Fits And Starts Quotes & Sayings

A source of white light-many colors mixed together-emits photons in a chaotic manner: the angle of the amplitude changes abruptly and irregularly in fits and starts. But when we construct a monochromatic source, we are making a device that has been carefully arranged so that the amplitude for a photon to be emitted at a certain time is easily calculated: it changes its angle at a constant speed, like a stopwatch hand. (Actually, this arrow turns at the same speed as the imaginary stopwatch we used before, but in the opposite direction-see Fig. 67.) — Richard Feynman

Louis-Cesare and Ray were in trouble.
I could tell because I could see them, not clearly, but in fits and starts, little glimmers like a couple of ghosts, if ghosts made "oh shit" faces on the one hand agitated French gestures on the other. And that sort of shit wasn't going to go unnoticed for long.
Aaaaand it didn't. — Karen Chance

When you snatch happiness in little bits, fits and starts, and lose it, like me, you become coarse, little by little, you become hateful. — Sarah Ruhl

But I think the possibility of a black and white society feeding each other's expertises, living harmoniously, will probably go along in fits and starts now but at least it has a great constitution now to back it up. — Janet Suzman

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. — Gilles Deleuze

Chance. Stupid, dumb, blind chance. Just a part of the strange mechanism of the world, with its fits and coughs and starts and random collisions. — Lauren Oliver

What is it?'
'Nothing,' he said, and put his arm around her.
'You sighed.'
'I'd like to be further along than I am.'
She snuggled against his side. 'I know that feeling. But don't we make progress in fits and starts? Nothing happens for a long time, then suddenly we get a surprise, have an encounter, reach a decision point, and we're no longer the same as we were before. — Bernhard Schlink

First, as I've always said, it all starts with product, which means having the right assortment, styles, and fits. Second is price, where we strive to offer the best quality, style, and design at a fair value. This is critically important, given the highly promotional environment we are operating in. And third, traffic. — Mickey Drexler

[SF] was a commercial genre born in the old adventure pulp magazines
of the first third of the twentieth century, aimed primarily at
adolescent males, which, over the decades, in fits and starts,
evolved into an intellectually credible, scientifically germane,
transcendental literature without losing its popular base.

Of what other literature in the history of the western world can
this truly be said? — Norman Spinrad

I don't find any direct statements in life. My poetry imitates or reproduces the way knowledge or awareness come to me, which is by fits and starts and by indirection. I don't think poetry arranged in neat patterns would reflect that situation. My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life. — John Ashbery

Pace yourself in your reading. A little bit every day really adds up. If you read during sporadic reading jags, the fits and starts will not get you anywhere close to the amount of reading you will need to do. It is far better to walk a mile a day than to run five miles every other month. Make time for reading, and make a daily habit of it, even if it is a relatively small daily habit. — Douglas Wilson

Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It's about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don't exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation. And I know, because America, we, too, have had to work hard over the decades, slowly, gradually, sometimes painfully, in fits and starts, to keep perfecting our union. — Barack Obama

Valerie Feigen watched in near bewilderment as her husband acquired, haltingly, in fits and starts, a trait resembling tact. — Michael Lewis

We all need to figure out what's right for us because nothing about life is one size fits all. Even for an Olympian, that's for sure. And such discovery starts with you paying attention - to yourself. — David Agus

When he was much older, he was to look back upon his last two undergraduate years as if they were an unreal time that belonged to someone else, a time that passed, not in the regular flow to which he was used, but in fits and starts. One moment was juxtaposed against another, yet isolated from it, and he had the feeling that he was removed from time, watching as it passed before him like a great unevenly turned diorama. — John Edward Williams

Life is fits and starts, mostly fits. — Walker Percy

You're not impatient any more. Then you were in a hurry, because you thought you could encompass everything in your life. You wanted to learn everything and experience everything and be everybody. In a way, that was charming and delightful in you: I used to write in my notebooks that you were zestful. But it also made you seem confused. You did things in fits and starts. You learned as a stammerer talks ... Today, you are not in such a hurry. I think you have decided that you can do only a few things at all well, and they are more than enough. — John Hersey

At the heart of our friendly or purely social relations, there lurks a hostility momentarily cured but recurring by fits and starts. — Marcel Proust

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes growing pains are by fits and starts. — Anne Northup

Cultural transformation announces itself in sputtering fits and starts, sparked here and there by minor incidents, warmed by new ideas that may smolder for decades. In many different places, at different times, the kindling is laid for the real conflagration-the one that will consume the old landmarks and alter the landscape forever. — Marilyn Ferguson

A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power. — John Adams

Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time - is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next. — Cesare Pavese

Deadlines help me, but my muse hates them. My muse functions in fits and starts, and tends to take very long vacations. Deadlines are like a hot poker to his ass. They force us both to sit down and write, which is what it takes to do this. — Alistair Cross

Time was something that moved in fits and starts for Magnus, dissipating like mist or dragging like chains, but when Alec was here, Magnus's time seemed to fall into an easy rhythm with Alec's, like two heartbeats falling into sync. — Cassandra Clare

Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey's fits and starts, rehearses life's own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things. — Jonathan Raban

My clarinet sounded like an apoplectic yak. For the brief days I blew the trumpet, a hostile-sounding pig snorted along in jerky fits and starts with the rest of the irritated band. — Karen Marie Moning

Sometimes I just want to tell a story regardless of whether it fits what the show is saying. I've been in a lot of writing rooms where somebody says an idea and everyone's dying, like laughing so they're delirious. It's like a black hole in a good way, everything starts to fall into it, you know what I mean. — Louis C.K.

Revolution is man's normal activity, and if he is wise he will grade it slowly so that it may be almost imperceptible - otherwise it will jerk in fits and starts and cause discomfort ... — Freya Stark

The progress of her aging seemed to occur in fits and starts, not so much a matter of physical growth as a deepening self-possession, as if she were coming into ownership of her life. — Justin Cronin

Outside the rain finally began to fall, surging in fits and starts. "I love the way it rains here," he told her. "It reminds me that some forces of nature can never be entirely subdued. They are eternal, which is a far better thing to be than immortal. — Neal Shusterman

Great men are necessary for our life, in order that the movement of world history can free itself sporadically, by fits and starts, from obsolete ways of living and inconsequential talk. — Jacob Burckhardt

It was one of those conversations that moved in fits and starts. The heavy stuff had been thrown into the open and they were trying to pick up the pieces, gently, carefully, wary of the exposed edges. — K.B. Spangler

We are so prone to expect to become good Christians by some sudden experience that lifts us all at once to higher ground without the gradual climb. We forget that we are to "grow in grace" and that normal growth is not a matter of fits and starts. — Vance Havner

The torrent of the reaching shade
Broke shadow into all its parts,
What then had been of shadow made
Found exigence in fits and starts ... — Allen Tate

The poet dreams of the mountain
Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall. — Mary Oliver

I sleep like an old woman now, she thought to herself. In fits and starts. It isn't sleeping and it isn't waking and it isn't rest. — Robin Hobb

An attempt is sometimes made to demonstrate the desirability of measures directed against speculation by reference to the fact that there are times when there is nobody in opposition to the bears in the foreign-exchange market so that they alone are able to determine the rate of exchange. That, of course, is not correct. Yet it must be noticed that speculation has a peculiar effect in the case of a currency whose progressive depreciation is to be expected while it is impossible to foresee when the depreciation will stop, if at all. While, in general, speculation reduces the gap between the highest and lowest prices without altering the average price-level, here, where the movement will presumably continue in the same direction, this naturally can not be the case. The effect of speculation here is to permit the fluctuation, which would otherwise proceed more uniformly, to proceed by fits and starts with the interposition of pauses. — Ludwig Von Mises

Since then the field of neurofeedback has grown by fits and starts, with much of the scientific groundwork being done in Europe, Russia, and Australia. Even though there are about ten thousand neurofeedback practitioners in the United States, the practice has not been able to garner the research funding necessary to gain widespread acceptance. One reason may be that there are multiple competing neurofeedback systems; another is that the commercial potential is limited. Only a few applications are covered by insurance, which makes neurofeedback expensive for consumers and prevents practitioners from amassing the resources necessary to do large-scale studies. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

My life has had a lot of fits and starts: before I studied literature at all I was a musician, and began undergrad as a conservatory student. I started studying literature in my third year of college, when I took a poetry course with James Longenbach that was pretty extraordinary. It changed my life. — Garth Greenwell

Could man be drunk for ever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning And lief lie down of nights. But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts. — A.E. Housman

Many a real genius is lost in the fictitious character of the Gentleman. I am the most inconsistent, changeable being so full of fits and starts. — Thomas Gainsborough

I do 100 shows a year, but I do it in fits and starts, as opposed to going on a long run. — Bryan Adams

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world ... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts. — David Guterson

At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the compass of those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep when he would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his crossed arms, and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his good humour, in his short-lived passion, in his easy contentment with hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts, altogether a true son of the land that gave him birth. The — Charles Dickens

Writing is a funny thing. It's not like you're working on a schedule. It comes in fits and starts. — Daphne Guinness