Commensurate Quotes & Sayings

The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology. — Stanislav Grof

Whatever field one choose to achieve the level of skill commensurate with the status of a world class expert, it requires 10,000 hours of practice — Sunday Adelaja

The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result. — John Mason Good

The hole and the patch should be commensurate. — Thomas Jefferson

Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses yet it does not surprise the moral sentiment that was older and awaited expectant these larger insights. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Technologists provide tools that can improve people's lives. But I want to be clear that I don't think technology by itself improves people's lives, since often I'm criticized for being too pro-technology. Unless there's commensurate ethical and moral improvements to go along with it, it's for naught. — Jaron Lanier

In heaven, knowledge shall be commensurate with the enlarged powers of the glorified soul. — Theodore L. Cuyler

The great object of Education should be commensurate with the object of life. It should be a moral one; to teach self-trust: to inspire the youthful man with an interest in himself; with a curiosity touching his own nature; to acquaint him with the resources of his mind, and to teach him that there is all his strength. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me. — Walter Raleigh

17. The self ended and the world began. They were of equal size, commensurate, one mirrored the other. 18. The riddle was: why couldn't we live in the mind. The answer was: the barrier of the earth intervened. — Louise Gluck

For the world order to be one of peace and justice, for the global village to be a theater of right livelihood, it is imperative that a new and proactive spiritual vision commensurate to the challenges of the emerging world order be enunciated without delay. — Agnivesh

Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to get somewhat chiseled, as it were, before it will fit into an epigram. — Joseph P. Farrell

But things happened the way they happened without regard to our desire for them to have happened another way. Despite an age-old instinct to provide an explanation more complex than that, something with a level of profundity and depth which would seem commensurate with the confusion I felt, it really was that simple. — Kevin Powers

Today, unless women gain jobs and athletic scholarships commensurate with their percentage of the population, feminists scream discrimination. — Marvin Olasky

Our Fly Smart philosophy is about investing only on those points of differentiation that pay for themselves, that earn a revenue premium commensurate with what it costs us to provide that product or service. — Gerard Arpey

And it never occurs to anyone to admit a greatness that is not commensurate with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable puniness. — Leo Tolstoy

The dignity of the act is the deliberate, circumspect, open, and serene performance by these men in the clear light of day, and by a concurrent purpose, of a civic duty, which embraced the greatest hazards to themselves and to all the people from whom they held this deputed discretion, but which, to their sober judgments, promised benefits to that people and their posterity, from generation to generation, exceeding these hazards and commensurate with its own fitness. — William M. Evarts

I asked myself the question, 'What do you want of your life?' and I realized with a start of recognition and terror, 'Exactly what I have - but to be commensurate, to handle it all better. — May Sarton

Take my advice, dear reader, don't talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But resist it. Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to be somewhat chiselled, as it were, before it will quite fit into an epigram. — Joseph P. Farrell

My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest? Or does human spaceflight simply have a life of its own, without a realistic objective that is remotely commensurate with its costs? Or, indeed, is human spaceflight now obsolete? — James Van Allen

The legacy of the Bush administration is a lack of positive action on energy and the environment and profligate and irresponsible spending with no commensurate action to deal with looming liabilities. — Lawrence Wilkerson

The powers of the Soul are commensurate with its needs. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's a fact of life that there will be oil spills, as long as oil is moved from place to place, but we must have provisions to deal with them, and a capability that is commensurate with the size of the oil shipments. — Sylvia Earle

The effort invested in 'getting it right' should be commensurate with the importance of the decision. — Daniel Kahneman

I would like to stress this point undoubtedly: France sees the Arab Spring as auspicious. The Arab Spring holds out tremendous hope - hope for democracy and the rule of law, hope for peace and stability, hope for better future in which every person can pursue goals commensurate with his or her needs, talents and ambitions. — Alain Juppe

The gratitude ... should be commensurate with the boundless blessings which we enjoy. — James K. Polk

One of these days you're going to a mansion that isn't going to cost you anything!-No upkeep, no expense, absolutely nothing except what it's already cost Jesus!-And it will be commensurate with your works on Earth, what you already paid for it down here. — David Berg

The primary purposes of the political pamphlets of the early 1700s were neither to enlighten nor educate the masses, but to incite partisan conversation and spread commensurate ideas ... Facts were not permitted to fetter the views they espoused, and the restraints of objective journalistic credibility were discarded by pamphleteers bent on promoting subjective slant to an insatiable general public for whom political dissonance was an integral part of social interaction. — Gavin John Adams

Preparing to improvise is at a level commensurate with mastering the structure in a European classical piece. Another way to define improvisation is spontaneous melody. In order to improvise, a player first needs to have memorized and analyzed the harmonic structure of so many pieces. — Jimmy Heath

The rewards of art are not always commensurate with its quality. It affords a precarious living. — Walter J. Phillips

Americans assume that we never go to war to sustain our wealth, because war must be understood as a moral enterprise commensurate with our being a democracy. — Stanley Hauerwas

This was in [Orwell's] 1946 'Politics and the English Language,' an essay that despite its date (and its title's basic redundancy) remains the definitive SNOOT statement on Academese. Orwell's famous AE translation of the gorgeous 'I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift' in Ecclesiastes as 'Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account' should be tattooed on the left wrist of every grad student in the anglophone world. — David Foster Wallace

Most of the big shore places were closed now. And there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of the ferryboat across the sound. And as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away till gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes, A fresh green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams. For a transitory, enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent. Face to face, for the last time in history, with something commensurate to its capacity for wonder. — F Scott Fitzgerald

We need to apply the rules of 10,000 hours in order to achieve the level of a skill commensurate with the status of a world-class expert — Sunday Adelaja

Question (The Great Problematic): Will the ultimate liberation of the erotic from its dialectical relationship with Christianity result in
(a) The freeing of the erotic spirit so that man- and womankind will make love and not war?
or (b) The trivialization of the erotic by its demotion to yet another technique and need-satisfaction of the organism, toward the end that the demoniac spirit of the autonomous self, disappointed in all other sectors of life and in ordinary intercourse with others, is now disappointed even in the erotic, its last and best hope, and so erupts in violence
and in that very violence which is commensurate with the orgastic violence in the best days of the old erotic age
i.e., war? — Walker Percy

The soil of Palestine still enjoys her sabbaths, and only waits for the return of her
banished children, and the application of industry, commensurate with her agricultural
capabilities, to burst once more into universal luxuriance, and be all that she ever was
in the days of Solomon. — John Lindsay

Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 per cent of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed. — Barack Obama, Sr.

Alongside the liberating relief of the veteran who tells us his story, I now felt in the writing a complex, intense, and new pleasure, similar to that I felt as a student when penetrating the solemn order of differentials calculus. It was exalting to search and find, or create, the right word, that is, commensurate, concise, and strong; to dredge up events from my memory and describe them with the greatest rigor and the least clutter. — Primo Levi

The principle of vis inertiae ( ... ) seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress — Edgar Allan Poe

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes
a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I think one of the most important differences between us is that you are excellent at living in a way that is commensurate with your values, whereas I am not. For instance, I didn't recycle until I watched An Inconvenient Truth and I'm still sort of iffy on it. And also, I didn't vote in 2000, even though I could have voted in Florida *hits self on head repeatedly* Ahh George Bush! It's all my fault! God! So stupid! *sigh* Let's change the subject. Also, we have vastly different happy dances. — John Green

A man ought to be able to live on a scale commensurate with the service that he renders. — Henry Ford

The happiness at getting what you want is not usually commensurate with the worry leading up to it. — Ann Brashares

Aside from recurrance, revision, and commensurate symbolic reference, echoes also reveal emptiness. Since objects always impede acoustic reflection, only empty places can create echoes of lasting clarity. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invaria. — George Orwell

One doesn't accept bad challenges. Part of it is always the risk-taking without seeing that the risks are rational and the rewards are commensurate.. are more than commensurate.. with the risks. — Sumner Redstone

The energy of the mind is commensurate with the work to be done. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The whites have resolved to destroy our liberty and have therefore brought a force commensurate to their intentions. The Cape, after a proper resistance, has fallen into their hands, but the enemy found only a town and plain in ashes; the forts were blown up, and all was burnt. — Toussaint Louverture

People who know no self-restraint lead stormy and disordered lives, passing their time in a state of fear commensurate with the injuries they do to others, never able to relax. — Seneca.

Moreover, broad plans commensurate with our national purpose and resources would bring conviction of our power to every soldier in the front line, to the nations associated with us in the war, and to the enemy. — Kelly Miller

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. — George Orwell

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite. — Franz Kafka

I believe that those who believe in the power of human rights must find new ways to address economic injustice - and on a scale commensurate with the millions of people around the world that are mired in poverty. — Pamela Yates

My exuberance breaks things, breaks me. It marches me up to people and elicits from me declarations of love, if only to give me the satisfaction of disappointment, to know that I am in love. I am forever building up this edifice of love and happiness, which would get to be as big as the world, or bigger, if it weren't for the storms, eruptions, convulsions, that tear it all down again. When any of it comes down, it all comes down. Although these catastrophic failures deeply wound me, still I am grateful for the opportunity to rebuild, and to renew my trust with the world. I do everything on the scale of the world, as the only thing commensurate to my happiness. — Michael Cisco

We need not deplore the renunciation of historical truth when we put forward rational grounds for the precepts of civilization. The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new-born babies are brought by the stork. Here, too, we are telling the truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what the large bird signifies . But the child does not know it. He hears only the distorted part of what we say, and feels that he has been deceived; and we know how often his distrust of the grown-ups and his refractoriness actually take their start from this impression. We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level. — Sigmund Freud

IN THE CINEMA A DIRECTOR EXPRESSES HIS INDIVIDUALITY FIRST AND FOREMOST THROUGH HIS SENSE OF TIME, THROUGH RHYTHM. RHYTHM GIVES COLOUR TO A WORK BY DISTINGUISHABLE STYLISTIC CHARACTERISTICS. RHYTHM MUST ARISE NATURALLY IN A FILM, A FUNCTION OF THE DIRECTOR'S INNATE SENSE OF LIFE AND COMMENSURATE WITH HIS QUEST FOR TIME. — Andrei Tarkovsky

It is an indication of Chelski's warped finances that even successive titles can be regarded as failure. Spend unprecedented sums and only unprecedented success can be commensurate. Chelski won't get the credit they think they deserve because of the money they've spent. There's £300m worth of difference between a victory and an achievement. — Pete Gill

It's easier, somehow, if there's a reason for tragedy - lust or jealousy or hatred or revenge. We can find in these explanations an emotional tenor commensurate with the gravity of the act. There's something we recognize as human, a motive toward which we can direct our rage but can also understand, at some primal level, as an extension of ourselves. — Leslie Jamison

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at commensurate speed. — Maya Angelou

Sam Hamill is a writer unabashedly taking his place within the community of literature and the community of all sentient beings-his fidelity is to the magnificent truth of existence, and to its commensurate singing. — Jane Hirshfield

Let the fortifications of the sea-coasts and the fleets of battle-ships and cruisers on the ocean be commensurate with the vast national interests and honor intrusted to their protection and defense; let the standing army be sufficient to discharge the duties which require long and scientific education and training, and to serve as models and instructors for the millions of young citizens: then will the United States, by being always ready for war, insure to themselves all the blessings of peace, and this at a cost utterly insignificant in comparison with the cost of one great war. — John McAllister Schofield

I think that peacekeeping can do quite a lot, if they are given the right mandate with the commensurate resources to get the job done. — Kofi Annan

Often individuals whose mental gifts so far outpaced their contemporaries, tended to lack the social graces commensurate with their other accomplishments. — Kirsten Beyer

Food conditions the nature of the mind. Mind guides the thinking. Thinking results in action. Actions lead to commensurate or matching results and effects. This chain of action between the food we eat and the results of our actions highlights the fact that meat eating leads to beastly actions and the concomitant evil effects. — Sathya Sai Baba

when i go to bed i go to bed with the lights on"

Every morning I look up at the moon and I think
You are a kiddie-pool and I will drown in you.
I think about field trips and cold cuts.
I think about dividends and other words
I don't understand. I make five hundred
lunches in advance. I want to be prepared.
I want new shoes. I want them to be waterproof
and unforgettable. I want the kind of resume
that takes home all the prizes and a salary
commensurate with thunderstorms. I want to believe
that there are people in this world
whose lives are the size of houses and their bills
are paid on time and when they see birds in the sky they think
that's a nice thing to see. In my free time I clip coupons
and put them in my wallet where I forget
to redeem them and this gnaws at me
day in and day out and when I close my eyes
I can feel my heart and it is trembling. — Sasha Fletcher

Every giant leap for mankind resulting from a technological advance requires a commensurate step in the opposite direction - a counterweight to ground us in humanity. — Alex Morritt

The overall strength of Chinese culture and its international influence is not commensurate with China's international status. The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak. — Hu Jintao

People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed. — Maya Angelou

As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration; and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow. — Samuel Johnson

Since loans are getting more expensive and there's less money available, we're seeing a commensurate decline in growth. Higher costs and lower growth, in turn, translate into lower profits. Figuratively speaking, in the future, we won't be able to run as far or jump as high as we used to. — Paul Achleitner

... though queens are a particular obsession of mine. I'm not speaking of European sovereigns, mind you, but that most glorious force of the chessboard. Did you know her square was originally occupied by a male "vizier," able to advance only one meager diagonal step per move? But during the reign of the great female monarchs, this piece metamorphosed into a "queen," and her power grew commensurate with her title. Only then did the game become something more - A mental odyssey that helped reshape the world. — Brian K. Vaughan

Character grows in the soil of experience with the fertilization of example, the moisture of ambition, and the sunshine of satisfaction. Character cannot be purchased, bargained for, inherited, rented or imported from afar. It must be home-grown. Purely intellectual development without commensurate internal character development makes as much sense as putting a high-powered sports car in the hands of a teenager who is high on drugs. Yet all too often in the academic world, that's exactly what we do by not focusing on the character development of young people. — Stephen Covey

Let him then have powers commensurate with his utmost possible need, only let him be held strictly responsible for the exercise of them. Any other course would be injustice as well as bad policy — Richard Henry Dana Jr.

Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions ... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics ... all the same as in Europe. A new dawn is not to be seen on this side of the ocean. — Dmitri Mendeleev

When I had just started 'Cheers,' my nerves were ajangle, to put it mildly. I was absolutely terrified. What you're learning is to not show the fear, and to ultimately overcome it so that the level of relaxation is commensurate with the level of tension. — Woody Harrelson

What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, 1st. destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedemonians; or 2d. it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or 3d. it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or 4th. it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable. — James Madison