Complicating Quotes & Sayings

My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally. — Seamus Heaney

Why complicate your life when it did not need complicating, when you had a choice? — Robert Galbraith

It is always so simple, and so complicating, to accept an apology. — Michael Chabon

Calvin: "I read this library book you got me."
Calvin's Mom: "What did you think of it?"
Calvin: "It really made me see things differently. It's given me a lot to think about."
Calvin's Mom: "I'm glad you enjoyed it."
Calvin: "It's complicating my life. Don't get me any more. — Bill Watterson

we humans have a penchant for complicating stuff that probably shouldn't be all that complicated. — Jayne Castle

Things always appear clear and simple from behind glass. It is in the thick of tribulations that blurring details arise, complicating my life. You can't rightly judge me, nor can you assist, from a shielded viewpoint. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Civilization, that great fraud of our times, has promised man that by complicating his existence it would multiply his pleasures ... Civilization has promised man freedom, at the cost of giving up everything dear to him, which it arrogantly treated as lies and fantasies ... Hour by hour needs increase and are nearly always unsatisfied, peopling the earth with discontented rebels. The superfluous has become a necessity and luxuries indispensable. — Isabelle Eberhardt

Back in the 1980s, the original stated purpose of the mortgage-backed bond had been to redistribute the risk associated with home mortgage lending. Home mortgage loans could find their way to the bond market investors willing to pay the most for them. The interest rate paid by the homeowner would thus fall. The goal of the innovation, in short, was to make the financial markets more efficient. Now, somehow, the same innovative spirit was being put to the opposite purpose: to hide the risk by complicating it. The market was paying Goldman Sachs bond traders to make the market less efficient. — Michael Lewis

Valerie didn't have those problems. Valerie was just another dancer, and anything she needed to hide would be mundane and understandable. Sometimes I envied Valerie, even though I knew that her life was simple only because she didn't actually exist. Maybe that was always the secret to a simple life. Reality was the complicating factor. — Seanan McGuire

I think a lot of writers are tempted to add complexity by over-complicating things, but always remember that most natural rules/laws are, at their core, simple. Start simple, and build from there, or you risk getting yourself and your readers tangled. — V.E Schwab

As for complicating the black metal aesthetic, I don't care about that since it was never a goal of mine to lay out any particular preconceived aesthetic, let alone one of traditional black metal where pseudonyms are adopted. — Colin Marston

unfortunately, understand psychology. "Like man, like state" (575); "governments vary as the characters of men vary; . . . states are made out of the human natures which are in them" (544); the state is what it is because its citizens are what they are. Therefore we need not expect to have better states until we have better men; till then all changes will leave every essential thing unchanged. "How charming people are! - always doctoring, increasing and complicating their disorders, fancying they will be cured by some nostrum which somebody advises them to try, never getting better, but always growing worse . . . . — Will Durant

A patient complains of feeling nervous or fearful. These feelings and behaviors suggest that the patient has an anxiety disorder, and the doctor prescribes whatever drug will most probably work for an anxiety disorder. However, there's no conclusive way to tell that this patient definitely has an anxiety disorder. Even if the doctor did get the diagnosis correct, there's a great deal of variation regarding which drug class (for example, anti-anxiety drugs versus antidepressants) a particular individual will respond to and which drug within a class (for example, Prozac versus Zoloft) will work best. If the drug doesn't work, the doctor will try the next one on the list and so on, thus delaying treatment success and complicating the process with the mix-and-match type of treatment. — Chris Prentiss

When I am trying to understand the method of winning in the endgame with two bishops against the knight, chess is a science, when I admire a beautiful combination or study, then chess is art, and when I am complicating position in the approaching time trouble of my opponent, then chess is sport. — Ashot Nadanian

I could never do a job that entailed complicating people's lives — Frank Healy

The more you try to simplify things the more you complicate them. You create rules, build walls, push people away, lie to yourself and ignore true feelings. That is not simplifying things. — Cecelia Ahern

The life of faith is a struggle enough in a broken world without us complicating it for other believers. — Jake Colsen

Needs multiply as they are met. Woe to the man who would live a disentangled life. Be on guard, my soul, of complicating your environment so that you have neither time nor room for growth! — Elisabeth Elliot

Complicating matters, adolescent brains are more susceptible to substance abuse and dependence than adult brains, because they're making so many new synaptic connections and sloshing around with so much dopamine. Pretty much all quasi-vices to which human beings turn for relief and escape - drinking, drugs, video games, porn - have longer-lasting and more intense effects in teenagers. It makes acting out especially tempting to them, and it makes their habits especially hard to break. — Jennifer Senior

Progress means simplifying, not complicating — Bruno Munari

The fact there was the desire that had been the basis of everything, much before any feelings or thoughts had become important, complicating it all.
I missed you, Dan. Everything. — Aleksandr Voinov

In any creative endeavor, there is a long list of features and effects that you want to include to nudge it toward greatness - a very long list. At some point, though, you realize it is impossible to do everything on the list. So you set a deadline, which then forces a priority-based reordering of the list, followed by the difficult discussion of what, on this list, is absolutely necessary - or if the project is even feasible at all. You don't want to have this discussion too soon, because at the outset, you don't know what you are doing. If you wait too long, however, you run out of time or resources. Complicating — Ed Catmull

230Our Internet debates ... tend to be dominated by a form of openness fundamentalism, whereby "openness" is seen as a fail-safe solution to virtually any problem. Instead of debating how openness may be fostering of harming innovation, promoting or demoting justice, facilitating or complicating deliberation - the kinds of debates we are likely to have about the uses of openness in the messy world that we live in - "openness" in networks and technological systems is presumed to be always good and its opposite ... is always bad. — Evgeny Morozov

I think it is very difficult today to have a reasoned public discourse on any controversial subject. Certainly, election years present a complicating factor. — John Poindexter

Holy shit, were we complicating things. We were out of control.
"Building?" Asked Eric, voice heavy with disbelief.
"Yes." Teeth gritted, I smiled.
"Banging, screwing," said Joe. "you know. — Kylie Scott

Whatever success I've had it is because I've tried to understand the situation of the player. I think the coach's duty is to avoid complicating matters. — Bill Belichick

Every fundamentalism focuses on end times, and Armageddon is, in a sense, a rhetorical trope, an emphatic and overwhelming conclusion, meant to wrap up and make tidy the mistaken wanderings of history. For a fundamentalist the end is one of the forms desire takes, a passion no different from lust or avarice, intense with longing and the need for fulfillment and relief. It's like they're horny for apocalypse. They get off on denouements, which partly explains why Hell House never amounted to much more than a series of murderous conclusions. It focused only on that part of a story where life finds itself fated. Inside every act a judgement was coiled. Real people with their ragged and uncertain lives, their stumbling desires, their bleak or blessed futures, would only break into the narrative, complicating the story, dragging it on endlessly. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Complicating matters even further, on a day-to-day basis, in the same individual, the sensory sensitivities can change, especially when the person is tired or stressed. These — Temple Grandin

The legal profession is notorious for complicating the simples of things. — Sarah M. Eden

There are musicians who want to make a living making music. There are listeners who want to listen to music. Complicating this relationship is a whole bunch of history: some of the music I want to listen to was made a while ago in a different economy. Some of the models of making a living making music are no longer valid but persist. — Kent Beck

However, this isn't how most American Christians think. American Christians gravitate to those who agree with them and are most welcoming toward those who swear allegiance to the church-approved doctrines and practices. Most Christians prefer to spend time with those who mirror themselves, which happens because Jesus isn't in charge of the class. The students have taken over and replaced Jesus' way of life with their own preferences. Jesus has become an impediment, a complicating factor to doing what we want. — Michael Spencer

Preaching on Sunday mornings is such a simple thing, and by complicating it, I think we all do ourselves and the audience a disservice. It is very simple. Here is the model: Make people feel like they need an answer to a question. — Andy Stanley

Vadim moved to touch his lips to Dan's, tilting his head with his hand, urging him to open up and pressed in harder, needed that feeling now, that want and need. The fact there was the desire that had been the basis of everything, much before any feelings or thoughts had become important, complicating it all. — Aleksandr Voinov

In the world of today, human desires far supersede human needs. Waste, as you can see, is the result of all of those contradictions. That is how we ended up complicating our world. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

And there lay the essential differences between reading and rereading, acts that Henry and I were preforming simultaneously. The former had more velocity; the latter had more depth. The former shut out the world in order to focus on the story; the latter dragged in the world in order to assess the story. The former was more fun; the latter was more cynical. But what was remarkable about the latter was that it contained the former: even while, as with the upper half of a set of bifocals, I saw the book through the complicating lens of adulthood, I also saw it through the memory of the first time I'd read it, when it had seemed as swift and pure as the Winding Arrow, the river that divides Calormen from Archenland. — Anne Fadiman

I really like to go for the essence of things - the most beautiful parts of things - of human beings or of music. If there are things in there that are getting in the way and complicating it, it's just not good for me. — Bill Kreutzmann

no simple mechanism could do the job as well or better. It might simply be that nobody has yet found the simpler alternative. The Ptolemaic system (with the Earth in the center, orbited by the Sun, the Moon, planets, and stars) represented the state of the art in astronomy for over a thousand years, and its predictive accuracy was improved over the centuries by progressively complicating the model: adding epicycles upon epicycles to the postulated celestial motions. Then the entire system was overthrown by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, which was simpler and - though only after further elaboration by Kepler - more predictively accurate.63 Artificial intelligence methods are now used in more areas than it would make sense to review here, but mentioning a sampling of them will give an idea of the breadth of applications. Aside from the game AIs — Nick Bostrom

[A]rt can't ever be programmatic ... it needs on the contrary to be complicating, subtle, questioning, doubtful and doubting. — Tony Leuzzi

When Russia had disputes with neighbors such as Ukraine over gas prices, it did not hesitate to cut off gas supplies as a form of economic power. Later, when a more sympathetic government came to power in Ukraine, Russia used the lure of heavily discounted gas prices to obtain the extension of its lease of a naval base in Ukraine, thus complicating the prospect that Ukraine might one day join NATO. — Joseph S. Nye Jr.

The establishment defends itself by complicating everything to the point of incomprehensibility. — Fred Hoyle

The feel of the place was deep, the prehistoric heartbeat of the rocks complicating the music, the people bright, all different kinds of dancers, smilers, swayers, swirlers, smokers, beer-drinking boppers, tripsters, spinners. I looked back at the crowd ... and saw the show for a moment as a jewel ... like a gem in a bracelet: an ornament on the body of the country, glittering in the coming darkness. — Jason Burke

Mindfulness is attentiveness, moment to moment. What's happening right now and what's coming up in me in response to what's happening right now. Importantly, this is in the service of being able to choose wisely so that I avoid complicating my own life and the lives of others. — Sylvia Boorstein

When writing these tests it's obvious and clear where "duplication" lies and how "common" pieces can be pulled into helper methods. Unfortunately, each time we extract a method we risk complicating our tiny universes. The right abstractions can reduce complexity; however, it's often unclear which abstraction within a test will provide the most value to the team. — Anonymous

To our three levels of complicating alienation we must add the fundamental distinction or break between God and humankind, between Creator and creature. That "division" is no tragedy, but part and parcel of our identity and God's grandeur. It must be accounted for in the mystery of God, who reveals himself to us as we can bear it: revelation invariably involves concealment, since God is God and we are not. The communion that he forges with us remains a tantalizing "mystery" that leads us to know more and more of him, but never in completion - and at this, we wonder! As Kallistos Ware puts it, where knowledge of God is concerned, "The eyes are closed - but they are also opened" (The Orthodox Way, p. 15). — Edith M. Humphrey

I have a talent for complicating situations, I said. — Seanan McGuire

You talk as if - a person is a person. A man is what he is. He can't be anything else. You can't change that.'
'Well then, I think that's the real difference between us. Because I believe you can change it.'
'Then I don't follow you. And I don't want to. Bad enough to cope with what one is, instead of complicating things even more. — Doris Lessing

I do not think that safety should be bought at the cost of complicating the expression of good solutions to real-life problems. — Bjarne Stroustrup

Standing beside you,
I took an oath
to make your life simpler
by complicating mine
and what I always thought
would happen did:
I was lifted up in joy. — David Ignatow

I've always had an interest in complicating the way that we perceive the black character, whether it's the black academic or scholar or activist or black intellectual. — Rashid Johnson

As long as through the workings of laws and customs there exists a damnation-by-society artificially creating hells in the very midst of civilization and complicating destiny, which is divine, with a man-made fate; as long as the three problems of the age are not resolved: the debasement of men through proletarianization, the moral degradation of women through hunger, and the blighting of children by keeping them in darkness; as long as in certain strata social suffocation is possible; in other words and from an even broader perspective, as long as there are ignorance and poverty on earth, books of this kind may serve some purpose. Victor Hugo, Hauteville House, 1 January 1862 — Victor Hugo

Either, you are in love with someone or you're not. Fear is complicated, not love. — Shannon L. Alder

The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on complexity; all Internet standards become festooned with complicating option sets that no one person can know in their entirety. The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on insufficient investment; safety review for open source code is rarely funded, nor sustainable when it is. The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on poor planning; wide deployment within critical functions but without any repair regime. — Dan Geer

All of you, get off my damned window now!"
"Shit," Locke muttered from a few feet above and to her left, his eloquence temporarily frightened into submission. "Madam, you're complicating our night, so before we come in and complicate yours, kindly cork you bullshit bottle and close the gods-damned window!"
She looked up, aghast. "Two of you? All of you, get down, get down, get down!"
"Close your window, close your window, close your fucking window!"
"I'll kill both you shitsuckers' huffed Fernez 'I'll drop both you off this fucking
"
There was a marrow-chillingly loud cracking noise, and the trellis shuddered beneath the hands of three men clinging to it. — Scott Lynch

Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled on a bizarre ideal of slenderness to which, strangely enough, we continue to adhere, our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages. — Paul Gauguin