Deflected Quotes & Sayings

I guess if you go around with famous people you are assured of some reflected (or deflected) glory. — Ambeth R. Ocampo

That wasn't enough. They weren't enough.
Nor, she soon realized, was Will, though by every rational measure he ought to have been ... He became ardent, spoke of love, hinted at marriage. She stilled his roving hands and deflected his near-proposals. Finally, when his frustration turned to anger, she cut him loose, bleeding and disoriented, her own heart perfectly intact.
Aidan wouldn't leave it intact, she'd known that from the first. Long before they became lovers, she could foresee that there would be an after, and that it would lay waste to them both. — Hillary Jordan

People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

History shows that ... (people) can be deflected from their natural tendencies by artful propaganda, bogus crises, or other political trickery. — Robert Higgs

Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result
eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly
in you. — Bill Bryson

It is almost always a mistake for heads of state to undertake the details of a negotiation. They are then obliged to master specifics normally handled by their foreign offices and are deflected onto subjects more appropriate to their subordinates, while being kept from issues only heads of state can resolve. Since no one without a well-developed ego reaches the highest office, compromise is difficult and deadlocks are dangerous. With the domestic positions of the interlocutors so often dependent on at least the semblance of success, negotiations more often concentrate on obscuring differences than they do on dealing with the essence of a problem. — Henry Kissinger

Like a small stone deflected off a larger one, my brother had spun off toward the Almighty, though to my mind the events of that morning could just as well have cast him the other way. — Mark Slouka

When capitalists are thwarted, deflected, or dispossessed, the generals and politicians, ... and socialist intellectuals, are always amazed at how quickly the great physical means of production - the contested tokens of wealth and resources of nature - dissolve into so much scrap, ruined concrete, snarled wire, and wilderness. — George Gilder

The most damning and hypocritical critiques of his allegedly aristocratic economic system emanated from the most aristocratic southern slaveholders, who deflected attention from their own nefarious deeds by posing as populist champions and assailing the northern financial and mercantile interests aligned with Hamilton. As will be seen, the national consensus that the slavery issue should be tabled to preserve the union meant that the southern plantation economy was effectively ruled off-limits to political discussion, while Hamilton's system, by default, underwent the most searching scrutiny. Few, — Ron Chernow

We really have no choice but to pray and encourage a return to an America steeped in Judeo-Christian values. It is either that or taking our chances in a society with no values at all. For all Americans the former carries certain risks, but the latter spells certain doom. For now, we should not be deflected by theological debate from the life-saving tasks awaiting us. There is work to be done. We must ensure that America will continue to be part of God's plan for the world. — Daniel Lapin

I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one's otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule ...
Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarly deflected from your chosen path. — Nick Hornby

Curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the most outstanding characteristic of modern thinking ... Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity, and the less they are deflected by the consideration of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare, but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest, which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times. — Abraham Flexner

Men and women who are lonely create. Those who are gregarious rarely do ... Any poet would rather bed with a girl than write a poem about her. All art is the result of frustration. Art is energy deflected from its normal course in action. — Burton Rascoe

As the cathode rays carry a charge of negative electricity, are deflected by an electrostatic force as if they were negatively electrified, and are acted on by a magnetic force in just the way in which this force would act on a negatively electrified body moving along the path of these rays, I can see no escape from the conclusion that they are charges of negative electricity carried by particles of matter. — Joseph John Thomson

Courage is defined as: the ability to face danger, difficulty, uncertainty, or pain without being overcome by fear or being deflected from a chosen course of action. Many of today's world leaders have great courage: I wonder ... would we be better off with cowardice? — Joshua Fernandez

We don't need the money that badly," my mother said. "According to my sisters, we do." I slid the photograph with dollar signs toward her. Mom swung toward Grandma Frida. "Mom!" Grandma Frida's eyes got really big. "What? Don't look at me!" "You started this." Ha! Attack deflected and redirected. "I did no such thing. I'm innocent. You always blame me for everything." "You started it and you encouraged it. Now look, she's taking on murders because you're guilt-tripping her to put food on the table. And what kind of message does this send?" "A true-love kind of message." Grandma Frida grinned. — Ilona Andrews

Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarily deflected from your chosen path. — Nick Hornby

Point made. Question deflected. Spoiled bitch put in her pace. — Samantha Young

The 77-grain bullet has great penetration, too. I shot one guy through the windshield of a car and hit him in the head, right where I was aiming, killing him instantly. If I had been using the lighter bullet, I think it would have been deflected. — Hans Halberstadt

This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet. — Anna Akhmatova

I would not regret putting a hole in your arrogant chest, only it would be deflected when it hit that piece of rock you call a heart. — Laurie McBain

She didn't heed the warning. "So they pay for everything? Doesn't that make you feel guilty?"
Every f**king day. "Was it your money that bought those Louboutin's ... or Braden's?"
Ellie choked on her laughter, smothering the sound quickly in a gulp of her drink. I patted her on the back, aiding her in her pretense. When I looked back at Holly she was glaring at me, her face flushed red to her hairline.
Point made. Question deflected. Spoiled bitch put in her place.
"So people can get married at Stirling Castle, huh?" I turned back to Jenna and our earlier conversation. "I've only visited it once, but it's a beautiful venue ... — Samantha Young

Religion and ethics were not always - or even frequently - mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often deflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice. — Dan Simmons

There was a certain usefulness in having a husband whom most people could barely tolerate: it deflected envy, for one thing. — Amanda Craig

This Cruel Age has deflected me ... — Anna Akhmatova

Every light has a point where it is brightest and a point toward which it wanders to lose itself completely. It must be intercepted to fulfill its mission; it cannot function in a void. Light can go straight, penetrate and turn back, be reflected and deflected, gathered and spread, bent as by a soap bubble, made to sparkle and be blocked. Where it is no more is blackness, and where it begins is the core of its brightness. The journey of rays from that central core to the outposts of blackness is the adventure and drama of light. — Josef Von Sternberg

Einstein's prediction of light deflection could not be tested immediately in 1915, because the First World War was in progress, and it was not until 1919 that a British expedition, observing an eclipse from West Africa, showed that light was indeed deflected by the sun, just as predicted by the theory. This proof of a German theory by British scientists was hailed as a great act of reconciliation between the two countries after the war. — Stephen Hawking

Every Day Is for the Thief, by turns funny, mournful, and acerbic, offers a portrait of Nigeria in which anger, perhaps the most natural response to the often lamentable state of affairs there, is somehow muted and deflected by the author's deep engagement with the country: a profoundly disenchanted love. Teju Cole is among the most gifted writers of his generation. — Salman Rushdie

You can get on with your job. I'm going to get on with mine. And mine is to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, that's what they expect from me and I'm not going to be deflected by interesting academic or media speculation or attempts to take the whole debate back. — Peter Hain

A vine from one tree shot out, tripping Blaise. He and Merewyn rolled to the ground. Varian stood between them and the trees, which shot blast after blast at him. He deflected them, but even so the heat from the fire was scorching.
'Go, Blaise,' he said. 'Get Merewyn out of here.'
Blaise nodded before he crawled to Merewyn under the barrage.
'Hold!'
The blast stopped as the three of them froze into place.
Again the woman appeared in the fire to stare at them maliciously. 'What is it you do?'
'I'm crawling,' Blaise answered. — Kinley MacGregor

Will saw the first Senshi officer release and instantly knew where the arrow was aimed. 'They've spotted Shigeru!' He was about to turn and shove Shigeru to the ground, but as he did so, his eye caught a flicker of movement and he spun back.
When asked later about what he did next, he could never explain how he managed it. Nor could he ever repeat the feat. He acted totally from instinct, an unbelievable piece of coordination between hand and eye.
The Senshi arrow flashed downward, heading directly for Shigeru. Will flicked his bow at it, caught it and deflected it from its course. The arrowhead screeched on the hard, rocky ground and the arrow skittered away. Even Halt took a second to be impressed.
'My god!' he said. 'How did you do that? — John Flanagan

If you lie to your husband - even about something so banal as how much you drink - each lie is a brick in a wall going up between you, and when he tells you he loves you, it's deflected away. — Mary Karr

Dear lieutenant, I think we all seduced you, deflected you from a course that might have let you live. Seeking something in the quick of us, searching to secure a kind of love with the provenance of age and land and family, you took over our premises; you presumed to the legacy that was ours, and if you did not see that such assumptions have their own ramifying repercussions, and that the stones demand their own continuity of blood, if you did not understand the gravity of their isolation, the solitude of their trapped state or the hardness of their old responsibility, still you cannot fault the castle or either one of us, or complain that you were led to your own conclusion.
I left the castle; you brought us all back. — Iain Banks

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely- make that miraculously- fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, everyone of your forbears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from it's life quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result - evetually, astoundingly, and all to briefly- in you. — Bill Bryson

It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. — Stephen Hawking

The great artists of finance like Morgan and Rockefeller weren't deflected. They wanted and got money, just simple money. What they did with it afterward is another matter. I've always felt they got scared of the ghost they raised and tried to buy it off. — John Steinbeck

One of the reasons why this country undertook military action in Iraq was that there are quite a few problems here, and perhaps attention needed to be deflected from those problems. It sometimes seems that the U.S. economy works successfully only if it gets a stimulus from the defense industry. So perhaps in addition to showing the power and the might of the United States internationally, another reason was to help the defense industry and to help the U.S. economy recover. — Mikhail Gorbachev

The state has been living on a revenue which was being produced in the private sphere for private purposes and had to be deflected from these purposes by political force. The theory that construes taxes on the analogy of club dues or of the purchase of the services of, say, a doctor only proves how far removed this part of the social sciences is from scientific habits of mind. — Joseph A. Schumpeter

He is so efficient. He seems to be playing smarter, more confidently. I think they have given him more responsibility. He's very, very accurate and doesn't make many mistakes. The statistics show he has three interceptions, but in reality it's only one. The others were deflected passes by receivers who should have caught balls. — Pat Haden

In the unspoilt state of innocent childhood, practically every human being has a natural and direct feeling for the existence of God Almighty. But as time passes, this faith may be deflected and people start believing in other powers - political, economic or social. — Nirmala Srivastava

BY DISPOSITION OF ANGELS
Messengers much like ourselves? Explain it.
Steadfastness the darkness makes explicit?
Something heard most clearly when not near it?
Above particularities,
these unparticularities praise cannot violate.
One has seen, in such steadiness never deflected,
how by darkness a star is perfected.
Star that does not ask me if I see it?
Fir that would not wish me to uproot it?
Speech that does not ask me if I hear it?
Mysteries expound mysteries.
Steadier than steady, star dazzling me, live and elate,
no need to say, how like some we have known; too like her,
too like him, and a-quiver forever. — Marianne Moore

When I get asked about novelists I like, they tend to be white, male, and British, like Graham Greene. They write the kind of declarative sentences I like. I don't like to be deflected by acrobatics. — Alan Furst

Perhaps the earliest memories I have are of being a stubborn, determined child. Through the years my mother has told me that it was fortunate that I chose to do acceptable things, for if I had chosen otherwise, no one could have deflected me from my path. — Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

We must not allow ourselves to be deflected by the feminists who are anxious to force us to regard the two sexes as completely equal in position and worth. — Sigmund Freud

You must never be deflected by unpleasantness. I want you to remember that. Although it may not be apparent to others, your duty will become as clear to you as if it were a white line painted down the middle of the road. You must follow it, Flavia. — Alan Bradley

And what of Joan's presence among so many young, armed men? Perhaps of all the nobles and military men, the Duke of Alencon - that dedicated, courageous and skillful commander - may be trusted most. Although he was a man who had a keen eye for attractive and available women, he too recognized a rare quality of sincere devotion that deflected any tendency to make sexual overtures. 'Sometimes I lay down to sleep with Joan and the soldiers,' Alencon recalled. 'We were all in the straw together, and sometimes I saw Joan prepare for the night. Sometimes too I looked at her breasts, which were beautiful. And yet I never had any carnal desire for her. — Donald Spoto

We are not dissatisfied with our choices and with what life has
given us, but when we meet we both have a curious and not unpleasant
impression that a veil, a breath, a throw of the dice deflected us
onto two divergent paths, which were not ours. — Primo Levi

Like an attack this melancholy comes from time to time. I don't know at what intervals, and slowly covers my sky with clouds. It begins with an unrest in the heart, with a premonition of anxiety, probably with my dreams at night. People, houses, colors, sounds that otherwise please me become dubious and seem false. Music gives me a headache. All my mail becomes upsetting and contains hidden arrows. At such times, having to converse with people is torture and immediately leads to scenes ... Anger, suffering, and complaints are directed at everything, at people, at animals, at the weather, at God, at the paper in the book one is reading, at the material of the very clothing one has on. But anger, impatience, complaints and hatred have no effect on things and are deflected from everything, back to myself. — Hermann Hesse

Sanabalis never seemed to eat, and he deflected most of her questions about Dragon cuisine. Then again, he deflected most of her questions about Dragons, period. Which was annoying because he was one, and could in theory be authorative. — Michelle Sagara West

The shield went down for such a brief moment that, when it sealed again, the tail of the lasomag charge deflected wildly. Adrenaline fired, he dove for the floor, heart racing, as the flash burst backwards, striking someone in Theta's section. Panic swelled in a shrieking roar, front to back, some scattering, others frozen in place. — Marcha A. Fox

What I'm very upset about is the attempt to dictate to museums what they show, and the statements made by politicians in Washington that have curtailed the freedom of the National Endowment for the Arts. The attention to those issues is deflected by the spin of my supposedly having trivialized the Holocaust. — Hans Haacke

Slapping her palm against his wrist with lightening speed, she deflected the weapon before immobilizing his knife wielding hand with an excruciatingly painful armbar that would have made Ronda Rousey proud. — Bianca James

The earliest lock gates moved vertically, subjecting them to great pressure and friction. Leonardo's innovation was paired mitered lock gates forming a V pointed in the direction of the higher water. Water was deflected to the sides when the gates were swung open, and pressure sealed the lock when the gates were closed. Over half a millennium later, canal locks are still built — Gerard Koeppel

What an experiment will give, to put a writer in the dark, ask her to stretch a character of the human kind with no physical characteristics attached? Will this character emerge with no prejudice in kind or one of a new kind, an organism cultured in the dark to what light may not reflect? Humanity absorbed or rudely deflected? — Dew Platt

India is content with itself, and driven by the will to sit on the high table of prosperity. It will not be deflected in its mission by noxious practitioners of terror. — Pranab Mukherjee

I am losing my great, dissolving, disintegrating pity for others, in which I saw deflected the compassion I wanted for myself. I no longer give compassion, which means I no longer need to receive it. — Anais Nin

If a projectile were deprived of the force of gravity, it would not be deflected toward the earth but would go off in a straight line into the heavens and do so with uniform motion, provided that the resistance of the air were removed. — Isaac Newton

It wasn't idealism that made me, from the beginning, want a more secure and rational society. It was an intellectual judgment, to which I still hold. When I was young its name was socialism. We can be deflected by names. But the need was absolute, and is still absolute. — Raymond Williams

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. — Barbara Tuchman

Men and women who had worn suits for decades traded punches powerful enough to crush elephant skulls, dodged and deflected attacks too fast for the eye to follow, and died suddenly, often before the crowd registered the killing blow.
Victors and dead men were separated by a blink of the eye. — Zachary Jernigan

Your death has not been waiting for your arrival at the appointed hour: it has, for all the years of your life, been racing towards you with the fierce velocity of time's arrow. It cannot be evaded, it cannot be bargained with, deflected or placated. All that is given to you is the choice: meet it with open eyes and peace in your heart, go gentle to your reward. Or burn bright, take up arms, and fight the bitch. — Mark Lawrence