Forestall Quotes & Sayings

The sequester has forced liberals to clarify their conviction that whatever the government's size is at any moment, is the bare minimum neccessary to forestall intolerable suffering. — George Will

Sometimes, I overheard my aunts discussing these blighted destinies; and Aunt Ruth would hug me, as if to forestall my following in their footsteps. Yet, from the way she lingered over such words as 'Xanadu' or 'Samarkand' or the 'wine-dark sea,' I think she also felt the trouble of the 'wanderer in her soul. — Bruce Chatwin

I can't help it, and I'm not sorry for it; I'm even a little proud. People think I'm cold and unfeeling, but that's a price I've always been willing to pay. The truth is that I'm beyond help; most people are; and it only angers me to see my sisters or my friends here in town wasting their time. To forestall or cover my anger, I jump in front of them, and suddenly I myself have turned into the person come to provide comfort, reassurance, help, whatever it is they originally desired to provide me with. I take their occasion and make it my own. — Russell Banks

We had been assured by our elders that intelligence was a family trait. All my kin and forebears were people of substantial or remarkable intellect, thought somehow none of them had prospered in the world. Too bookish, my grandmother said with tart pride, and Lucille and I read constantly to forestall criticism, anticipating failure. If my family were not as intelligent as we were pleased to pretend, this was an innocent deception, for it was a matter of indifference to everybody whether we were intelligent or not. People always interpreted our slightly formal manner and our quiet tastes as a sign that we wished to stay a little apart. This was a matter of indifference, also, and we had our wish. — Marilynne Robinson

I'm not a "conservative" because I see precious little left in this world worth conserving. Playing defense, it seems to me, can only forestall an inevitable slide into tyranny. — Joseph Farah

Then he went into the dining room, consulting his watch. It was ten thirty already. More than half the morning was gone. More than half the time for sitting and trying to write the prose that would make people sit up and gasp. It happened that way more often now than he would even admit to himself. Sleeping late, making up errands, doing anything to forestall the terrible moment when he must sit down before his typewriter and try to wrench some harvest from the growing desert of his mind. ("Mad House") — Richard Matheson

Storytellers continue their narratives late into the night to forestall death and to delay the inevitable moment when everyone must fall silent. Scheherazade's story is a desperate inversion of murder; it is the effort, throughout all those nights, to exclude death from the circle of existence. — Michel Foucault

To dust is only to forestall burial — Annie Dillard

Perhaps I became so vague, so exhilarated with vagueness, precisely in order to forestall a recognition of the final term of the syllogism that begins: If one man loves another he is a homosexual; I love a man ... — Edmund White

If I did not simply live from one moment to another, it would be impossible for me to be patient, but I only look at the present, I forget the past, and I take good care not to forestall the future. — Therese De Lisieux

Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide. — Karl A. Menninger

Should the enemy forestall you in occupying a pass, do not go after him if the pass is fully garrisoned, but only if it is weakly garrisoned. — Sun Tzu

It is impossible to carry the American people along with you on a program of caution to forestall a threatening position. — Harold L. Ickes

I notice where Death has been introduced, he frequently calls, making it desirable to forestall his advances. — Emily Dickinson

The largest enemy of change isn't 'no', it's 'not yet' - that is the easiest way to forestall change. — Seth Godin

Elizabeth's entire body started to tremble as his lips began descending to hers. and she sought to forestall what her heart knew was inevitable by reasoning with him. "A gently bred Englishwoman," she shakily quoted Lucinda's lecture. "feels nothing stronger than affection. We do not fall in love."
His warm lips covered hers. "I'm a Scot," he murmured huskily. "We do. — Judith McNaught

Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. — Jonah

Ever more people are alert to the challenge of global poverty and global warming. We know that solutions are at hand. We will not sleepwalk into catastrophe. We have the capacity to forsee and forestall, and I believe we will find the will to act — Jonathan Dimbleby

What had happened? Age, he guessed. And with it: Jobs. Money. Children. The things to forestall death, the things to ensure one's relevance, the things to comfort and provide context and content. The march forward, one dictated by biology and convention, that not even the most irreverent mind could withstand. But — Hanya Yanagihara

We spend our entire lives thinking about death. Without that project to divert us, I expect we would all be dreadfully bored. We would have nothing to evade, and nothing to forestall, and nothing to wonder about. Time would have no consequence. — Eleanor Catton

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. — Albert Schweitzer

The leaders of the Pahlavi regime, in an attempt to forestall the rising tide of the Islamic revolutionary movement, were hard at work to cast doubt on the question of the Imam Khomeini's position as a Marja'a (a top religious authority) and in this way, undermine public faith in his academic, political and religious competence. — Yousef Saanei

You will not forestall my judgement! — Davy Jones

The benefits of a philosophy of neo-religious pessimism are nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage, one of modern society's most grief-stricken arrangements, which has been rendered unnecessarily hellish by the astonishing secular supposition that it should be entered into principally for the sake of happiness. Christianity and Judaism present marriage not as a union inspired and governed by subjective enthusiasm but rather, and more modestly, as a mechanism by which individuals can assume an adult position in society and thence, with the help of a close friend, undertake to nurture and educate the next generation under divine guidance. These limited expectations tend to forestall the suspicion, so familiar to secular partners, that there might have been more intense, angelic or less fraught alternatives available elsewhere. Within the religious ideal, friction, disputes and boredom are signs not of error, but of life proceeding according to plan. — Alain De Botton

Man has the lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end up destroying the earth. — Albert Schweitzer

Trials are sent to some so as to take away past sins, to others so as to eradicate sins now being committed, and to yet others so as to forestall sins which may be committed in the future. These are distinct from the trials that arise in order to test men in the way that Job was tested. — Maximus The Confessor

For police themselves, the consequence of [911 policing] has been the emergence of a siege mentality...the alienation of officers from the communities they police interferes with the effective exercise of their basic authority, forcing police to rely inordinately on the use of force. As strangers, police feel compelled to draw upon 'preemptively coercive means such as intimidation and threats' if not the direct application of force...not only is such coercion antithetical to policing a democracy, it may create the very resistance it is intended to forestall, and lead to self-fulfilling prophecies and a downward spiral in which police become more aggressive and youths embittered and resistant. — George Kelling

She'd been prepared for him to say he was too old, she must put away that sweet but impractical idea, they would forget all about it and go back to being good friends. She had almost hoped he would say that; it would forestall the complication and entanglement, yet leave her with a grief to harbor, sad but tender, grief like a secret, soothing companion. But this! There was nothing soothing about this. — Lynne Sharon Schwartz

I've always though of writing as the opposite of suicide," she said. "That writing was about immortality. Defeating death, or at least forestalling it."
"Like Scheherazade?"
"Yes," she said. "Spinning tales to forestall her execution ... — Ruth Ozeki

We still, alas, cannot forestall it-
This dreadful ailment's heavy toll;
The spleen is what the English call it,
We call it simply, Russian soul. — Alexander Pushkin

Even at this stage, my preparations were like strapping on a parachute in an airplane that was about to crash; the whole time I was preparing to hurl myself out the door, I clung to the hope that something would happen at the last minute to forestall that terrible necessity I felt-not hostility, as psychiatric texts would say, or vengeful rage, or a desire for attention. This was done in secret, out of a need to alleviate pain which was as implacable as thirst. — Tracy Thompson

Taking magnesium before your period may forestall the pain altogether. A series of European studies with small groups of women who suffered painful periods consistently showed relief of symptoms when they took high doses of magnesium.10, 11, 12 Take 700 mg of dietary calcium with 700 mg of supplemental magnesium Use non-laxative ReMag. Calcium — Carolyn Dean

What need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid?. — John Milton

I remain confident that if faced with such a threat, the West will remember its twenty-five hundred years of tradition, much to the detriment of any possible foe. Having said that, we must all hope our leaders are wise enough to forestall any threat of this magnitude before it manifests itself. Because the Western way of war is brutal. If it is ever again unleashed in all its decisive barbarity, it will be many generations before our enemies recover. — Jim Lacey

One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process: We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get. — William B. Irvine

At other times, he wondered whether it was the world that had lost its color, or his friends themselves. When had everyone become so alike? Too often, it seemed that the last time people were so interesting had been college; grad school ... What had happened? Age, he guessed. And with it: Jobs. Money. Children. The things to forestall death, the things to ensure one's relevance, the things to comfort and provide context and content. The march forward, one dictated by biology and convention, that not even the most irreverent mind could withstand. But those were his peers. What he really wanted to know was when his friends had become so conventional, and why he hadn't noticed earlier. — Hanya Yanagihara

A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the grace of God, foresee, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying Why? — Dallas Willard

It is our mission to forestall our duties — Alexandre Dumas

But love ... of whom?" I say at last. "Of what? What great passion would forestall death?"
Her graceful eyebrow arches, "You do not know? You, a poet?"
I do not know. I say as much.
She leans forward so that I can hear the rustle of her starched cotton blouse and silk beneath. Our faces are so close that I can feel the warmth from her skin. "Then you need more time to learn," she whispers, her voice as filled with emotion as when she cried out last night. — Dan Simmons

Think about food on a full stomach and you find you don't care about taste. Think of lust after making love, and you find you don't care about sex. Therefore, if people always reflect on the regret they will feel afterward to forestall folly at the moment, they will be stable and will not err in action. — Zicheng Hong

If you are unwilling to endure your own suffering even for an hour, and ontinually forestall all possible misfortune, if you regard as deserving of annihilation, any suffering and pain generally as evil, as detestable, and as blots on existence, well, you have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet another religion in your heart (and this is perhaps the mother of the former)-the religion of smug ease. Ah, how little you know of the happiness of man, you comfortable and good-natured ones!for happiness and misfortune are brother and sister, and twins, who grow tall together, or, as with you, remain small together! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Ashamed their civilisation had a Diplomatic service at all and so tried to compensate for what they were worried might look to other species suspiciously like a symptom of weakness by ensuring that only the most aggressive and xenophobic Affronters became diplomats, to forestall anybody forming the dangerously preposterous idea the Affront were going soft. — Anonymous

To forestall misunderstandings: there is value in creating and enjoying art. To many people, drawing, painting, sculpting, singing, and playing a musical instrument are vital forms of self-expression, and their lives would be poorer without them. People produce art in all cultures and in all kinds of situations, even when they cannot satisfy their basic physical needs. Other people enjoy seeing art. In a world in which everyone had enough to eat, basic health care, adequate sanitation, and a place at school for each of their children, there would be no problem about donating to museums and other institutions that offer an opportunity to see original works of art to all who wish to see them, and (more important, in my view) the opportunity to create art to those who lack opportunities to express themselves in this way. Sadly, we don't live in that world, at least not yet. — Peter Singer

For the first time, I understood the ancients' need to find explanations for why things happen. It's a quintessential human imperative. Random is not emotionally satisfying. Therefore, lightning was the bolt from an angry god. Crop failure was punishment for failing to honor the gods with a fatted calf. The plague happened because you took the Lord's name in vain or coveted your neighbor's wife. Going to church regularly and praying could forestall illness. And on and on. — Alanna Mitchell

Many writers have reported being able to forestall the petty annoyances of life by maintaining the shared illusion that they are working at something productive...a facility they share with prostitutes and attorneys. — Kenneth B. Lifshitz

A writer must know how people read, what are the main sources of reading errors, and what can be done to possibly forestall them. — Rudolf Flesch

Nothing surpasses my performances with small bands, especially with Charlie Parker. A small band doesn't forestall creativity. — Dizzy Gillespie

The stakeout. The least glamorous and yet often the most valuable activity in investigations. To endure the agonizing boredom and forestall restlessness, I slowed my metabolism into near rigor mortis until I was nothing more than a pair of eyeballs fixed — Mario Acevedo

... if you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you for an hour and if you constantly try to prevent and forestall all possible stress way ahead of time; if you experience suffering and displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that besides your religion of pity you also harbor another religion in your heart that is perhaps the mother of the religion of pity: the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable and benevolent people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Can the theater teach us to wait? To forestall our satisfaction? Poems teach us how to wait. The natural world makes us wait. Erik Satie teaches us how to wait. And so does much music. Will YouTube teach us how to wait? Will YouTube teach us how to die? — Sarah Ruhl