Cancels Out Quotes & Sayings

It can even come about that a created will cancels out, not perhaps the exertion, but the result of divine action; for in this sense, God himself has told us that God wishes things which do not happen because man does not wish them! Thus the rights of men are immense, and his greatest misfortune is to be unaware of them. — Joseph De Maistre

Here everything is planned for killing. The ground is ready to receive us, the bullets are ready to hit us, the spots where the shells will explode are fixed in time and space, just like the paths of our destiny which will inevitably lead us to them. And yet we want to stay alive and we use all our mental strength to silence the voice of reason. We are well aware that death does not immortalise a human being in the memories of the living, it simply cancels him out. — Gabriel Chevallier

I think we've established that her son is crazy, and crazy cancels out clever every time. — John Connolly

What the hell's wrong with mimosas?' Aphrodite was saying. 'Orange juice is for breakfast.'
'What about the champagne part? That's alcohol,' Stevie Rae said.
'It's pink Veuve Clicquot. That means its good champagne, which cancels out the alcohol part, — P.C. Cast

Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies? That meddling ape imitation, as soon as we come to years of indiscretion, (so let me speak,) snatches the pen, and blots out nature's mark of separation, cancels her kind intention, destroys all mental individuality. The lettered world no longer consists of singulars: it is a medley, a mass; and a hundred books, at bottom, are but one. — Edward Young

Be careful of men who are bald and rich; the arrogance of "rich" usually cancels out the nice of "bald". — Rita Rudner

By the external appearance of your knowledge, you have attained (high) ranks and reverence with the people! So seek with Allah higher ranks and closeness by virtue of your hidden good deeds. And know that these two ranks, one cancels out the other. — Wuhayb Ibn Al-Wird

Lending Out Books

You're always giving, my therapist said.
You have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she'll
have to see you again in order to return them.
but what happens is, she doesn't have the time
to read them, & she's afraid if she sees you again
you'll expect her to walk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers. — Hal Sirowitz

The worldly relations of men and women often form an equation that cancels out without warning when some insignificant factor has been added to either side. — William McFee

He looks so stupid that it cancels out my
stupid so I give in and ride and he runs
and gets on the bike after only two tries. — Cath Crowley

A lot of stand-up comedy guys, when they get a little famous, just give up their stand-up career, and it cancels out the thing that set them apart. — Johnny Knoxville

Afflicted with existence, each man endures like an animal the consequences which proceed from it. Thus, in a world where everything is detestable, hatred becomes huger than the world and, having transcended its object, cancels itself out. — Emile M. Cioran

The very act of accepting responsibility short-circuits and cancels out any negative emotions you may be experiencing. — Brian Tracy

You will laugh when you discover that I often had no scruples about deceiving nitwits and scoundrels and fools when I found it necessary. As for women, this sort of reciprocal deceit cancels itself out, for when love enters in, both parties are usually dupes — Giacomo Casanova

Mechanized warfare still left room for human qualities to play an important part in the issue. 'Automatic warfare' cancels them out, except in a passive form. Archidamus is at last being justified. Courage, skill and patriotism become shrinking assets. The most virile nation might not be able to withstand another, inferior to it in all natural qualities, if the latter had some decisively superior technical appliance.
(...)The advent of 'automatic warfare' should make plain the absurdity of warfare as a means of deciding nations' claims to superiority. It blows away romantic vapourings about the heroic virtues of war, utilized by aggressive and ambitious leaders to generate a military spirit among their people. They can no longer claim that war is any test of a people's fitness, or even of its national strength. Science has undermined the foundations of nationalism, at the very time when the spirit of nationalism is most rampant. — B.H. Liddell Hart

Maybe they do. Maybe every stupid person you know cancels out every smart person you know and every good person you know cancels out every evil person you know."
"That's right. That's probably why everyone forgot about Jesus and Hitler, and just remembers their un-cancelled out contemporaries Average Jane and Average Joe," I said. — Audrey Bell

Everyone assumes that novelists are smarter and more interesting. They're generally smarter and more interesting, but they're often very short. So it kind of cancels all the smart and interesting stuff out. — Liev Schreiber

In cosmos and microcosmos scale can be/so great and be so small/neither can stay believable, each/cancels the other out and we, too big/for one an unapparent otherwise/live self-scaled lives where we are as if we were./Bring some words together toward a real. — William Bronk

Oftentimes what you see cancels out what you perceive. — Bill Johnson

Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one. — Judith Martin

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble. — C.S. Lewis

Belief in Providence is belief in a power to which all things stand at command to be used according to its pleasure, in opposition to which all the power of reality is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature; it interrupts the course of necessity, the iron bond which inevitably binds effects to causes; in short, it is the same unlimited, all-powerful will, that called the world into existence out of nothing. Miracle is a creatio ex nihilo. He who turns water into wine, makes wine out of nothing, for the constituents of wine are not found in water; otherwise, the production of wine would not be a miraculous, but a natural act. The only attestation, the only proof of Providence is miracle. Thus Providence is an expression of the same idea as creation out of nothing. — Ludwig Feuerbach

Graphic Design for its own sake will never happen, because the concept cancels itself out - a poster about nothing other than itself is not Graphic Design, it's ... makin' ART. — Chip Kidd

I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began.
"And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all."
"I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly.
"Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin. — Iain Pears

He gestured toward the rice pudding. "I put cinnamon on it. Cancels out the cholesterol. Read about it on the Men's Health Web site."
Her lips twitched. "That's bullshit." She eyed the banana cream pie. "What cheap pop-science justification have you got for that one?"
He contemplated the pie. "Well, bananas are good for you. Lots of potassium, which helps you shed water weight, right? And there's no trans fats in the pie crust. I can promise you that."
"Yeah?" Her lips pursed, suppressing a smile. "So what is in it?"
He grinned wickedly. "Lard," he announced. "Artery clogging, cholesterol-laden pig fat. Hope you're not a vegetarian. — Shannon McKenna

High modernism is numinous through and through, as the work of art provides one of the last outposts of enchantment in a spiritually degenerate world. Postmodernism, with its notorious absence of affect, is post-numinous. It is also in a sense post-aesthetic, since the aestheticisation of everyday life extends to the point where it undermines the very idea of a special phenomenon known as art. Stretched far enough, the category of the aesthetic cancels itself out. — Terry Eagleton

I have changed refuge so often, in the course of my rout, that now I can't tell between dens and ruins. But there was never any city but the one. It is true you often move along in a dream, houses and factories darken the air, trams go by and under your feet wet from the grass there are suddenly cobbles. I only know the city of my childhood, I must have seen the other, but unbelieving. All I say cancels out, I'll have said nothing. — Samuel Beckett

Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights - that's suppression by any light. — Artur Davis

The speed will increase and the players will be better, but also the players around you will be a lot better. It all cancels itself out. — Robert Griffin III

You think saving someone's life cancels out taking another person's life? In terms of fate and circumstance, yes. In terms of retribution and contrition, no. — Cassia Leo

Life essentially seeks out balance.I have found that it is in the habit of trading one sorrow for one joy until one cancels out the other. — Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

That is not all, however: this relationship between writing and death is also manifested in the effacement of the writing subject's individual characteristics. Using all the contrivances that he steps up between himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more that the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing. — Michel Foucault

We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often. — Winston Churchill

It's harder when people are playing along, because it's just not as funny. They're trying to be funny, and it sort of cancels out the whole joke. — Steve Carell

I calculated the total time that humans have waited for web pages to load. It cancels out all the productivity gains of the information age. Sometimes I think the web is a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society. — Scott Adams

Did I just see you litter?'
'I'm driving a hybrid. It cancels out. — Michelle Hodkin

I read a page of Plato's great work. I can no longer understand anything, because behind the words on the page, which have their own heavenly brightness, to be sure, there shines an even brighter, an enormous, dazzling -why- that blots out everything, cancels out, destroys all meaning. All individual intelligence. When one has understood, one stops, satisfied with what one has understood. I do not understand. Understanding is far too little. To have understood is to be fixed, immobilized. It is as though one wanted to stop on one step in the middle of a staircase, or with one foot in the void and the other on the endless stair. But a mere why, a new why can set one off again, can unpetrify what was petrified and everything starts flowing afresh. How can one understand? One cannot. — Eugene Ionesco

The greatest proof of power is the mass grave, the camp as a field of the dead. However, total power here cancels itself. Death is the absolute antisocial fact. For that reason, the absolute power to kill can never become total. In order to escape this dilemma, it constantly searches out new victims, defining new groups of opponents. Everyone is on terror's proscription list - extended to its logical conclusion, all of humankind. — Wolfgang Sofsky

When you're struggling, or doubting, or fearful, or feel as if your foundation has crumbled, don't ever underestimate the power of praise! Don't just think about it. Do it. Pull out all the stops. Make praise your first response to fearful situations in your life. God wants us to praise Him at all times, but especially when we are afraid or discouraged. When we do, not only will He take away our fear, but He will also give us joy (Psalm 34:1-5). Fear will tell you things that are not God's truth for your life. Fear denies that God's presence is powerful and fully active in your life. It cancels all hope and faith in God's desire to work in your behalf. But the truth is that faith, prayer, praise, and the Word of God will conquer your every fear. — Stormie O'martian

For every child who wants to be accepted wholly and loved unconditionally, there are others who simply want to be accepted for who they are, even if they receive only a fraction of love. I don't think one cancels out the other. I don't believe that there is any right or wrong ... we simply coexist. — Natsuki Takaya

But when, through the open door of the cross and the name and power of Jesus Christ, I commend myself to the Father's heart, then God cancels all my past, accepts all my present, swears His holy name for my future and the love of God take me over. Then fear goes out of my heart, because love has come in. — A.W. Tozer