“Average Jones had come by his nickname inevitably. His parents had foredoomed him to it when they furnished him with the initials A. V. R. E. as preface to his birthright of J for Jones. His character apparently justified the chance concomitance. He was, so to speak, a composite photograph of any thousand well-conditioned, clean-living Americans between the ages of twenty-five and thirty.” WellsCharacterAgeSpeakParentChanceFiveThousandTwentiesCleanPhotographAverageThirtyJustifiedInitialsTwenty FiveBirthrightNicknamesCompositesClean Living Book:Average Jones Source: Average Jones
“For more than twenty years he [Blanchard] toiled on through the most fatiguing paths of literary composition, mostly in periodicals, often anonymously; pleasing and lightly instructing thousands, but gaining none of the prizes, whether of weighty reputation or popular renown, which more fortunate chances, or more pretending modes of investing talent, have given in our day to men of half his merits.” MenYearsGivenChanceHalfPathTalentTwentiesInvestingReputationFortunateMeritPrizePretendingCompositionRenown Author:Samuel Laman Blanchard
“So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself, which he has religiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish that he caught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if he did not catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish - you could never catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation of it. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, he called it twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and so on.” IfsMadeSaidTwoThreeChanceSeaExampleTenRiversTwentiesFoundationAssumingFinalsCaughtFishesBoatThirtyLakesFishingFortyArrangements Book:Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog Source: Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog
“in reading ... stories, you can be many different people in many different places, doing things you would never have a chance to do in ordinary life. It's amazing that those twenty-six little marks of the alphabet can arrange themselves on the pages of a book and accomplish all that. Readers are lucky - they will never be bored or lonely.” PeopleLittlesBookDifferentStoriesReadingChanceReaderLuckySixPagesOrdinaryLonelyMarkTwentiesAccomplishBoredDifferent PeoplesBook ReadingDifferent PlaceAlphabetOrdinary LifeReading Stories Author:Natalie Babbitt
“If you don't begin to be a revolutionist at the age of twenty, then at fifty you will be a most impossible old fossil. If you area red revolutionary at the age of twenty, you have some chance of being up-to-date when you are forty!” IfsAgeChanceImpossibleRedAreasTwentiesRevolutionaryFiftyFortyFossilsUp To Date Author:George Bernard Shaw
“He's (Jack McKeon) been around baseball for twenty-plus years. He knows what it takes to be a manager. I hope he gets the chance.” KnowsYearsChanceBaseballTwentiesManagersPlus Author:Ken Griffey, Jr.
“The chance to own a home; chance to own an education; chance to get access to capital. This is the real civil rights battle of the twenty-first century.” FirstsRealHomeChanceRightsCenturyBattleTwentiesAccessCivil Rights Author:Jack Kemp
“When I was 8 years old, it mattered what my favorite singer said and wore and expressed opinions about. And if I have a chance to matter to the growth and hopes and wishes of little girls, that's something I can't take lightly. So I do factor them in when I'm thinking about what to wear, and what to say, and whether or not to go out to bars even thought I'm not twenty-one.” IfsThinkingYearsLittlesSaidI CanMatterGirlWishGrowthChanceOpinionTwentiesMy FavoriteSingersBarsFactorsTwenty OneFavorite Singer Author:Taylor Swift
“I've had a chance to meet some of my civil rights heroes and, more recently, members of the young generation around [Barack] Obama, people in their teens and twenties who were determined to make history and who were too idealistic to think that what they were trying to do might be impossible. They proved that visionary pragmatism can win over the majority. That comes from a particular place in your heart that generation Y is offering America. They just can't afford to be naive now, in terms of the ferocity of the opposition.” PeopleThinkingTryingHeartMightAmericaYoungWinningTermChanceRightsImpossibleGenerationsParticularHeroMembersTwentiesMajorityDeterminedCivil RightsBarackOppositionOfferingTeensNaiveVisionariesPragmatismIdealisticFerocityYoung GenerationGeneration Y Author:Van Jones
“When you're in your twenties, it's the last time you have the chance to experiment with multiple identities, to decide who you're going to be in life.” LastsChanceIdentityTwentiesExperimentsMultipleLast TimeMultiple Identities Author:Irvine Welsh
“There is a one-in-300 chance that Earth will be struck on March 16, 2880, by an asteroid large enough to destroy civilization and possibly cause the extinction of the human race. But, on the bright side, Prince could re-release his hit song with the new refrain 'We're gonna party like its twenty-eight seventy-nine.'” HumansEnoughEarthSongCausesSidesChancePartyRaceCivilizationTwentiesEightNineReleaseHuman RaceMarchSeventiesExtinctionRefrainBright SideAsteroids Author:Nathan Myhrvold
“For me, stripping was an unusual kind of escape. I had nothing to escape but privilege, but I claimed asylum anyway. At twenty-four, it was my last chance to reject something and become nothing. I wanted to terrify myself. Mission accomplished.” KindWantedLastsChanceFourTwentiesPrivilegeMissionsAccomplishedRejectsUnusualAsylumsStrippingLast ChanceMission Accomplished Author:Diablo Cody
“Here are some questions I am constantly noodling over: Do you splurge or do you hoard? Do you live every day as if it's your last, or do you save your money on the chance you'll live twenty more years? Is life too short, or is it going to be too long? Do you work as hard as you can, or do you slow down to smell the roses? And where do carbohydrates fit into all this? Are we really all going to spend our last years avoiding bread, especially now that bread in American is so unbelievable delicious? And what about chocolate?” IfsYearsLongHardLastsChanceFitTwentiesRoseSmellBreadChocolateLast YearAvoidingDeliciousUnbelievableSlow DownToo ShortCarbohydratesLife Too ShortLive Every Day Author:Nora Ephron
“I loved getting my M. B. A., and I really enjoyed being an accountant and financial analyst before I quit my day job twenty-five years ago to write full time. I just liked writing more…plus, I knew even then that as a full-time writer, I'd get plenty of chances to do business-type stuff, while as an accountant, I probably wouldn't get a lot of opportunities to write about dragons.” WritingYearsJobsOpportunityStuffChanceBusinessFiveTypeYears AgoTwentiesFinancialQuittingPlentyEnjoyedFive YearsDragonsPlusTwenty FiveI QuitAccountantsAnalystsDay Jobs Author:Patricia C. Wrede
“Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet - never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man. Ay, there lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellignton or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid.” MenWayMindLittlesFactsRomanceCertainHurtChanceMorningMarriedTwentiesLaysNineHorribleWetUnclesBeing MarriedMaidsPitifulOld Maids Author:Lucy Maud Montgomery
“The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left.” PeopleIfsMenWayFirstsLongIdeasDifferentSeemsUsedFightingLeftChanceFiveVictoryTwentiesIntelligentIntellectEvery ManClarityDifferent WaysJudgedTwenty FiveBrainwash Author:Ezra Pound