Author:Gloria Estefan

“If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense.”

Ifs World Firsts War Moments Problem Seems Modern Morality War Of The Worlds Our Future Uncertain Modern World

Author:Jawaharlal Nehru

“When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which - of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.”

Ifs Knows Giving Moments Night Names Speech Speakers New Life

Book:Between Man and Man

Source: Between Man and Man

“You do not attain to knowledge by remaining on the shore and watching the foaming waves, you must make the venture and cast yourself in, you must swim, alert and with all your force, even if a moment comes when you think you are losing consciousness; in this way, and in no other, do you reach anthropological insight.”

Ifs Thinking Way Moments Force Consciousness Losing Casts Wave Insight Swim Shore Venture

Book:Between Man and Man

Source: Between Man and Man

“[In response to Alfred Tennyson's poem "Vision of Sin," which included the line "Every moment dies a man, every moment one is born."] If this were true, the population of the world would be at a stand-still. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of death. I would suggest that the next edition of your poem should read: "Every moment dies a man, every moment 1 [and] 1/16 is born." Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 [and] 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.”

Ifs Men World Should Believe Long Stills Moments Would Be Dies Next I Believe Born Lines Sin Vision Figures Birth Response Rate Population Excess Accurate Tennyson

Author:Charles Babbage

“There are few who would need advisers, if they were only accustomed to appeal to themselves in their calmest, holiest moments. If, when embarrassed with doubt as to any course of action, they would turn aside from the immediate tumult of the world, and from the vain speaking of those who "darken counsel by words without knowledge;" and would then commune with their hearts alone, at night, the heavens their silent counsellors, they would act not always in accordance with the wise men of this world, but with that wisdom which bringeth peace.”

Source: Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd

“At any particular moment in a man's life, he can say that everything he has done and not done, that has been done and not been done to him, has brought him to that moment. If he's being installed as Chieftain or receiving a Nobel Prize, that's a fulfilling notion. But if he's in a sleeping bag at ten thousand feet in a snowstorm, parked in the middle of a highway and waiting to freeze to death, the idea can make him feel calamitously stupid.”

Source: Blue Highways: A Journey Into America

“I can't wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say "f off". But after a while you can get away with things.”

People Ifs Looks Art I Can Moments Certain Waiting Position Get Away

Author:Damien Hirst

“We can generally read a man's purpose towards us in his manner, if his purposes are of much moment to us.”

Ifs Men Moments Purpose

Book:The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children

Source: The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children

“There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect... What is philosophy today... if it does not consist in, instead of legitimizing what we already know, undertaking to know how and how far it might be possible to think otherwise?”

Ifs Thinking Knows Doe Philosophy Moments Might Today Know How Knowing Perceive Indispensable Undertakings

Author:Michel Foucault

“Some wonder why I have such a feeling of concern over the imposition of the death penalty. I ask those who wonder how would you feel if you defended a man charged with murder, who was as innocent as any hon. member in this House at this very moment, who was convicted; whose appeal was dismissed, who was executed; and six months later the star witness for the Crown admitted that he, himself, had committed the murder and blamed it on the accused? That experience will never be effaced from my memory.”