Double Act Quotes & Sayings

(...) psychiatrists today recognize the contortionist's act that was required of women in an age when they were expected to stifle their own healthiest impulses. (...) "To be able to renounce your own achievements without feeling that you were sacrificing requires constant effort. To be lovely and unaggressive, a woman spends a lifetime keeping hostile or resentful impulses down. Even healthy self-assertion is often sacrificed since it may be mistaken by hostility. Therefore, [women] often repress their initiative, give up their aspirations, and unfortunately end up excessively dependent with a deep sense of insecurity and uncertainty about their abilities and their worth. — Colette Dowling

She stepped the way the water moves within a gentle wave. Never mind the motion, the water stays unchanged. That was the proper way of things. — Patrick Rothfuss

Enthusiasm: If you don't FEEL enthusiastic, ACT enthusiastic. Soon, you'll BE enthusiastic. Double your enthusiasm and you'll probably double your income. — Frank Bettger

As soon as I had believed that financial security purchased emotional security, I'd lived a dependent, conditional life. Now I realize that rather than mortgage myself for a dream life on a layaway plan, I prefer the rather nice kind of life I've stumbled into. My desire for a double oven has less to do with signaling that I belong to a certain class or have reached a type of perfection and more to do with the fact that I haven't figured out how to make a pot roast and an apple pie at the same time. So I make the pie ahead of time and reheat it. I think it was Mark Twain who said, 'Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want.' I tell my kids this, hoping they will learn to balance the act of pursuing with the act of savoring. — Liz Perle

I ask Laurie if it's possible to get trained fish. Lindsay says this is how we know I've never produced a movie. — Emma Thompson

I have a wonderful English-language dialogue coach. All the time I have to speak English, he is with me. It is a double effort, because you have to say the words correctly and then act them. — Adriana Barraza

I consider myself a martial artist and an actor. They can work together or individually. I love to do action. I love having a good role in which I can act and fight. That's double happiness. — Mark Dacascos

I love picture books - with picture books, you can use words and pictures as a double act, even tell two different versions of a story at the same time. — Mini Grey

She had come to that state where the horror of the universe and its smallness are both visible at the same time - the twilight of the double vision in which so many elderly people are involved. If this world is not to our taste, well, at all events, there is Heaven, Hell, Annihilation - one or other of those large things, that huge scenic background of stars, fires, blue or black air. All heroic endeavour, and all that is known as art, assumes that there is such a background, just as all practical endeavour, when the world is to our taste, assumes that the world is all. But in the twilight of the double vision, a spiritual muddledom is set up for which no high-sounding words can be found; we can neither act nor refrain from action, we can neither ignore nor respect Infinity. — E. M. Forster

If a man is highly sexed he's virile.
If a woman is, she's a nymphomaniac.
With them it's power
but with us it's a disease!
Even the act of sex is called penetration!
Why don't they call it enclosure? — Gemma Hatchback

Did you hear Dr. Jenkins was caught roller-skating half-naked in the middle of the night on Prospect Road?" Don't act shocked. It'll just motivate her to stay and gossip longer. It's no big deal whatsoever that your doctor is a freak. Roger shrugged. "Nothing wrong with a little exercise." Maggie did a double take. "Without clothes?" "Smart man - less to wash. I hate doing laundry." Maggie blew out a desperate breath. "He was wearing his nurse's bra!" Note to self: find a new doctor. "You can never have too much support," said Roger. "The guy's got some serious man-boobs. — Rich Amooi

Up on the Magdalen Islands, eight crew members from the Sea Shepherd sprayed more than a thousand seal pups with a harmless but permanent red dye. This dye was designed to ruin their pelts and save the pups from hunters. The activists were arrested and, in pitch-perfect Orwellian double-speak, charged with violating the Seal Protection Act. — Karen Joy Fowler

I agree with a lot of the points in Taleb's book, but I don't agree with many of his conclusions. It seems to me that he rightly points out that risk managers miss a lot of the risks, but the conclusion is that he draws, is that we should abandon risk management, whereas my conclusion is we should improve it. — Robert F. Engle

But say I could repent and could obtaine
By Act of Grace my former state: how soon
would higth recal high thoughts; how soon unsay
what feign'd submission swore: ease would recant
vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow
where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
which would but lead me to a worse relapse
and heavier fall: so should I purchase cleave
short intermission bought with double smart:
This knows my punisher; therefore as far
from granting here, as I from begging peace:
All hope excluded thus, behold in stead
of us out-cast, exil'd, his new delight,
Mankind created, and for his this World.
So farewell Hope, and with Hope farwel Fear,
Farewel Remorse: all Good to me is lost. — John Milton

Gratefulness is a double-edged sword. Because I think we've poured it into a feeling. And the batter of gratitude gets kind of stuck to the edges of the Williams Sonoma melamine mixing bowl. But gratefulness, the act of being grateful is actually ... a verb. It's an activity. — Abigail Spencer

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Disaster doesn't like being flirted with. Disaster wants to fuck. Disaster doesn't want to dance around and double talk and feel just a little horny and never act on it. If you so much as wink at it, Disaster is going to fuck you in the ass. — Brad Vance

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy. — George Eliot

Happy Hauntings; and, pleasant dreams! — Peter James

The US "Down Low" is thronging with young Black males who live double lives in the homosexual urban underground. These "Black" and "queer" young males, who have sex with men and live straight lives, reject "gays" as "faggots who dress, talk and act like girls", thereby ascribing a White effeminacy to gayness and embracing a Black hypermasculinity. — Chantal Zabus

Kingdom praying and its efficacy is entirely a matter of the innermost heart's being totally open and honest before God. It is a matter of what we are saying with our whole being, moving with resolute intent and clarity of mind into the flow of God's action. — Dallas Willard

Catch my eye,tell me what you see
Wonder if they could guess it about me
Here i'm standing in a double life
One with love,one with strife
Try to act normal,and play it cool
So afraid of breaking a rule
But now i'm falling to hard to stop
Can't help but take the next drop — Alexandra Monir

Did Jane tell you all she knows about bears?"
"Yes," the king replied. "Don't act like food, inexplicably double your height and weight, and play dead unless it doesn't work."
"She didn't, perhaps, mention how me might kill the beast?"
"No," Edward said. "Her information was more the useless type. — Cynthia Hand

From faith, hope, and love, the virtues of religion referring to God, there arises a double act which bears on the spiritual communion exercised between God and us; the hearing of the word and prayer. — William Ames

Working mothers' laughter comes hardest when our double life is revealed for what it is: a juggling act in which the balls can drop at any time, invariably on our own head. — Allison Pearson

I'm a Verizon customer. I don't mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I don't think you're talking to the terrorists. I know you're not. I know I'm not. So we don't have anything to worry about. — Lindsey Graham

I'm somebody's who's in favor of transparency and openness. — John Barrasso

Bingo swayed like a jelly in a high wind. — P.G. Wodehouse

In 2006, the Secure Fence Act was signed into law, requiring the Department of Homeland Security to build upward of 700 miles of double layered fencing along the U. S-Mexico border. While the Obama administration is quick to state that the targets have been met, only a small fraction - in fact, less than 40 miles - of the newly implemented infrastructure is double-layered. — Duncan Hunter

Working with Jean-Claude is a lot of fun. Because he's a great actor who also happens to be a fighter. That combination doesn't usually come together anymore. Usually, you have to fight the stunt double and then act against the actor. In his case, you are fighting with a real guy. It takes a minute to get used to that. Because it doesn't happen any more. — Dolph Lundgren

Over the years, I have perfected the art of dancing and photographing at the same time: it's a great double act. If you're dancing, you are joining in. If you stand there rigid, you are not in the flow of things. — Martin Parr

We had not had time to establish ourselves as a double act before Ernie joined the Merchant Navy. I teamed up with the brother of the late Dave Morris. — Eric Morecambe

[ ... ]while we all have the capacity to do harder things, we also have the desire to do exactly the opposite. — Kelly McGonigal

In your body, there exists a subtle current of electricity, very subtle. But the subtler it is, the deeper it goes. It is not very visible. Scientists say that all the electricity that is in your body, if put together, can be used to light a five-candle bulb. It is not much. Quantitatively it is not much, quantitatively the atom is not much, but qualitatively ... If it explodes, it has tremendous energy in it. — Rajneesh

Solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside. I think in my own way I'm aware of this danger - probably through experience - and that's why I've had to constantly keep my body in motion, in some cases pushing myself to the limit, in order to heal the loneliness I feel inside and to put it in perspective. Not so much as an intentional act, but as an instinctive reaction. — Haruki Murakami

I can certainly throw out some observation about the process of creating which may be of use. Firstly, it's the best & the worst of worlds, because the only fuel you have to make the fire blaze on the page / screen is the stuff of your own being. An artist consumes his or herself in the act of making art. I can feel that consumption even now, sitting here at my desk at the end of a working day. In order to generate the ideas that I have set on the page for the last 10 or 11 hours I have burned the fuel of my own history. This is, obviously a double-edged sword. In order to give, the artist must take from himself. That's the deal. And it's very important to me that the work I do is the best I can make it, because I know what is being burned up to create. As the villain of Sacrament says: living & dying, we feed the fire. — Clive Barker

Children in home-school conflict situations often receive a double message from their parents: "The school is the hope for your future, listen, be good and learn" and "the school is your enemy ... " Children who receive the "school is the enemy" message often go after the enemy
act up, undermine the teacher, undermine the school program, or otherwise exercise their veto power. — James P. Comer

A man may be a Jew, a nobleman, a tramp, or a chimneysweep," Ossip said softly, "but as long as he is proud of his accomplishments, he will be honored to be called a man. — Monique Raphel High

'Sightseers' started off as a character comedy double act. — Alice Lowe

What propels an embryo from one stage to the next-and makes one species different from another-is not a blueprint but rather an enormous autonomous library of the instructions contained within its genome. Each gene does double duty, specifying both a recipe for a protein and a set of regulatory conditions for when and where it should be built. Taken together suites of these IF-THEN genes give cells the power to act as parts of complicated improvisational orchestras. Like real musicians, what they play depends on both their own artistic impulses and what the other members of the orchestra are playing. As we will see in the next chapter, every bit of this process-from the Cellular Big 4 to the combination of regulatory cues-holds as much for development of the brain as it does for the body. — Gary F. Marcus

Misfits deal with the double-edged reality of having our differences act as the source of both our challenges as well as our successes. — Tiffany L. Jackson