A Few Great Quotes & Sayings

I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts. — Meryl Streep

Forgetting myself for a moment, I stopped to study the menu that was elegantly exposed in a show window. I read, realizing that a few days earlier I could have gone in and ordered anything on the menu. But now, though I was the same person with the same appetite, the same appreciation and even the same wallet, no power on earth could get me inside this place for a meal. I recalled hearing some Negro say, "You can live here all your life, but you'll never get inside one of the great restaurants except as a kitchen boy." The Negro often dreams of things separated from him only by a door, knowing that he is forever cut off from experiencing them. — John Howard Griffin

Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Full-body workouts are great for someone who can only train a few times per week, as missing one day will be less detrimental. — John Romaniello

Also,' McCoy continued, 'this is the yearly reminder that our beloved scoreboard's birthday, the anniversary of its donation to the school, is coming up in just a few short weeks. So everyone get ready, prepare your offerings, and be ready to celebrate this great occasion!'

The PA system went quiet. I stared at the ceiling. Did he just say 'offerings?'

For a scoreboard? — Francesca Zappia

Do not all great men and women have a few birds in their head? — Edward Stanton

This is the first letter I have ever written. That a few marks on this piece of paper can bring you my heart in my absence is a great magic. Life is a constant source of wonder. — Clay Griffith

You are a strong woman now, not the insecure, introverted, spoiled brat I married. You know adversity and know how to fight for success. You will do great in this world as you carry on. Be careful. Remember: they all want to fuck you. Few will love you. I do and did. — Tit Elingtin

We want to dedicate our music tonight to the great opportunity that we all have to begin to truly understand the events of the past few days and to act upon them with courage and with compassion as we make our plans to live in a completely new world. — Laurie Anderson

Once in power, Stalin's campaign to succeed Lenin required a legitimate heroic career which he did not possess because of his experience in what he called 'the dirty business' of politics: this could not be told, either because it was too gangsterish for a great, paternalistic statesman or because it was too Georgian for a Russian leader. His solution was a clumsy but all-embracing cult of personality that invented, distorted and concealed the truth. Ironically this self-promotion was so grotesque that it fanned sparks, sometimes innocent ones, which flared up into colossal anti-Stalin conspiracy-theories. It was easy for his political opponents, and later for us historians, to believe that it was all invented and that he had done nothing much at all - particularly since few historians had researched in the Caucasus where so much of his early career took place. An anti-cult, as erroneous as the cult itself, grew up around these conspiracy-theories. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

Things come to the poor that can't get in at the door of the rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be poor
one that no man covets, and brat a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize. — George MacDonald

Religious creeds are a great obstacle to any full sympathy between the outlook of the scientist and the outlook which religion is so often supposed to require ... The spirit of seeking which animates us refuses to regard any kind of creed as its goal. It would be a shock to come across a university where it was the practice of the students to recite adherence to Newton's laws of motion, to Maxwell's equations and to the electromagnetic theory of light. We should not deplore it the less if our own pet theory happened to be included, or if the list were brought up to date every few years. We should say that the students cannot possibly realise the intention of scientific training if they are taught to look on these results as things to be recited and subscribed to. Science may fall short of its ideal, and although the peril scarcely takes this extreme form, it is not always easy, particularly in popular science, to maintain our stand against creed and dogma. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

The key is to design great golf courses all around the world. But my plan is only to do a select few. I devote so much of my time to these. I'm kind of a hands-on kind of person. I always want to do the best that I can in all of my life and this is no different. — Tiger Woods

I've remade a few movies and they all have one thing in common: great endings. If you're going to remake something, make sure that ending is tight. It's a little less challenging, if you have a great ending. If you don't have a great ending, don't remake the movie. — Chris Rock

I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters. — Robert Penn Warren

Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move. — Emma Goldman

I had begun to grasp, in the past few weeks, one of the great and uncovenanted delights of Greece; a pre-coming of age present in my case: a direct and immediate link, friendly and equal on either side, between human beings, something which melts barriers of hierarchy and background and money and, except for a few tribal and historic feuds, politics and nationality as well... Existence, these glances say, is a torment, an enemy, an adventure and a joke which we are in league to undergo, outwit, exploit and enjoy on equal terms as accomplices, fellow-hedonists and fellow-victims. — Patrick Leigh Fermor

Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature's profligate generosity. — Pat Conroy

How did it ever come to this?" I asked him. "The same way it always has and - to our great misfortune - probably always will. With fierce hate harbored by a few and complacency displayed by the rest. All it takes for evil to take hold and flourish is for men and women of conscience to do nothing. — Lisa Shearin

Learning to read, and to a lesser degree, to write, are of course the major events in one's intellectual development. There is nothing to compare with it, since very few people (Helen Keller is the great exception) can remember what it meant for them to learn to speak. — Karl Popper

De-Christianizing America has been high on the progressive agenda, and, thanks to the government (especially the federal courts), it has been a great success. Nor can we overlook the contribution of the entertainment industry, which now determines what passes for 'culture.' The main practical vehicle of de-Christianization has been the Sexual Revolution. A few radicals have called for the abolition of the family, but most liberals have been more discreet, avoiding hostile rhetoric while quietly but constantly pursuing policies that result in lower birthrates and fatherless children. — Joseph Sobran

Of the thousands of species that our ancestors hunted and gathered, only a few were suitable candidates for farming and herding. Those few species lived in particular places, and those are the places where agricultural revolutions occurred. Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward for humanity. — Yuval Noah Harari

If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position hire the best writer. it doesn't matter if the person is marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever, their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing clear writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. great writers know how to communicate. they make things easy to understand. they can put themselves in someone else's shoes. they know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. Writing is making a comeback all over our society ... Writing is today's currency for good ideas. — Jason Fried

Here, in their midst, George feels a sort of vertigo. Oh God, what will become of them all? What chance have they? Ought I to yell out to them, right now, here, that it's hopeless? But George knows he can't do that. Because, absurdly, inadequately, in spite of himself, almost, he is a representative of the hope. And the hope is not false. No. It's just that George is like a man trying to sell a real diamond for a nickel, on the street. The diamond is protected from all but the tiniest few, because the great hurrying majority can never stop to dare to believe that it could conceivably be real. — Christopher Isherwood

In the Great Deluge in the days of Noah, nearly all mankind perished, eight persons alone being saved in the Ark. In our days a deluge, not of water but of sins, continually inundates the earth, and out of this deluge very few escape. Scarcely anyone is saved. — Alphonsus Liguori

The short film project I just finished for W Hotels and Intel, I didn't have my script finished until a few days before we began filming. We edited it very quickly and now it's up online. It was great to conceive an idea and have it premiere just a few weeks later, compared to a feature, which takes a year or more. — Roman Coppola

Hi, Ceony," he said. He then stiffened like a soldier and added, "Magician Thane, it's a pleasure to meet you finally."

Bennet took a few long strides and offered his hand to the paper magician, who stood taller in height by several inches. Emery shook the apprentice's hand with an amused twinkle in his eye. Bennet continued. "I've heard a great many things about you."

"And you still shook my hand?" Emery asked. "Your mother raised you well. — Charlie N. Holmberg

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can't be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush's style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don't, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing. — Peggy Noonan

Communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought - frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile — F Scott Fitzgerald

The first thing you notice about women in Hollywood, besides their low percentage of body fat, is how few are married. And the number of great-looking, successful single women without a social life is staggering ... The most glaring misconception about Hollywood is that it is the romance capital of the world. — Lynda Obst

I checked to see if there'd been a really good book published in the last few decades. Then I started with what Cleopatra would have read, asking myself, 'What can we know about her education?' It turns out to be a very great deal, and bizarrely, no one had written about that before. — Stacy Schiff

Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is ... how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that." Nicholai's imagination was galvanized by the concept of shibumi. No other ideal had ever touched him so. "How does one achieve this shibumi, sir?" "One does not achieve it, one ... discovers it. And only a few men of infinite refinement ever do that. Men like my friend Otake-san." "Meaning that one must learn a great deal to arrive at shibumi?" "Meaning, rather, that one must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity. — Trevanian

One of the great joys of science has to be turning a thought that surfaced one night over a few beers into a full-blown project. — Joe Roman

I have a great deal of respect for the craft, I don't know how much respect it has for me. But it's a precision process. Doing it on stage would be, I think, terrifying. Doing it on film has its own difficulties, because film is not conducive to spontaneity. You might have a run through and get a few chuckles at eight o'clock in the morning, but you don't keep laughing at the same thing all day long. — Colin Firth

Some people have a mistaken idea that all thoughts disappear through meditation and we enter a state of blankness. There certainly are times of great tranquility when concentration is strong and we have few, if any, thoughts. But other times, we can be flooded with memories, plans or random thinking. It's important not to blame yourself. — Sharon Salzberg

You are ashamed to open your Bible and read that blessed Psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." You are ashamed to be seen on your knees. No man can be a disciple of Jesus Christ without bearing His cross. A great many people want to know how it is Jesus Christ has so few disciples, whilst Mahomet has so many. The reason is that Mahomet gives no cross to bear. There — D.L. Moody

I'm not opposed to aging - even though society is kinder on men than women when it comes to getting old. How can I look at aging as the enemy? It happens whether I like it or not and no one is set apart from growing old; it comes to us all. Youth passes from everyone, so why deny it? I'm proud of my age. I'm proud that I've survived this planet for as long as I have, and should I end up withered, wrinkled and with a lifetime of great wisdom, I'll trade the few years of youth for the sophistication of a great mind ... for however long it lasts. — Donna Lynn Hope

The representation of gay characters on screen is important for us all to think about because there are sadly too few representations of gay characters on screen in mainstream cinema. If Marvel starts making movies about gay superheroes, then we'll be in a really great place. We're not at that place. — Graham Moore

The various systems of doctrine that have held dominion over man have been demonstrated to be true beyond all question by rationalists of such power-to name only a few-as Aquinas and Calvin and Hegel and Marx. Guided by these master hands the intellect has shown itself more deadly than cholera or bubonic plague and far more cruel. The incompatibility with one another of all the great systems of doctrine might surely be have expected to provoke some curiosity about their nature. — Wilfred Trotter

Killing one person was murder; killing a few or dozens was ore murder; so killing thousands or tens of thousands ought to be punished by putting the murderer to death a thousand times. What about more than that? a few hundred thousand? The death penalty, right? Yet, those of you who know some history are starting to hesitate.

What if he killed millions? I can guarantee you such a person would not be considered a murderer. Indeed, such a person may not even be thought to have broken any law. If you don't believe me, just study history! Anyone who has killed millions is deemed a 'great' man, a hero.

And if that person destroyed a whole world and killed every life on it--he would be hailed as a savior! — Liu Cixin

Most often, our water is shut off because of some reconstruction project, either in our village or in the next one over. A hole is dug, a pipe is replaced, and within a few hours things are back to normal. The mystery is that it's so perfectly timed to my schedule. That is to say that the tap dries up at the exact moment I roll out of bed, which is usually between 10:00 and 10:30. For me this is early, but for Hugh and most of our neighbors it's something closer to midday. What they do at 6:00 a.m. is anyone's guess. I only know that they're incredibly self-righteous about it and talk about the dawn as if it's a personal reward, bestowed on account of their great virtue. — David Sedaris

It's very difficult to find the time or the money for people to organize rehearsals for some movies. It staggers me how little preparation often goes into these scenes which are difficult and complicated. You think, "God, it's crazy. I've never met this person before and here I am having to work at how to do a whole performance on the set." It was great to have a few days of just talking to Michael [Caine]and Daniel [Barber] and thinking about the characters and the relationship between them before we started shooting. — Emily Mortimer

The problem with trying to find your happiness through avoidance is the nature of reality. Reality simply does not allow us to evade unwanted experiences. Sure, we might be able to escape a few {...] but the evasive life often comes at a cost, like having to live your life in terror. Even if we can successfully ward off some terrifying experiences, we can not advert them all. Particularly, the most unpleasant ones: sickness, old age and death. If our strategy has been to flea unpleasant circumstances, when they come to meet us - as they surely will - our suffering will be great indeed. — Mark W. Muesse

A nation orients itself by its own geniuses, and derives from them its ideas of its own ideals, but the guiding star serves also as a light to other nations. As speech has been created by a few great men, the most extraordinary wisdom lies concealed in it, a wisdom which reveals itself to a few ardent explorers but which is usually overlooked by the stupid professional philologists. — Otto Weininger

Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you've learned about the grand themes of life. It's time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few facts about the drifting clouds ... Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life ... I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel- and steal- a little of that energy. — Carl Safina

Great critics, of whom there are piteously few, build a home for the truth. — Raymond Chandler

The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possiblity of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover against his will what another human being is thinking and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand. — George Orwell

A guy is sitting in a bar getting bored, looking to strike up a conversation. He turns to the bartender and says, "Hey, about those Democrats in Congress..." "STOP pal - I don't allow talk about politics in my bar!" interrupted the bartender. A few minutes later the guy tries again: "You know what some people say about the pope?" "NO religion talk, either," the bartender cuts in. One more try to break the boredom: "This year, I really thought the Yankees would..." "NO sports talk. That's how fights start in bars!" the barman says. "Look, how about sex. Can I talk to you about sex?" "Sure, that we can talk about any time," replies the barkeep. "GREAT... GO FUCK YOURSELF! — Barry Dougherty

For evil to take place, the acts of a few people are not sufficient; the great majority also has to remain indifferent. That is something of which we are all quite capable. — Tzvetan Todorov

Tides are like politics. They come and go with a great deal of fuss and noise, but inevitably they leave the beach just as they found it. On those few occasions when major change does occur, it is rarely a good news. — Jack McDevitt

We have, it seems, a few people who think Jarret may be just what the country needs - apart from his religious nonsense. The thing is, you can't separate Jarret from the "religious nonsense." You take Jarret and you get beatings, burnings, tarrings and featherings. They're a package. And there may be even nastier things in that package. Jarret's supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret's talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader. — Octavia E. Butler

I have a very keen sense of smell and always associate certain people and places with particular fragrances. For me, nothing is more likely to set a mood than certain scents. I find I vary the perfume I use depending on the climate and the time of day. However a few great perfumes seem to work for most occasions. — Elizabeth Hurley

A few books well chosen, and well made use of will be more profitable than a great confused Alexandrian library. — Thomas Fuller

We got up at 6am to go to school for a few years and we found it so challenging. Some people in our country have woken up at 6am every single morning for decades now so that this nation can wake up and see great mornings. I salute all those wonderful super humans who are inspiring a better tomorrow. Thank you, Teachers! — Sharad Vivek Sagar

I have been in recent years the author of a bestiary and director of some atlas projects; I've written criticism, editorials, reports from a few front lines, letters, a great many political essays ... , more personal stuff, essays for artists' books, and more ... Nonfiction is the whole realm from investigative journalism to prose poems, from manifestos to love letters, from dictionaries to packing lists. — Rebecca Solnit

Although my road to writing seems like it may have come easily, there were a few bumps in that road. I didn't get a lot of encouragement from friends, although my family were great supporters. I also had many ... what you would call "mind-boggling" moments, when I would doubt myself and what I was writing. It has been said that we, ourselves, are our own worst critics.
All the hard work had payed off though, and I created a children's book that I am proud of, and an unforgettable little girl that will touch the hearts of many."-Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

You were great tonight, helping with Candice's wound and the funeral ceremony for Chaz ... such as it was."
"I only did what needed doing, and as for your friend's funeral, it was a beautiful good-bye you all gave him," she murmured. "Simple but pure. You honored him well, Kellan."
The phrase she used - one reserved for the solemnest occasions in Breed traditions - touched him in a way he couldn't express. Instead, he tipped her chin up on the edge of his hand and kissed her. Not the hungered kind of kiss that they'd been sharing each time they'd connected since her arrival back in his life a few days ago but a kiss shaped by tender caring and gratitude, by profound respect ... and, yes, love.
He loved this woman.
His woman. — Lara Adrian

The Lord has given you a heart open to great horizons; do not be afraid to commit your life completely to the service of Christ and His Gospel! Listen to Him as He says again today: 'The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. — Pope John Paul II

Australia's arid western region, from the town of Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean coast, is a beautiful, haunting, but largely empty land. Dominated by the harsh, almost uninhabited Great Sandy and Gibson deserts, the region is known only to Australian Aborigines, a handful of white settlers, and the few travelers who motor across it. — Robyn Davidson

The health of a church depends not merely on the creed which it professes, not even on the wisdom and holiness of a few great ecclesiastics, but on the faith and virtue of its individual members. — Charles Kingsley

You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember."
"Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers."
"Was it magic?"
"Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge."
Oh, to be sure, there is much we do not understand. The years pass in their hundreds and
their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so
they seem ... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink
beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.
So long as there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights. — George R R Martin

The great thing about true best friends is that when you go MIA for a few months, they inquire but they don't press. Best friends know the power of infatuation but also how quickly it dissipates. You just have to wait it out. And then afterward, tease them about it for decades. — Mindy Kaling

Walt had a way of communicating that was just magical," composer Richard Sherman told me. "Simple, but magical. He would give you a challenge and say, 'I know you can do this.' He made you believe anything was possible. He made you proud to be on his team. And it really was a team effort - Walt would roll up his sleeves and go to work alongside the rest of us. "He saw potential in people who had never really done anything great. My brother Robert and I really had no track record in the music industry, but Walt heard a few of our songs and he gave us an opportunity and inspired us to keep topping ourselves. Without Walt to inspire us, I don't know where we'd be today. "Walt always wanted you to find something wonderful in yourself, to believe in it and consider it God's gift to you. God gives you the gift, and the rest is up to you. Walt taught me that what you do with that gift is your gift back to God. — Pat Williams

Finally I had made that necessary imaginative leap - which is a real necessity, since most of us writers can't be out there living like crazy all the time. These days, very few are the writers whose book jackets list things like bush pilot, big game hunter, or exotic dancer. No, more often we are English teachers. We have children, we have mortgages, we have bills to pay. So we have to stop writing strictly about what we know, which is what they always told us to do in creative writing classes. Instead, we have to write about what we can learn, and what we can imagine, and thus we come to experience that great pleasure Anne Tyler noted when somebody asked her why she writes, and she answered, I write because I want more than one life. — Lee Smith

Great churches aren't built on the gifts or talents of a few, but on the sacrifice of many. — Brian Houston

But a few understand that building is a great symbol we live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. — Ayn Rand

Here's the fascinating part, call it the golden shoulder: We have no idea in advance who the great contributors are going to be. We know that there's a huge cohort of people struggling outside the boundaries of the curated, selected few, but we don't know who they are. — Seth Godin

On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble - for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone - was a great iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters: 'The dead travel fast. — Bram Stoker

I was an optimist, a great champion of the human spirit. And I lost that for a time. I feel like I've regained a bit of that in the last few years but there was a period of my life in which I had a very low opinion of people in general. — Jude Law

I bear to the wisdom of Sir Philip Sidney, who said that next to hunting he liked hawking worst. However, though he may have fallen into as hyperbolical an extreme, yet who can put too great a scorn upon their folly, that, to bring home a rascal deer, or a few rotten conies, submit their lives to the will or passion of such as may take them under a penalty no less slight than there is discretion shown in exposing them. — Frances Osborne

You cannot be disciplined in great things and undisciplined in small things. Brave undisciplined men have no chance against the discipline and valour of other men. Have you seen a few policemen handle a crowd? — George S. Patton Jr.

Within the next few years-a decade perhaps-we should be in a position to unlock new knowledge about life and matter so great that wholly new concepts of human life will follow in the wake of this new knowledge. — David Lilienthal

I have to admit that I am not great at selecting music for CDs! I have a few personal favorites, and then I let my producer take it from there! — Karen Mason

To that, I say this: a few may not agree, but one of the greatest men to have walked the earth in my lifetime is Nelson Mandela. He and his people suffered tremendously under the apartheid regime, but when he took over the mantle of governing South Africa, he did not vindictively return the favour to the opposition, which would probably have sent South Africa into chaos and terminal decline. Instead he charted a way forward that started with forgiveness and inclusiveness, bringing about a smooth transition instead of possible revenge and bloodshed. Maybe some folk in cricket administration can learn something from the great man. — Michael Holding

Cass Mastern lived for a few years and in that time he learned that the world is all of one piece. He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but spring out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide. It does not matter whether or not you meant to brush the web of things. You happy foot or you gay wing may have brushed it ever so lightly, but what happens always happens and there is the spider, bearded black and with his great faceted eyes glittering like mirrors in the sun, or like God's eye, and the fangs dripping. — Robert Penn Warren

It was a great thing for the Blues boys to do in terms of shaving their hair off for me. The whole squad did it. At first I thought it was only going to be a handful of boys, but fair play, they all did it, and a few of the coaches as well. — Matthew Rees

The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both. — August Wilson

Everybody tries to score a great goal, and I am lucky I have netted a few. — Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Very few women understand how great is the hunger in a man to be near femininity...(b)ut if a woman wishes to give a most precious gift to a man, if she would truly feed this masculine hunger (a hunger that he will seldom show but that is always there), she will be very, very feminine when her man is in a mood, so he can get his bearings and be a man again. — Robert A. Johnson

Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass. — Charlie Munger

All photographs are about light. The great majority of photographs record light as a way of describing objects in space. A few photographs are less about objects and more about the space that contains them. Still fewer photographs are about light itself. — John Paul Caponigro

When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don't understand creativity. They don't appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they've not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks. But that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We'd get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. — Walter Isaacson

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
and the vermin of the world inhabit it
and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
and it goes by the name of London.
At the top of the hole sit the privileged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lonely zoo
turning beauty to filth and greed ...
I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders,
for the cruelty of men is as wonderous as Peru
but there's no place like London! — Stephen Sondheim

Of course, there will be few people who are sympathetic but you don't become a great team overnight, no matter how much money you have at your disposal. — Frank Lampard

We pay a lot of money to get a tank with a few tropical fish in it and never tire of looking at their brilliant iridescence and marvelous forms and movements. But God has seas full of them, which he constantly enjoys. (I can hardly take in these beautiful little creatures one at a time.) We are enraptured by a well-done movie sequence or by a few bars from an opera or lines from a poem. We treasure our great experiences for a lifetime, and we may have very few of them. But he is simply one great inexhaustible and eternal experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right. This is what we must think of when we hear theologians and philosophers speak of him as a perfect being. This is his life. — Dallas Willard

The learned gentleman (like a few of his English brethren) was desperately long-winded, and had a remarkable capacity of saying the same thing over and over again. His great theme was 'Warren the engine driver,' whom he pressed into the service of every sentence he uttered. I listened to him for about a quarter of an hour; and, coming out of court at the expiration of that time, without the faintest ray of enlightenment as to the merits of the case, felt as if I were at home again. — Charles Dickens

In my experience there are few people who are of true genius. There are many who are gifted, but most of the world's work and great things come from ordinary people with a talent which they develop. — James E. Faust

The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning, and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and where a mathematical reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a Candle standing by you. — John Arbuthnot

He nodded. "Okay. We got it out in the open. Here it is. This is your moment to be angry at your own laziness and wallow in self-pity. A moment is all you get, because any minute Adam Pierce might set Houston on fire. Take a few minutes for your pity party. Would five be enough?"
"You're an asshole."
"Yes, but I'm a very well-trained asshole. I'm offering you the use of my expertise. So suck it up, get over this bump, and let's go. Are you with me?"
You know what? No: if he ever fell in love, it wouldn't be great romantic devotion. It would be an exercise in frustration and lust, and at the end of it his significant other would strangle him. — Ilona Andrews

I was a tomboy and I didn't have a bunch of brothers but I always wanted them and so I sort of adopted a few of my great friends to be my brother. — Olivia Wilde

I have thought I am creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God and returning to God; just hovering over the great gulf, till a few moments hence I am no more seen. I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, the way to heaven
how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God! I have it. Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri [a man of one book]. — John Wesley

Once in every few publishing seasons there is an Event. For no apparent reason, the great heart of the Public gives a startled jump, and the public's great purse is emptied to secure copies of some novel which has stolen into the world without advance advertising and whose only claim to recognition is that The Licensed Victuallers' Gazette has stated in a two-line review that it is 'readable'. — P.G. Wodehouse

Great teams are usually small-under fifty in total head count. (There are few examples of a team made up of hundreds of people who created anything revolutionary.) Big teams aren't conducive to revolutionary products because such products require a high degree of single-mindedness, unity, and unreasonable passion. — Guy Kawasaki

As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Fantasy works inwards upon its author, blurring the boundary between the visioned and the actual, and associating itself ever moreclosely with the Ego, so that the child who has fantasied himself a murderer ends by becoming a Loeb or a Leopold. The creative Imagination works outwards, steadily increasing the gap between the visioned and the actual, till this becomes the great gulf fixed between art and nature. Few writers of crime-stories become murderers
if any do, it is not the result of identifying themselves with their murderous heroes. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Others
as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders
serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few
as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men
serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part ... — Henry David Thoreau

Contrary to vulgar legend the lives of great ballerinas are not entirely given up to a few minutes of graceful movement every night followed by champagne drunk out of their toeshoes till dawn, in the company of financiers ... no, most of their time is spent in filthy rehearsal halls, inhaling dust, or else in class, daily, year in year out, practicing, practicing even after they are already prima ballerinas. — Gore Vidal

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

One of the very few valid criticisms of Queen Victoria is that she was not sufficiently concerned with improvement of the conditions in which a great mass of her subjects passed their lives. She lived through an age of profound social change, but neither public health, nor housing, nor the education of her people, nor their representation, engaged much of her time. — Cecil Woodham-Smith

I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad — Alexis De Tocqueville