Defies Quotes & Sayings

Sin defies God, utterly corrupts each individual, corrodes all social relationships, and issues in death. — D. A. Carson

The things you see in Army barracks sometimes defies logic. After a while, you give up trying to rationalize and understand such things ... you just accept them as your new reality. — Scott Burkett

Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity at the same time is ideal. — Banksy

I admire the way the Bible defies anybody who wants to nail it on a preferred meaning. There are so many ways to interpret the Bible as there are different opinions about what a certain passage or verse really means. So anybody can go there and read a meaning into (eigesis) whatever passage or verse he wants to suit his inclinations. Proof that the Bible is inspired? It caters for all sorts of people and views. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising
the very half that makes rising necessary
is having first been nailed to the cross. — Cheryl Strayed

Crying defies scientific explanation. Tears are only meant to lubricate the eyes. There is no real reason for tear glands to overproduce tears at the behest of emotion. — Veronica Roth

I love the relationship that anyone has with music ... because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out ... It's the best part of us probably ... — Nick Hornby

The human creature, humiliated and offended in ways that are inconceivable to the mind and heart, defies the blind and deaf divinity. — Francoise Mauriac

[...] sometimes mystery defies what our head knows and we feel God reach down into the ordinariness of nightly ritual and speak to our heart with a whisper. — Lindsey O'Connor

We can store patterns and conclusions in our heads, but we cannot store randomness itself. Randomness is a concept that defies categorization; by definition, it comes out of nowhere and can't be anticipated. While we intellectually accept that it exists, our brains can't completely grasp it, so it has less impact on our consciousness than things we can see, measure, — Anonymous

There is no trifling with nature; it is always true, grave, and severe; it is always in the light, and the faults and errors fall to our share. It defies incompetency, but reveals its secrets to the competent, the truthful, and the pure. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

His voice dropped to a low murmur, and he leaned down so that he was almost whispering in her ear. "You see, there's this woman."
She wasn't going to look at him. She wasn't.
"Normally, one might say that there was a beautiful woman - but I don't think she qualifies as a classical beauty. Still, I find that when she's around, I'd rather look at her than anyone else."
He set two fingers against her cheek, and Minnie sucked in a breath. She was not going to look at him. He'd see the longing in her eyes, and then ...
"There's something about her that draws my eye. Something that defies words. Maybe it's her hair, but I tried to tell her that, and she told me I was being ridiculous. I suppose I was. Maybe it's her lips. Maybe it's her eyes, although she so rarely looks at me. — Courtney Milan

We must learn to live on the heavenly side and look at things from above. To contemplate all things as God sees them, as Christ beholds them, overcomes sin, defies Satan, dissolves perplexities, lifts us above trials, separates us from the world and conquers fear of death. — A.B. Simpson

I love those moments on stage, on screen and in life when you dispense with language, when you sort of transcend it in a way, and certainly the experience of falling in love, I think, defies words, which is why poets, painters, musicians, actors have tried to describe that feeling, writers have just tried to put words to that. — Cate Blanchett

Universally, the better gold the worse man. The political economist defies us to show any gold mine country that is traversed by good roads, or a shore where pearls are found on which good schools are erected. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every specific human being, however, thinks, judges, imagines, wills and expresses himself or herself in a unique, dissimilar, and unrepeatable mode
a mode of unpredictable difference, or otherness, which objectively defies description or delimitation. — Christos Yannaras

The arrogance of race prejudice is an arrogance which defies what is scientifically known of human races. — Ruth Benedict

But I guess the thing about fear is that it defies the laws of rationality. It creates its own laws instead. — David Levithan

When you become so determined that you want to feel good - you have become as your Inner Being is, in such a pure place of Positive Energy - then that which is 'negative energy' simply can't mix with you. It defies Law. If you are very strong and clear about your positive wanting, and feeling it, then 'bad' things simply cannot get in. Colds can't get in, car accidents can't get in, anything that you are not wanting cannot be your personal experience. — Esther Hicks

Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them. — William J. Clinton

It defies reason to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. would march arm in arm with Wall Street hedge fund managers and members of ALEC to lead a struggle for the privatization of public education, the crippling of unions, and the establishment of for-profit schools. — Diane Ravitch

Nevertheless, this is where it begins. The first word appears only at a moment when nothing can be explained anymore, at some instant of experience that defies all sense. To be reduced to saying nothing. Or else, to say himself: this is what haunts me. And then to realize, almost in the same breath, that this is what he haunts. — Paul Auster

the ghetto should never come with a photo. The Third World slum is a nightmare that defies beliefs or facts, even the ones staring right at you. A vision of hell that twists and turns on itself and grooves to its own soundtrack. — Marlon James

We are not peddlers of the fashionable. We believe that good design defies fashion, is truly innovative, eminently sensible, yet a source of inspiration to those who have the pleasure of living with it. — Arthur Erickson

Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society. For since any given rule implies majority acceptance, any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently-thinking individuals. The new idea, much less the new critical idea, must needs begin as a small minority opinion; therefore, the State must nip the view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies the opinions of the mass. "Listen only to your brothers" or "adjust to society" thus become ideological weapons for crushing individual dissent. By such measures, the masses will never learn of the nonexistence of their Emperor's clothes. — Murray N. Rothbard

They did not know; nor did they know that the negation of everything is in itself a form of servitude and
that real freedom is an inner submission to a value which defies history and its successes. — Albert Camus

Dad told Uncle Seth not to screw things up," she informed me as we washed our hands. "He said even if Uncle Seth is famous, him getting a woman like you defies belief."
I laughed and smoothed down the skirt of my dress. "I don't know about that. I don't think your dad gives your uncle enough credit."
Brandy gave me a sage look, worthy of someone much older. "Uncle Seth spent last Valentine's Day at a library. — Richelle Mead

The power we call God defies description. — Mahatma Gandhi

Copying is an art in itself, demanding the greatest technical ability, especially in watercolour. However well done, the copy invariably lacks that nascent, ineffable, but definite quality, provided by the furious enthusiasm with which an original is created, an essential spontaneity that defies reproduction. — Walter J. Phillips

It is the Late city that first defies the land, contradicts Nature in the lines of its silhouette, denies all Nature. It wants to be something different from and higher than Nature. These high-pitched gables, these Baroque cupolas, spires, and pinnacles, neither are, nor desire to be, related with anything in Nature. And then begins the gigantic megalopolis, the city-as-world, which suffers nothing beside itself and sets about annihilating the country picture. — Oswald Spengler

The Super Bowl now takes on a magnitude that almost defies the imagination. — Paul Tagliabue

First you do everything possible to make sure your world is antibourgeois, that it defies bourgeois tastes, that it mystifies the mob, the public, that it outdistances the insensible middle-class multitudes by light-years of subtlety and intellect - and then, having succeeded admirably, you ask with a sense of See-what-I-mean? outrage: look, they don't even buy our products! (Usually referred to as "quality art.") — Tom Wolfe

I sometimes still go out hunting for bad weather, flying low in simple airplanes to explore the inner reaches of the clouds. Less experienced pilots occasionally join me, not to learn formal lessons about weather flying, but with a more advanced purpose in mind - to accompany me in the slow accumulation of experience through circumstances that never repeat in a place that defies mastery. — William Langewiesche

Anyone who has experienced a strange episode in their life that defies all present scientific knowledge can appreciate the limits of human knowledge. There's nothing like such an event to make you keenly aware of how little we truly know and understand. — Steven Symes

I do believe it is the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven, building seven, which collapsed in on itself. — Rosie O'Donnell

John Kerry's newfound interest in fiscal discipline is a political gimmick that defies his 20-year record in the Senate and stands in stark contrast to his reckless and expansive promises of new government spending on the campaign trail. — Steve Schmidt

... quite naturally, I am curious about behaviour which does not fit the natural patterns, which floats suspended at some unexplored level of the sentient sea and defies the tides and waves of society. — David Case

I expect that someday you'll have to deal with a little girl just as defiant as you were. But you'll be glad she defies you, in spite of your frustrations, because you'll know she has the courage to take on the world if she ever has to. — Catherine Jones Payne

It defies common sense that stores are fined for selling toy guns to children, but someone who isn't even allowed to board an airplane in this country can purchase as many real guns he wants with no questions asked. — Carolyn McCarthy

Art, if it can be ascribed value, is most valuable when its beauty (and the beauty of the truth it tells) bewilders, confounds, defies evil itself; it does so by making what has been unmade; it subverts the spirit of the age; it mends the heart by whispering mysteries the mind alone can't fathom; it fulfills its highest calling when into all the clamor of Hell it tells the unbearable, beautiful, truth that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. None of these songs and stories matter if the beauty they're adding to isn't the kind of beauty that redeems and reclaims. — Andrew Peterson

The gross evil of our time defies all labels. — Edward Abbey

There is music in your soul. A wild and untamed sort
of music that speaks to me. It defies all the rules and laws you humans set upon it. It grows from inside you, and I have a wish to set that music free. — S. Jae-Jones

There has to be some way this won't end in tragedy. Why can't Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after? It's as if the universe won't abide such a strong connection in such a disconnected world, as if our connection defies the natural order. — Kitty Thomas

People's faith, people's beliefs are such a personal thing, and it defies definition. I'm so rarely interested in discussing what I believe or what you believe. I think it's liquid, anyway. — Lorraine Toussaint

Then, what is sacrelige [sic]? If it is nothing more than a rebellion against dogma, it is eventually as meaningless as the dogma it defies, and they are both become hounds ranting in the high grass, never see the boar in the thicket. Only a religious person can perpetrate sacrelige: and if its blasphemy reaches the heart of the question; if it investigates deeply enough to unfold, not the pattern, but the materials of the pattern, and the necessity of a pattern; if it questions so deeply that the doubt it arouses is frightening and cannot be dismissed; then it has done its true sacreligious [sic] work, in the service of its adversary: the only service that nihilism can ever perform.
(unused 1949 prefatory note to The Recognitions) — William Gaddis

People who lose children have their hearts warped into weird shapes. Some try to deny it has happened. Some pretend it hasn't. Losing friends or parents is not the same. To lose a child is beyond comprehension. It defies biology. It contradicts the natural order of history and genealogy. It derails common sense. It violates time. It creates a huge, black, bottomless hole that swallows all hope. — Michael Robotham

Meditation is a cyclical process that defies analysis, but demands acceptance. — Sharon Salzberg

Whatever has "wit enough to keep it sweet" defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands. — Agnes Repplier

Great education defies structure because it is always (always!) individualized, personalized, interactive, nimble, responsive and inspired. — Oliver DeMille

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made. — Ludwig Von Mises

Mystery, like faith, defies human logic. — Maureen Moss

And while it's easy to say this is a situation to be avoided, isn't this what we also fear and crave simultaneously, that some internal force which defies understanding might remake us into the people we dream we are? — Chang-rae Lee

In order for ethnology to live, its object must die; by dying, the object takes its revenge for being 'discovered' and with its death defies the science that wants to grasp it. — Jean Baudrillard

Remodeling defies the principles of modern commerce. You shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, yet these same people are constantly insinuating that you're cheap. (It reminded me of medicine, another area where you shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, who make you feel guilty for questioning a bill.) Construction workers are the blue-collar version of the snooty salespeople at Gucci who make $8 an hour but look down on you if you balk at a $400 alligator wallet. — Margo Kaufman

Virtue runs before the muse,
and defies her skill;
she is rapt and doth refuse
to wait a painter's will. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's a reason why the story of the ghetto should never come with a photo. The Third World slum is a nightmare that defies beliefs or facts, even the ones staring right at you. A vision of hell that twists and turns on itself and grooves to its own soundtrack. Normal rules do not apply here. Imagination then, dream, fantasy. You visit a ghetto, particularly a ghetto in West Kingston, and it immediately leaves the real to become this sort of grotesque, something out of Dante or the infernal painting of Hieronymus Bosch. It's a rusty red chamber of hell that cannot be described so I will not try to describe it. It cannot be photographed because some parts of West Kingston, such as Rema, are in the grip of such bleak and unremitting repulsiveness that the inherent beauty of the photographic process will lie to you about just how ugly it really is. — Marlon James

I think 'Sightseers' was a bit of an epiphany, a massive learning curve, and it gave me loads of confidence to go out there, and also to create a female character which is completely unexpected and defies convention. — Alice Lowe

Trouble defies the law of gravity. It's easier to pick up than to drop. — Jonathan Raban

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college - the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes - the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That's what America is about. — Barack Obama

What if you suddenly saw a two-ton great white shark barreling through the air toward your face? Such a sight defies all logic. "That's fake," you mumble. Your brain shorts out. Your legs won't move. Without this book, the best you can hope for is to be killed in a dry pair of underwear. — Andrew Shaffer

Wit defies death
but death defines wit — David Giannini

Music keeps time and defies time, simultaneously. — Susan Wittig Albert

Something is funny, most of all, because it's true, and because the velocity of insight into this truth exceeds our normal standards. Something is funny because it's outside our accepted boundary of decorum. Something is funny because it defies our expectations. Something is funny because it offers a temporary reprieve from the hardship of seeing the world as it actually is. Something is funny because it is able to suggest gently that even the worst of our circumstances and sins is subject to eventual mercy. — Steve Almond

Faith is one of only two things in mankind's consciousness that defies discussion. The other is one's marriage. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

There is evil in all of us, and it is the mark of a man how he defies the evil within. — David Gemmell

There seems to be a different Chicago around every street corner, behind every bar, and within every apartment, two-flat, cottage, or bungalow. City of immigrants or city of heartless plutocrats, say what you will, Chicago almost defies interpretation. In many ways Chicago is like a snake that sheds its skin every thirty years or so and puts on a new coat to conform to a new reality. — Dominic A. Pacyga

The free man is not he who defies the rules ... but he who, recognizing the compulsions inherent in his being, seeks rather to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest each day's experience. — Bernard Iddings Bell

And as we drift into sleep, I feel something I've never felt before. A closeness that isn't merely physical. A connection that defies the fact that we've only just met. A sensation that can only come from the most euphoric of feelings: belonging. — David Levithan

If people have faith, peace prevails among them. There is no logic for peace. In fact, peace is the most illogical thing in this world. If we see inequality, injustice and poverty around the world, often we think - 'why people don't fight for their rights?' Peace is a miracle, which defies all logic. Political leaders are clever and they destroy peace by inventing logic that creates hatred. Even in war, the logic put forward by both the sides are totally contradictory, and both the sides feel that they are right. — Awdhesh Singh

Lawful residents of San Francisco are being stripped of their freedom because of an illegal measure that defies common sense. I believe that we will prevail. — Wayne LaPierre

One of the most powerful transformational catalysts is knowledge, new information, or logic that defies old mental models and ways of thinking. — Elizabeth Thornton

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. — Saul D. Alinsky

The ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is nonintuitive for those unacquainted with physics. Religious belief in God, and Christian belief that God became Man around two thousand years ago, may seem strange to common-sense thinking. But when the most elementary physical things behave in this way, we should be prepared to accept that the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense intuitions. — Antony Hewish

Mankind is a science that defies definitions. — Robert Burns

He, who beats his wife defies his goddess — Akinwale Musa Oluseun

This bill, by vesting the power to withhold or terminate Federal funds, creates a concentration of power of economic coercion unequaled in the history of governments-a power concentration which defies the experience of mankind with the temptation of power to corrupt. — Strom Thurmond

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism. — Robert Green Ingersoll

We are at a time when postmodernism defies certainty, truth, and meaning; when spiritualism dabbles in quantum theory; and when randomness has become the order of the day. Isn't it ironic that at the same time, the world is on the edge of financial bankruptcy because we have conducted our financial affairs in a random fashion, as if there are no absolutes? — Ravi Zacharias

I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies. But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks. The drinks, people. — Jim Butcher

Wracked with a hangover I do my muttering over a Black Velvet, a union of champagne and stout. Don't be swindled into believing there's any cure for a hangover. I've tried them all: iced tomatoes, hot clam juice, brandy peaches. Like the common cold it defies solution. Time alone can stay it. The hair of the dog? That way lies folly. It's as logical as trying to put out a fire with applications of kerosene. — Tallulah Bankhead

Like all great art, it defies the tyrant Time. — Edwin A. Abbott

Your soul has a special mission. Your soul is supremely conscious of it.
Maya, illusion or forgetfulness, makes you feel that you are finite, weak and helpless. This is not true. You are not the body. You are not the senses. You are not the mind. These are all limited. You are the soul, which is unlimited. Your soul is infinitely powerful. Your soul defies all time and space. — Sri Chinmoy

You and I were never meant to be together, but we are. Our pairing is not unlike two electrons ignoring natural laws in order to orbit one another. Life now defies reason - quirky but beautiful. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I can't blame you for trying to categorize me. It's a human instinct. It's why scientists are, to this day, completely flabbergasted by the duck-billed platypus: it's furry like a mammal, but lays eggs like a bird. It defies conventional classification.
I AM THE PLATYPUS (Coo coo ka-choo) — Jeff Garvin

I do believe that it's the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics that World Trade Center tower 7-building 7, which collapsed in on itself-it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved. World Trade Center 7. World Trade [Center] 1 and 2 got hit by planes-7, miraculously, the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible. — Rosie O'Donnell

Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government. — B.R. Ambedkar

Charm is that extra quality that defies description. — Alfred Lunt

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved. — P. J. O'Rourke

The state incurs debts for politics, war, and other higher causes and 'progress' ... The assumption is that the future will honour this relationship in perpetuity. The state has learned from the merchants and industrialists how to exploit credit; it defies the nation ever to let it go into bankruptcy. Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief. — Jacob Burckhardt

It always seemed that I learned more about myself the more I ventured into the forest or hiked along a beach or up a mountain. But for me, it was always the ocean that I found most attractive. Perhaps it's the enigma of waves that pull me to the sea whenever I feel lost. Unlike a mountain, they are a powerful force that's ever-changing--a piece of nature that defies analysis. And I was sick of being analyzed by a world of ancient beliefs. — Kathleen Gasperini

The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can't. — Christopher Paolini

The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class. — Walter Lippmann

Goodness, Time's rude hand defies,
And winter lives when beauty dies. — Henry Kirke White

There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it. — Judith McNaught

If Sally had been in an accident or come down with some overtly physical disease, I would not hesitate to tell him about it, confident that his sympathies would flow in my direction as a matter of course. But psychosis defies empathy; few people who have not experienced it up close buy the idea of a behavioral disease. It has the ring of an excuse, a license for self-absorption on the most extreme scale. It suggests that one chooses madness and not the other way around. (86) — Michael Greenberg

Irish rock star Bono has said, Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff. — Shane Claiborne

Taking chances. Risking a little to gain a lot, fully aware that the word 'promise' defies definition. Outcomes cannot be predicted. There are too many variables. Sometimes you have to close your eyes to forecast the weather. — Ellen Hopkins

The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned. — Ludwig Von Mises

A typical 'Larry King Live' is a pastiche whose absurdism defies parody. Wearing his trademark suspenders and purple shirts, he looks as if he's strapped to the chair with vertical seat belts, unable to eject. — James Wolcott