Diminishes Quotes & Sayings

It is true that on bright days we are happy. That is true because the sun on the eyelids effects chemical changes in the body. The sun also diminishes the pupils to pinpricks, letting the light in less. When we can hardly see we are most likely to fall in love. — Jeanette Winterson

Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison. — Gaston Bachelard

In the debate between those who believe in essentially unregulated markets and others who hold that reasonable regulation diminishes market excesses without inhibiting their basic function, the subprime situation unfortunately provides ammunition for the latter view. — Barney Frank

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them. — Aleister Crowley

Crime is incurable, save by that gradual process of adaptation to the social state which humanity is undergoing. Crime is the continual breaking out of the old unadapted nature
the index of a character unfitted to its conditions
and only as fast as the unfitness diminishes can crime diminish. — Herbert Spencer

Our view of history diminishes the reality of the past. We concentrate on the historic event as something that has happened, and in so doing we ignore it as a moment which, at the time, is happening. — Ian Mortimer

Absence diminishes minor passions and inflames great ones, as the wind douses a candle and fans a fire. La Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680 OBSERVANCE — Robert Greene

Begging for acknowledgment, or even asking, diminishes dignity and diminishes power. — Will Smith

Custom, which diminishes the intense, increases the moderate, pleasures. — Andrew Michael Ramsay

Self-admiration has created a culture of narcissism and a "love gap" that diminishes us. What the world needs most is a love that is the polar opposite of narcissism. A love that is selfless and self-abandoning. A love that does not ask, "What's in it for me?" but "What's in it for those I am privileged to know?" A love that isn't about being served but serving others. Your dreams come alive when you are preoccupied with making other people's dreams come true. That is where real happiness is found. — Mark Chironna

Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on.
Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy. — Emil Cioran

Every State which breaks the equilibrium in its own favor only causes the other States to combine against it, and thereby diminishes its influence and power. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Let us call this quality the Original Mind. This mind looked at the world more directly - not through words and received ideas. It was flexible and receptive to new information. Retaining a memory of this Original Mind, we cannot help but feel nostalgia for the intensity with which we used to experience the world. As the years pass, this intensity inevitably diminishes. We come to see the world through a screen of words and opinions; our prior experiences, layered over the present, color what we see. We no longer look at things as they are, noticing their details, or wonder why they exist. Our minds gradually tighten up. We become defensive about the world we now take for granted, and we become upset if our beliefs or assumptions are attacked. — Robert Greene

One of the most effective ways to overcome anxiety is to try to shift the focus of attention away from self and toward others. When we succeed in this, we find that the scale of our own problems diminishes. This is not to say we should ignore our own needs altogether, but rather that we should try to remember others' needs alongside our own, no matter how pressing ours may be — Dalai Lama

A holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it. — Elie Wiesel

I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation. — William Boyd

Neither exhortations to virtue nor the argument of approaching death should divert us from literature; for in a good mind it excites the love of virtue, and dissipates, or at least diminishes, the fear of death. — Francesco Petrarca

Solve global warming, eliminate the nuclear threat, and we will still have to confront the vastness of our species and the way it diminishes, without thinking, all the other species around it. — Verlyn Klinkenborg

Silence kills the soul; it diminishes its possibilities to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing. — Marlon Riggs

Life is messy. Grit and grace come at us fast, side by side. Sometimes the grit becomes overwhelming and diminishes our spirit. What's good seems lost and gone forever. This is a story about the pathway back to what's beautiful, when the way back seems impossible. — Sharon E. Rainey

Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it. — Arthur Ashe

Bongo's sobs are hurled out
like paintballs from a skirmish gun
until the force diminishes
into a trickle of sobs
that wind up the exorcism. — Emma Cameron

But the larger a man grows in his own inner darkness, the more his outer form diminishes. — Milan Kundera

I like people with big talents and small neuroses - not always an easy combination to find. I've discovered that if the neurosis is too big, it diminishes the talent and you wind up working too hard for what you get. — Mel Brooks

The truth is that we live in a world that diminishes possibilities. — Lionel Suggs

When a woman is convinced that she can stop the violence in her marriage, her stubborn determination feeds her sense of failure each time she sees that she can't regulate her husband's demands and abuses. In a perverse type of review, she may then ask herself how she could have been so stupid as to overlook the early warnings. This further diminishes her self-esteem. — Susan Weitzman

Through right nutrition and exercise. If you don't equate the body with who you are, when beauty fades, vigor diminishes, — Eckhart Tolle

A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It's like losing a finger. It's worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul. — Ken Follett

The biggest hindrance in life is to live for other people and crave for their approval. This kind of behaviour diminishes your God given purpose and it leads you to live a barren life. Free yourself from the prison of pretence and live a purposeful lifestyle. — Euginia Herlihy

as technology expands the reach of mind, a comprehension of what it actually is and ontologically designs diminishes. — Tony Fry

I hold it to be of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one, for neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy; but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you — Niccolo Machiavelli

Family life always diminishes the energy of a revolutionist. Children must be maintained in security ,and there's the need to work a great deal for one's break. The revolutionist ought without cease to develop every iota of his energy; he must deepen and broaden it; but this demands time. He must always be at the head, because we--the workingmen--are called by the logic of history to destroy the old world, to create the new life; and if we stop, if we yield to exhaustion, or are attracted by the possibility of a little immediate conquest, it's bad--it's almost treachery to the cause. No revolutionist can adhere closely to an individual--walk thorough life side by side with another individual--without distorting his faith; and we must never forget that our aim is not little conquests, but only complete victory! — Maxim Gorky

It's not what you know, and it's not even who you know. It's how much knowledge you give away. Hoarding knowledge diminishes your power because it diminishes your presence. — David Weinberger

Smell the aroma of beautiful food, then
go to the latrine and sniff. "What happened to you?" Your dung will answer,
"My beauty was a lure, a trick to get inside you."
Every matter particle does the same
enchantment. Try to see the beginning and end at once. Would you willingly wear manacles
just because they're made of gold? Admire the genius of an artist, but also watch what
happens to him or her in old age, how the expert craftsman's craft diminishes. — Rumi

The world needs them - the ones who absorb the emotions of others, which diminishes their pain and disquietude and the world also uses them as a repository for confessions, secrets, grudges and indignation. They will leave these uncommon and intuitive individuals feeling unburdened themselves while the unusual individual will be weighed down by having taken on those burdens in addition to their own. The world needs them but what they need is something as aberrant as themselves, and that is silence, stillness and rest. — Donna Lynn Hope

Old age diminishes our strength; it takes away our pleasures one after the other; it withers the soul as well as the body; it renders adventure and friendship difficult; and finally it is shadowed by thoughts of death. — Andre Maurois

Real scientists investigate parts, not wholes. But this diminishes the goals of true science. What most scientists are doing today really should be called technology, not science. — T. Colin Campbell

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. — John Donne

Fear of punishment diminishes self-esteem and goodwill. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Infidelity reduces and diminishes, leaving nothing where you once had a sense of self-worth. — Sue Grafton

Despair wishes their hope diminishes. — Sherina Gandia

Science is about nothing but getting at the truth, and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science. — Tim Hunt

Mutants, super beings, gods, aliens, a guy who sticks to walls at one extreme, a creature who eats planets at the other; Each one that comes into being, they feel, diminishes the rest of humanity, ordinary homo sapiens, that little bit more. — Jim Lee

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen's faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs. — Joe Biden

Any time we look at our Maker with love, our importance in our own eyes diminishes, and we are filled with awe and humility and love for others. — Julian Of Norwich

Any man's death diminishes us, but when an artist passes away, we lose not just an island but an entire archipelago. — Michael Dirda

Maybe someday I'll have that, bit it won't be with Ridge, and knowing that diminishes whatever ray of hope shone through the storm of my week. — Colleen Hoover

A positive attitude enables a person to endure suffering and disappointment as well as enhance enjoyment and satisfaction. A negative attitude intensifies pain and deepens disappointments; it undermines and diminishes pleasure, happiness, and satisfaction; it may even lead to depression or physical illness. — Viktor E. Frankl

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit. — Igor Stravinsky

I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem: the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. Time augments rather than diminishes their everlasting novelty; and to our descendants of a thousand years hence it may safely be predicted that they will be even more fascinating than to ourselves. This is true of many ancient lands, but of no place is it. so true as of Egypt. — Amelia B. Edwards

Enough for me that you are beautiful: Beauty possessed diminishes. Better a dream of love Than love's dream broken; Better a look exchanged Than love's word spoken. Enough for me that you walk past, A firefly flashing in the dark. — Ruskin Bond

What stress really does, though, is deplete willpower, which diminishes your ability to control those emotions. — Roy F. Baumeister

The whole gestural system of work was also obscene, in sharp contrast to the miniaturized and abstract gestural system of control to which it has now been reduced. The world of the objects of old seems like a theatre of cruelty and instinctual drives in comparison with the formal neutrality and prophylactic 'whiteness' of our perfect functional objects. Thus the handle of the flatiron gradually diminishes as it undergoes 'contouring' - the term is typical in its superficiality and abstractness; increasingly it suggests the very absence of gesture, and carried to its logical extreme this handle will no longer be manual - merely manipulable. At that point, the perfecting of the form will have relegated man to a pure contemplation of his power. — Jean Baudrillard

Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action. — Walter Inglis Anderson

Whatever the color of a man's skin, we are all mankind. So every denial of freedom, of equal opportunity for a livelihood, or for an education, diminishes me. — Everett Dirksen

I realized that I could have done more for him if I had been in his house. I would have pushed morphine--large doses. Morphine disconnects the head from the body, makes the isthmus of a neck vanish and diminishes the awareness of suffering. It is like a magic trick: the head on the pillow, at peace, while the chest toils away. — Abraham Verghese

A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry. A society in which the capacity for warm appreciation of excellence atrophies will find that its capacity for excellence diminishes. Happiness, too, diminishes as the appreciation of excellence diminishes. That is no small loss, least of all to a nation in which the pursuit of happiness was endorsed in the founding moment. — George F. Will

Happiness is really rooted in simplicity. The tendency to excessiveness in thought and action diminishes happiness. — Brian L. Weiss

The tyrant Palpatine is dead. But the fight isn't over. The war goes on even as the Empire's power diminishes. But we are here for you. Know that wherever you are, no matter how far out into the Outer Rim you dwell, the New Republic is coming to help. Already we've captured dozens of Imperial capital ships and Destroyers - — Chuck Wendig

Lustre of man walking proud beneath the sky diminishes to nothing and goes unregarded. — Aeschylus

There are moments in a creative life when you understand why you do it. Those moments might last a few seconds or maybe, for some people, years. But whatever the actual time that passes, they still feel like a single moment. Fragile in the way a moment is, liable to be shattered by a breath, set apart from all the other passing time, distinct.
But then it changes. And what seemed unimaginably exhilarating gets bogged down, even when a project is going well. It is a gradual, inevitable sobering during which your right to be passive diminishes. What the ether has given you, now in fact belongs to you. And then it is work. Then it is hard. — Robin Black

Everything diminishes with time, my darling, but my feelings for certain people pierce me daily, and it is no illusion that they center me and let me know who I am, and let me know that I have loved and have been loved, no matter how badly or clumsily. — Tennessee Williams

We ourselves are the last to notice that we are not making any headway. It is brought to our notice from the outside; former students suddenly emerge as our superiors. As we grow older, the respect we receive diminishes: the disproportion between our age and our position becomes evident, first to other people and finally to ourselves. Then it is time to retreat. — Ernst Junger

An attitude of gratitude increases abundance and diminishes fear. — Jeffrey Fry

Pliny the Elder once said that the Romans, when they couldn't make a building beautiful, made it big. The practice continues to be popular: If we can't do it well, we make it larger. We add dollars to our income, rooms to our houses, activities to our schedules, appointments to our calendars. And the quality of life diminishes with each addition. On the other hand, every time that we retrieve a part of our life from the crowd and respond to God's call to us, we are that much more ourselves, more human. Every time we reject the habits of the crowd and practice the disciplines of faith, we become a little more alive. — Eugene H. Peterson

This is the strongest I have ever wanted a family. Other people to worry with. I am the only person worrying for her and it feels to me like this diminishes her odds of recovery. To have many people praying for you suddenly seems like a necessary thing and I consider telling the woman next to me what is happening, if only to have another person thinking about my Mom. — Liz Moore

Our greatest strength isn't our ability to imagine brighter days ahead, it is that we are empowered-in every present moment-to effortlessly dismiss any dark thought or feeling that, left unattended, diminishes our happiness. — Guy Finley

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones. — Holly Black

Mindfulness means being present to whatever is happening here and now - when mindfulness is strong, there is no room left in the mind for wanting something else. With less liking and disliking of what arises, there is less pushing and pulling on the world, less defining of the threshold between self and other, resulting in a reduced construction of self. As the influence of self diminishes, suffering diminishes in proportion. — Andrew Olendzki

Although generally our sight diminishes with age; I submit that our vision improves. The older we get, the more clearly we see our life's decisions played out to their logical conclusions. — David C. Maloney

The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact...Man, not the earth, makes civilization. — Ariel Durant

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life — Octavio Paz

Paper money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money: gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous ... — Thomas Paine

Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ's love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ's love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering which Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one. — Frederick Buechner

Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours. — Erin Morgenstern

That which serves our spirits enhances our bodies. That which diminishes our spirits diminishes our bodies. — Caroline Myss

This was puzzling, as the standard textbook of psychiatry at the time stated that incest was extremely rare in the United States, occurring about once in every million women.8 Given that there were then only about one hundred million women living in the United States, I wondered how forty seven, almost half of them, had found their way to my office in the basement of the hospital. Furthermore, the textbook said, "There is little agreement about the role of father-daughter incest as a source of serious subsequent psychopathology." My patients with incest histories were hardly free of "subsequent psychopathology" - they were profoundly depressed, confused, and often engaged in bizarrely self-harmful behaviors, such as cutting themselves with razor blades. The textbook went on to practically endorse incest, explaining that "such incestuous activity diminishes the subject's chance of psychosis and allows for a better adjustment to the external world."9 — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Time may be defined as " dimension governed by activity." Dimension diminishes with inactivity so does the value of time. — Moutasem Algharati

I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear. — Rosa Parks

Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. — William James

There is a difference between solitude and isolation. One is connected and one isn't. Solitude replenishes, isolation diminishes. — Henry Cloud

We have bred multiple generations of people who have not experienced knowing where you are the moment a news story broke, with that news story being great and grand and something that elevates society instead of diminishes it. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I once heard that when fear takes possession of the heart of a person, it diminishes them — Chigozie Obioma

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy. — Samuel Johnson

Lithium prevents my seductive but disastrous highs, diminishes my depressions, clears out the wool and webbing from my disordered thinking, slows me down, gentles me out, keeps me from ruining my career and relationships, keeps me out of a hospital, alive, and makes psychotherapy possible. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The mechanism of violence is what destroys women, controls women, diminishes women and keeps women in their so-called place. — Eve Ensler

Humor simultaneously wounds and heals, indicts and pardons, diminishes and enlarges; it constitutes inner growth at the expense of outer gain, and those who possess and honestly practice it make themselves more through a willingness to make themselves less. — Louis Kronenberger

Draw, as much and as often as you can. When drawing lies fallow, the skill diminishes. — Gene Black

As relationships progress, the time you spend smooching diminishes. Where kissing was once an enjoyable entree unto itself, it becomes a mere appetizer couples hasten through on the way to the main course. — Jenna McCarthy

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. — John Donne

Although it might seem as though anonymity, invisibility, and other such distancing factors grant us the freedom to engage in more authentic forms of self-expression than we're usually permitted, [John] Suler warns against the temptation to regard disinhibition as "revealing of an underlying 'rue self." He suggests instead that the inhibited self and disinhibited self are simply different *sides* of the *same* person. So Suler challenges the intuitive notion that whatever inhibits us thereby diminishes the authenticity of our self-expression. — Mimi Marinucci

The Low Church rectors, in the main, struggle with poor congregations, born to the faith but deficient in buying power. As bank accounts increase the fear of the devil diminishes, and there arises a sense of beauty. This sense of beauty, in its practical effects, is identical with the work of the Paulist Fathers. — H.L. Mencken

James Reston, Jr.: You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes, great complex ideas, stretches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. — Peter Morgan

Money without wisdom diminishes the pleasure and enjoyment of wealth. — James Cook

Part of the reason why so many actors lose the plot when they go over to America is that they become part of an industry, so that's why they don't want to play weak, bad or vulnerable guys - because that's not sellable; that diminishes their profit margin. — Peter Mullan

When institutional religion diminishes, when religion is "private" without churches, morality begins to go, then belief in God, and then anything is acceptable. — Anonymous

But all progressive movements have to beware their own successes. The progress they make reinvents the society they work in, and they must in turn reinvent themselves to keep up, otherwise they become hollow echoes from a once loud, strong voice, reverberating still, but to little effect. As their consequence diminishes, so their dwindling adherents become ever more shrill and strident, more solicitous of protecting their own shrinking space rather than understanding that the voice of the times has moved on and they must listen before speaking. It happens in all organizations. It is fatal to those who are never confronted by a reckoning that forces them to face up and get wise. — Tony Blair

Studies show that when ordinary people do something wrong - break a promise, commit a murder - they usually fold it into a narrative that denies or at least diminishes their guilt. — Jonathan Gottschall

Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us - and our beloveds - healthier. — Sharon Salzberg