Favorably Quotes & Sayings

Having taught economics courses at private vocational schools and universities, I have always had a problem with GNP as a yardstick of prosperity. GNP is improved by increases in questionable activities such as consumption of cigarettes and the production of weapons. Moreover, a substantial increase in car accidents will favorably affect GNP because more funerals, hospital visits, car repairs, and new car purchases will result. — Ernie J Zelinski

[In Adelie Land, Antarctica, a howling river of] wind, 50 miles wide, blows off the plateau, month in and month out, at an average velocity of 50 m.p.h. As a source of power this compares favorably with 6,000 tons of water falling every second over Niagara Falls. I will not further anticipate some H. G. Wells of the future who will ring the antarctic with power-producing windmills; but the winds of the Antarctic have to be felt to be believed, and nothing is quite impossible to physicists and engineers. — Frank Debenham

Henry Ford had the additional distinction of being the only American mentioned favorably in Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler's memoir of 1925. — Bill Bryson

I can easily ignore my detractors and feel the people who respond favorably. — LeRoy Neiman

Campaigns fail if they waste resources courting voters who are unpersuadable or already persuaded. Their most urgent task is to find and persuade the few voters who are genuinely undecided and the larger number who are favorably disposed but need a push to actually vote. — James Surowiecki

A second-century rabbi said that if 999 angels gave a bad account of a man and one angel reported favorably, God would hear the one angel; even if 999 parts of that one angel's report were unfavorable, God would hearken to the favorable part. — Israel Shenker

The tavern will compare favorably with the church. — Henry David Thoreau

The queens in history compare favorably with the kings. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Anyaele Sam Chiyson's Law of Confidence States that Until you accept the consciousness of your powers or of reliance on your comfortable circumstance as true, you will not be able to experience the feeling you need to manifest your adequacy an reliance on yourself, and your powers to have all things come out well and favorably for you according to your plans and desires. — Anyaele Sam Chiyson

No baby knows when the nipple is pulled from his mouth for the last time. No child knows when he last calls his mother "Mama." No small boy knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story that will ever be read to him. No boy knows when the water drains from the last bath he will ever take with his brother. No young man knows, as he first feels his greatest pleasure, that he will never again not be sexual. No brinking woman knows, as she sleeps, that it will be four decades before she will again awake infertile. No mother knows she is hearing the word Mama for the last time. No father knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story he will ever read: From that day on, and for many years to come, peace reigned on the island of Ithaca, and the gods looked favorably upon Odysseus, his wife, and his son. — Jonathan Safran Foer

He said that for those who hadn't been to California, what it was most like was an enchanted island. The spitting image. Just like in the movies, but better. People live in houses, not apartment buildings, he said, and then he embarked on a comparison of houses (one-story, at most two-story), and four- or five-story buildings where the elevator is broken one day and out of order the next. The only way buildings compared favorably to houses was in terms of proximity. A neighborhood of buildings makes distances shorter, he said. Everything is closer. You can go walking to buy groceries or you can walk to your local tavern (here he winked at Reverend Foster), or the local church you belong to, or a museum. In other words, you don't need to drive. You don't even need a car. And here he recited a list of statistics on fatal car accidents in a county of Detroit and a county of Los Angeles. And that's even considering that cars are made in Detroit, he said, not Los Angeles. — Roberto Bolano

People yearn to be in one of the best
a combat marine regiment, an elite college, the executive committee of a company, a religious sect, a fraternity, a garden club
any collectivity that can be compared favorably with other, competing groups. — E. O. Wilson

The possibility of my presidential candidacy emerged spontaneously in public opinion polls. For my part, I noticed people's affection when I was doing work on the ground. I think the important thing is that my candidacy was born from citizens themselves, driven by the people and which the parties picked up favorably. — Michelle Bachelet

History chalks up Mr. McKinley's War as a U.S. win, and he also polls favorably as a 'near great' president. — Douglas Brinkley

The myth persists in Egypt to this day that Napoleon's soldiers actually disfigured some of these ruins, and are even said to have used the Sphinx as target practice for their cannons, shooting off its nose. This last is a calumny: it is known that the Sphinx was defaced as early as the eighth century by the Sufi iconoclast Saim-ed-Dahr,28 and was further damaged in 1380 by fanatical Muslims prompted by the Koran's strictures against images. During these early times the Sphinx was not regarded as a precious historical object, but instead inspired fear: through the centuries it became known to the Egyptians as Abul-Hol (Father of Terrors), and would only begin to be regarded more favorably when it became a tourist attraction in the later nineteenth century. — Paul Strathern

Reform the environment and not man; being absolutely confident that if you give man the right environment, he will behave favorably. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The best that can be said for anybody is probably that you misunderstood him favorably. — William, Saroyan

We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them; and a lucky hit, either in business or reputation, improves even their personal appearance in our eyes. — William Hazlitt

Whenever a new scholar came to out school, I used to confront him at recess with the following words: 'My name's Tom Bailey: what's your name?' If the name struck me favorably, I shook hands with the new pupil cordially; but if it didn't I would turn on my heel, for I was particular in this point. Such names as Higgins, Wiggins, and Spriggins were deadly afronts to my ear; while Lapgdon, Wallace, Blake, and the like, were passing words to my confidence and esteem. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them. — Michel De Montaigne

I will look favorably on this kind of person: one who is humble, submissive in spirit, and who trembles at My word. Isaiah 66:2 — Beth Moore

Always best to start with violence and attempt communication second. People reacted more favorably when they knew you would snuff a few lives to get what you wanted... or for no reason whatsoever. — Michael R. Fletcher

The movie industry has ignored the success of films that look favorably on faith with the same sort of self-destructive stubbornness that has led to its continued sponsorship of antireligious-message movies. — Michael Medved

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country. — Henry David Thoreau

The tough decisions that a president has to make in the Oval Office are in no way related to the capability of a person to do well on television. On the other hand, the capability of a person to project favorably on television enhances that person's odds of being elected so he can serve in the Oval Office. So you can't ignore the talents, one, to be very effective on television, and on the other hand, to be very effective as an operating president. — Gerald R. Ford

This is the Lord's declaration. I will look favorably on this kind of person: one who is humble, e submissive A in spirit, f and trembles at My word. — Anonymous

On him who wields power gently, the god looks favorably from afar. — Aeschylus

Each woman was valued at 150 pounds of tobacco, which was the same price exacted from Jane Dickenson when she eventually purchased her freedom. Not surprisingly, then, with their value calculated in tobacco, women in Virginia were treated as fertile commodities. They came with testimonials to their moral character, impressing on "industrious Planters" that they were not being sold a bad bill of goods. One particular planter wrote that an earlier shipment of females was "corrupt," and he expected a new crop that was guaranteed healthy and favorably disposed for breeding. Accompanying the female cargo were some two hundred head of cattle, a reminder that the Virginia husbandman needed both species of breeding stock to recover his English roots.37 Despite — Nancy Isenberg

Isn't Santa just a stand in for the society that has locked them up for formative years? Something that watches and judges, telling them that they got what they deserved based on their behavior? Surely they have to have noticed that Saint Nick, like the judicial system itself, tends to look more favorably upon rich children. He is fat, white, past middle age, and holds all the cards. — Thomm Quackenbush

There was a young man favorably endowed as an Alcibiades. He lost his way in the world. In his need he looked about for a Socrates but found none among his contemporaries. Then he requested the gods to change him into one. But now
he who had been so proud of being an Alcibiades was so humiliated and humbled by the gods' favor that, just when he received what he could be proud of, he felt inferior to all. — Soren Kierkegaard

The Kennedy lifestyle is something that is looked upon favorably by the elites throughout our culture, both political and social. — Rush Limbaugh

The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favorably received at first; but remain in obscurity until they win notice from intelligence of a high order, by whose influence they are brought into a position which they then maintain, in virtue of the authority thus given them. If the reason of this should be asked, it will be found that ultimately, a man can really understand and appreciate those things only which are of like nature with himself. The dull person will like what is dull, and the common person what is common; a man whose ideas are mixed will be attracted by confusion of thought; and folly will appeal to him who has no brains at all; but best of all, a man will like his own works, as being of a character thoroughly at one with himself. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I have been in relatively high-risk businesses all of my adult life. Few of the others, however, had the possibility of direct gains in knowledge which this one had. I have confidence in the equipment, the planning, the training. I suspect that on a risk-gain ratio, this project would compare very, very favorably with those to which I've been accustomed on the past 20 years. — Neil Armstrong

Regardless of one's point of view, it's quite easy to see that Darwinism is not in the same league as the hard sciences. For instance, Darwinists will often compare their theory favorably to Einsteinian physics, claiming that Darwinism is just as well established as general relativity. Yet how many physicists, while arguing for the truth of Einsteinian physics, will claim that general relativity is as well established as Darwin's theory? Zero. — William A. Dembski

The sense of doing good , the satisfaction of being right, the joy of looking favorably upon oneself, dear sir, are powerful levers for keeping us upright and making us progress. On the other hand, if men are deprived of that feeling, they are changed into rabid dogs. — Albert Camus

Some of us are more favorably disposed than others. — John McCain

And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic. — Robert W. Welch Jr.

There were several key American scientists that favorably reported on Nazi eugenics after visiting Hitler's Germany in order to provide it cover. — A.E. Samaan

You could only to your best, and hope for a strong tail wind to waft you faster to your destination. Until then, you played the game, kept your tongue civil, and spoke favorably of your enemies when either they or their spies might overhear. — Michael Reaves

The prose poem Walk The Red Road is great stuff and deserves to be read aloud. It compares quite favorably to The Walls Of Emerald by Li Chiang Yen, a Chinese poet of the late Tang period. — Brian Aldiss

Money may not be your best friend, but it's the quickest to act, and seems to be favorably recognized in more places than most friends are. — Myrtle Reed

Sometimes life simply doesn't work in our favor, for a multitude of reasons. But if we keep investing, with faith, in our future, when the time comes, when the winds blow favorably in our direction, our speed is much faster than normal. — Robin Sacredfire

I read the book [My Life by Bill Clinton] completely. And I think it compares very favorably with Ulysses S. Grant's gold standard of presidential autobiographies. — Dan Rather

It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea. — Henry David Thoreau

How have I never noticed she only required praise to find me acceptable? wondered Sophronia, not quite realizing that this, too, was a mark of her new education. Many was the lady whose belief in another's sound judgment was based solely upon that other judging her favorably. — Gail Carriger

I swam across the rocks and compared myself favorably with the sars. To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.) — Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants. — Jon Krakauer

Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has 'cast up' in my time or is like to
this art by which even the 'poor' can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favorably on the morality of the country? — Jane Welsh Carlyle

To grow, we need things that we do not have and cannot provide, and we need to have a source of those things who looks favorably upon us and who does things for us for our own good. — Henry Cloud

When insecurity prevents you from working productively, stop and take some time to reestablish trust in yourself. You can do this by reminding yourself of the clients who have responded favorably to your work in the past, naming them aloud, if necessary. Re-read any client testimonials you've received or review work that you're particularly proud of. — Michael Law

Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quijote, "you don't know much about adventures. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The continent did not appeal: France was filled with irritating people; Spain was corrupt and unstable; Russia, impossible; Italy, absurd; Germany, rigid; Portugal, in decline. Holland, thought favorably disposed toward him, was dull. The United States of America, he decided, was a possibility. — Elizabeth Gilbert

A country that has yielded a billion and a half of gold is, perforce, well and favorably known to the uttermost parts of the earth. Though the stream of yellow wealth diminishes, or even ceases to flow, yet the channel is carved through which the thoughts of men longingly roll. Upon such a land no limit of impossibility is placed. — Frank Lewis Nason

Measurement of lengths of individual pools and riffles is partly a matter of judgment. With this qualification, we may say that we found in Seneca Creek that the average length of one repeating distance is 324 feet, which is 5.1 times the mean width of the bankfull channel. The ratio 5.1 in Seneca Creek compares favorably with the corresponding ratio, 5, for meanders in streams of comparable size. In Seneca Creek the average length of pool is 1.6 times the length of riffle. No corresponding figure is available for meanders. — Luna B. Leopold

God likes to listen favorably to the prayers of His faithful, particularly when they look at Christ's body — William Of Auxerre

When I neglect the gospel, I'll want nice vacations and nice compliments and nice things to make my life nicer. I'll long to be able to compare myself favorably with others and to know that I am successful. I'll look down on those who don't meet my standards, and I'll idolize those who excel. I'll forget that he is preeminent. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

Challenge: we find personal meaning in pursuing a goal that's difficult but not impossible. Curiosity: we're intrigued and find pleasure in learning more. Control: we like the feeling of mastery. Fantasy: we play a game; we use our imagination to make an activity more stimulating. Cooperation: we enjoy the satisfaction of working with others. Competition: we feel gratified when we can compare ourselves favorably to others. Recognition: we're pleased when others recognize our accomplishments and contributions. — Gretchen Rubin

I won't ask you to tell me who has spoken ill of me, but I would like to know who has spoken favorably. — Santiago Roncagliolo

We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. — William James

Beauty has a kind of blinding effect on our judgment. For instance, research shows we judge writing more favorably if we find the author attractive. This could be because of the halo effect we discussed earlier, where someone with one positive quality - beauty, in this case - is assumed also to have others. Or in some cases people may rate beautiful people highly on other attributes just to curry favor with them. — John Neffinger

You help far more when you depict a person favorably than instruct its weaknesses. — Albert Camus

Very well," it said. "I am a mighty fortress, sheathed in stone."
King Vikram thought for a moment.
"I am a catapult," he said. "Stone-breaking, fortress-sundering."
"I am a saboteur," countered the vetala. "Oath-breaker, weapon disabler."
"I am ill luck," said King Vikram. "Upending plots, dismaying plans."
The vetala was favorably impressed.
"I am fortune," it said. "I crown luck with destiny."
"I am free will," said King Vikram. "I challenge destiny with choice."
"I am divine will," said the vetala, "to which choice and destiny are one and the same."
"I am myself," said King Vikram. "The only thing that is mine to give, by choice or by destiny. — G. Willow Wilson

By giving professors jobs for life, universities create a feeling of unanswerable power among too many. Tenured professors who are uninterested in serving the student body are less likely to respond favorably to criticism, and are more likely to feel the freedom to intimidate or harass those with opposing viewpoints. — Ben Shapiro

It is probable that England will look favorably upon the independence of the Philippines, for it will open their ports to her and afford greater freedom to her commerce. — Jose Rizal

Chocolate is an extraordinary source of key stress-fighting minerals including: magnesium, iron, chromium, vanadium, copper, zinc, manganese, and phosphorus. These minerals favorably influence a woman's hormone system, which explains why chocolate has always been considered important for a woman's monthly cycle. — David Wolfe