Four Line Quotes & Sayings

For the elements have the property of moving back to their place in a straight line, but they have no properties which would cause them to remain where they are, or to move other-wise than in a straight line, These rectilinear motions of these four elements when returning to their original place are are of two kinds, either centrifugal,vziz.>the motion of the air and the fire; or centripedal,viz.> the motion of the earth, and the water; and when the elements have reached their original place, they remain at rest. — Maimonides

Following their line of vision, he found the distraction. The damn tennis team, running the perimeter of the football field in some half-assed formation, following their fearless leader. They weren't looking at the field, weren't yelling or causing a scene. Just concentrating on keeping up with Chris.
Having been a teenage boy himself, the draw was obvious. Teenage girls. Short shorts. No brainer. At thirty-four, he was past that.
Except his eyes didn't seem to get the "I'm Too Old For This" memo. They were tracking Chris like a hawk tracks a field mouse. — Jeanette Murray

Gunner shook his head; he wasn't in the mood. He stared down at his bottle as he spoke. "Yeah, and what if I do go after it and what if I find no one, and I'm alone for the next sixty years? What then? Huh? Friends and family will get married. I'll be stuck buying gifts. Years pass: children, birthday parties. At dinner parties, I'll be odd man out, forcing people to arrange five chairs around a table instead of four or six. Or, okay, let's say maybe twenty years down the line I meet someone nice and I've already given up on ever finding true love. Let's say the girl is a few pounds overweight, has fizzy hair and an annoying laugh, but at this point, I'm also a few pounds overweight and my hair is thinning and my laughter is annoying. Maybe then the two of us get married, and both our groups of friends will say, 'See I told you that you'd find true love. It just took a while.' And we'll smile, but we'll both know it's a lie-- — Michael Anthony

Four lines, and the world went quiet.
I'm sorry for telling everyone about your mum, read the first line.
I miss being your friend, read the second.
Are you okay? read the third.
I see you, read the fourth, with the I underlined about a hundred times. — Patrick Ness

When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we'd start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That's the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record. — Roy Wood

No reason to be afraid of Nick," Jack said. "I could take you down there and introduce you, threaten to sic my wife on him if he steps out of line." "I bet one knee in the nuts straightens him right out," Ellie said. There was a strange sound from Noah, something of a growl. "I don't like this idea at all. If this guy got fresh with you, I'd have to deal with him. That wouldn't be good." "Horsefeathers," Ellie said. "I can take care of myself." This wouldn't be the best time to bring up the fact that she was having a tough time doing exactly that - taking care of herself. And in almost exactly twenty-four hours Noah was already feeling the urge to deck the imbecile who would dare put a hand on her. It had been years since he'd been in a fight; it wasn't nice for ministers to fight. He was supposed to counsel and pray his way out of tight spots. One — Robyn Carr

By the time the anthem plays its final strains, all twenty-four of us stand in one unbroken line in what must be the first public show of unity among the districts since the Dark Days. You — Suzanne Collins

You went back in time," he repeated, "and you expect his cell phone to work?"
"Well, no, I just, I mean, I came back and he hasn't! Shouldn't he have?"
Morrison, very steadily, said, "Were you together?"
"No! I just said he went to fight the Morrigan!"
"I see." There was a pause. "The man is seventy-four years old, Joanie. He can take care of himself. If you were," a great and patient pause filled the line before he went on, "time traveling. If you were time traveling and got separated, then I can't think of any reason he would necessarily come back to the present at the same time you did."
"Except I was the focal point, it was my fault, it
!"
"Joanne. Siobhan. Siobhan Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick."
I didn't think anybody had ever said my name like that before. I gulped down a hysterical sob and whispered, "Yeah?"
Morrison, with gentle emphasis, said, "I love you. Now pull yourself together and go find the bad guy," and hung up. — C.E. Murphy

It is satisfying, and after a while he finds himself singing an old song: the same one he sang with Oldenburg in Broad Arrow Tower. He keeps time with his hammer, and draws out those notes that make the cargo-hold resonate. All round him, water seeps through the cracks between Minerva's hull-planks (for he is well below the water-line) and trickles down merrily into the bilge, and the four-man pumps take it away with a steady suck-and-hiss that's like the systole and diastole of a beating heart. — Neal Stephenson

facts about the pyramid that he sometimes forgot some of them until reminded. This was one of them. Instead of the typical four flat sides, the Great Pyramid had eight, but it had been forgotten in the mists of time until an aerial photo had been taken at just the right time. It was now known that at dawn and sunset on the spring and fall equinoxes, a shadow appears in such a way as to divide the pyramid in half, and the concavity that divides each side on the center line is revealed. — J.C. Ryan

Ortez sauntered over to the nearest wall intercom. "Bridge, this is the captain -- what the hell's going on up there? I didn't schedule a combat drill for today." Hell, it occurred to him -- he hadn't scheduled any kind of drill for at least four months. On the other end of the line, young 2nd lieutenant Cedric Pankow, the com officer, let it fall. — Christina Engela

I'm not driven to get back into politics. It's not on my top five things to do before I die, but saying that, I may be in politics in the next year or the next ten years. I've been on the front line for 12 years, four in state government, eight on the national level. — J. C. Watts

The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant
Once there was a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. Now, the eggplant, as you know, is a member of the vegetable kingdom, and the rabbit is a very fast animal.
Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something.
People expected the eggplant to win the race by some clever trick of philosophy. The race was started, and there was a lot of cheering. The rabbit streaked out of sight.
The eggplant just sat there at the starting line. Everybody knew that in some surprising way the eggplant would wind up winning the race.
Nothing of the sort happened. Eventually, the rabbit crossed the finish line and the eggplant hadn't moved an inch.
The spectators ate the eggplant.
Moral: Never bet on an eggplant. — Daniel Pinkwater

Nothing like it had ever been seen in New York. Housetops were covered with "gazers"; all wharves that offered a view were jammed with people. The total British armada now at anchor in a "long, thick cluster" off Staten Island numbered nearly four hundred ships large and small, seventy-three warships, including eight ships of the line, each mounting 50 guns or more. As British officers happily reminded one another, it was the largest fleet ever seen in American waters. In fact, it was the largest expeditionary force of the eighteenth century, the largest, most powerful force ever sent forth from Britain or any nation. — David McCullough

I don't think auditioning will ever faze me again after the 'Grease' TV experience. It was fierce. There were thousands of people auditioning in four cities. I flew from home in Minneapolis to audition in L.A. I waited in line all day. I arrived at 7 A.M. and wasn't seen until 6 P.M. — Laura Osnes

Natural consequences is actually a parenting concept, but one I use on myself, because sometimes my ability to thoughtfully reflect on a difficult situation is in line with a four-year-old's. — Kelly Williams Brown

After referees negated a line change that led to Tampa Bay"s winning goal in the Stanley Cup Playoffs: After all these years in the league, am I that stupid that I would put four forwards and one defenseman in a 3-3 tie, in the third period? I think everybody that knows me here knows I"m not that stupid. I might be halfway stupid, but not that stupid. — Pat Burns

Those type of people [in New Orleans] keep me happy and just smiling, you know? I just go hang out and talk with them and they tell me all types of old stories, and sometimes I might even pull my horn out in the middle of the block, and they're playing on beer bottles and different things, and we just do a little second line type thing, just us, four or five people, who are just having fun. That makes me day to be able to do that and go hang out with the people in the (Treme) neighborhood, and to do some shows around town, you know? — Troy Andrews

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn't come out right, you've got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific. — Dr. Seuss

Talking on a cell phone makes us four times as likely to have an accident - the same as a driver who has a blood alcohol content of .08 percent, which qualifies as intoxicated in most states. The risk is equal for drivers holding their phones to their ears and for those speaking through a hands-free device. In both cases, researchers suggest, the drivers generate mental images of the unseen person at the other end of the line, which conflicts with their capacity for spatial processing. "It's not that your hands aren't on the wheel," says David Strayer, the director of the Applied Cognition Laboratory at the University of Utah, "it's that your mind is not on the road. — Tony Schwartz

A chasm reminds us that there is a fine line between bravery and idiocy. — Veronica Roth

I led by three or four feet, with Biggy (John Biglow) surging closer on each stroke. I hated him in those last few seconds; he was the only reason my guts were being strewn over the water like an oil slick ... I pressed one last time, and looked at the finish-line flagman. In that instant the flag jumped down and then up. The up stroke, identifying the second place finisher, was for me. John Biglow was the victor. I stared into the green-brown water watching my bloody soul drop through the depths, slowly rocking back and forth, occasionally glinting in the light, and then finally disappearing. — Brad Alan Lewis

Four wings, two hearts, but only one soul. They connect in the middle, but are separated by a thin line of ash. Its what brings them together, yet rips their feathers apart. They can never truly be together as light and dark. Unless one makes the ultimate sacrifice. Blows out their candle, and joins the other in the dark. Or if the other dares to fly across the line and steals the others light And force them to cross over the line and join the darkness of life. Im not gone, princess. I will come back for you until you give in. — Jessica Sorensen

Book ideas are like planes, lined up to approach the runway. Some never leave the gate, but others move quickly to the front of the line. It was like that with The Four Purposes. Honestly, I cannot remember the moment I had the idea for the book; perhaps because it emerged like a green shoot emerging from the soil of my subconscious. But it seemed important enough to begin the flow of words that eventually shaped themselves into this new book. — Dan Millman

But I can stop on any corner at the intersection of two busy streets, and before me are thousands of lives headed in all four directions, uptown downtown east and west, on foot, on bikes, on in-line skates, in buses, strollers, cars, trucks, with the subway rumble underneath my feet ... and how can I not know I am momentarily part of the most spectacular phenomenon in the unnatural world? ... The city may begin from a marketplace, a trading post, the confluence of waters, but it secretly depends on the human need to walk among strangers. — E.L. Doctorow

Those four effects described above - shaping a male-dominant view of sexuality, initiating victims, contributing to difficulty in separating sexual fantasy and reality, and providing a training manual for abusers - are at work just as much with men who have not engaged in activities that meet the legal definition of rape. Here we have to let go of a comforting illusion - that there is some clear line between men who rape and men who don't, between the bad guys and the good guys. — Robert Jensen

We took off for the tree line, leaving the wounded soldiers to wonder how they'd been beaten by four misfits and a horse. — Rachel Sharp

In 2004,I offered priority (book)-signing to smokers, the reason being that, because they didn't have as long to live, their time was more valuable. Four years later my special treatment was reserved for men who stood five-foot-six and under. "That's right, my little friends," I announced. "There'll be no waiting in line for you." It seemed unfair to restrict myself to men, so I included any woman with braces on her teeth.
"What about us?" asked the pregnant and the lame. And because it was my show, I told them to wait their f***ing turn. — David Sedaris

Yeah. I can see what you bring out in him. You don't know this because you've never experienced it, but Four without you is a much different person. He's ... obsessive, explosive, insecure ... "
"Obsessive?"
"What else do you call someone who repeatedly goes through his own fear landscape?"
"I don't know ... determined." I pause. "Brave."
"Yeah, sure. But also a little bit crazy, right? I mean, most Dauntless would rather leap into the chasm than keep going through their fear landscapes. There's bravery and then there's masochism, and the line got a little hazy with him. — Veronica Roth

Secondly, love and relationships are complicated. No one could ever get it right in a four-line sentence. — Adrian Grenier

The new American dream is one of responsibility. What is the bottom-line number that you're going to be able to pay back toward a student loan responsibly if you're doing it yourself after you have a job? That dictates the amount of money you can borrow. That dictates the school you can go to, if you can even go to a four-year college at all. — Suze Orman

Being the first to do something like this also registers a lot of attention that the line might not have gotten if all four books had just appeared from one company. — Mark Millar

The Color Purple received four Tony nominations; the play is highly looked at and it's a must see for everyone. I just want to carry on what Jennifer Hudson has done and help the team get to the finish line. — Heather Headley

He didn't mind it in the beginning, this slowness. It left him alone with himself while he fished and listened to the call of the herons, and taught Anthony to row a boat and to play baseball and soccer, while Anthony read to him from his children's books as Alexander held the fishing line. The soul was repairing itself little by little. And it was on Bethel Island, with his mother and father twenty-four hours by his side, watching over him, talking to him, playing with him, that Anthony stopped waking up with nightmares in the middle of the night and settled down to silence inside himself. And it was on Bethel Island that Alexander stopped needing ice cold baths at three in the morning - the hot sudsy dimly lit baths with her soapy hands and soapy body in the late evening sufficing. — Paullina Simons

There are seven winners of the Monaco Grand Prix on the starting line today, and four of them are Michael Schumacher. — Murray Walker

Imran Khan asked Pakistanis of four things at the Historic Lahore Jalsa.

1. We shall never lie and always speak the truth.
2. Leave our ego's behind and only think of this Nation, there are 11 crore Pakistanis living beneath poverty line.
3. We shall be brave and break the shackles of fear.
4. We have to bring Justice to this society, even if our friends and relatives do injustice, we shall be fair and bring them to Justice. — Imran Khan

Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind, Two of us will help you, whichever you would find, One among us seven will let you move ahead, Another will transport the drinker back instead, Two among our number hold only nettle wine, Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line. Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore, To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four: First, however slyly the poison tries to hide You will always find some on nettle wine's left side; Second, different are those who stand at either end, But if you would move onward, neither is your friend; Third, as you see clearly, all are different size, Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides; Fourth, the second left and the second on the right Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight. — J.K. Rowling

I've been standing here plotting how to keep you naked twenty-four hours a day."
"Might be kinda hard to go back down to the party. Or the supermarket. Or church."
That made him chuckle. "Oh, it'll be hard alright. In fact ... " he pulled me against his hips again, "I'd say it already is."
"Wow, that was bad."
"I'll show you bad."
"Stop talking, you retard! Just take off your damned pants already."
"I'll show you retard."
"Oh my God."
His hands went to the belt at his waist, and then he slid his zipper down. Slowly. The move would have been sexy as hell if he hadn't thrown out this line along with it: "Want me to dance for you?"
"Oh my God! Just shut up! — T. Torrest

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it
namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign. — Mark Twain

He would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whaterver a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why construcing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill, is work, whilst rolling nine-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service that would turn it into work, then they would resign. — Mark Twain

From his bedroom window on the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Nathaniel Dixon watched in awe at the four-ship formation of V-22 Ospreys chewing up the Virginia air with their massive, wingtip-mounted tilt rotors as they made a pass over the flight line. The aircraft grew in his window as they approached the small bungalow he lived in with his mother and father on base. Just before they flew out of sight, Nathaniel clapped his hands together over the window and imagined smashing each Osprey like a dragonfly. Then, he imagined each falling to earth in flames, smashing in a great ball of fire in his backyard. — Jonathan Marker

So, in one slightly technical line, here's the mathematical skinny. There's an equation in string theory that has a contribution of the form (D-10) times (Trouble), where D represents the number of spacetime dimensions and Trouble is a mathematical expression resulting in troublesome physical phenomena, such as the violation of energy conservation mentioned above. As to why the equation takes this precise form, I can't offer any intuitive, nontechnical explanation. But if you do the calculation, that's where the math leads. Now, this simple but key observation is that if the number of spacetime dimensions is ten, not the four we expect, the contribution becomes 0 times Trouble. And since 0 times anything is 0, in a universe with ten spacetime dimensions the trouble gets wiped away. That's how the math plays out. Really. And that's why string theorists argue for a universe with more than four spacetime dimensions. — Brian Greene

Kriss put a hand on Elise's. "Almost all the girls who went home are already engaged to wonderful men. To be a part of the Selection at all makes you a prize. And you made it to the top four of the Elite at the very least. Trust me, Elise, guys will be lined up around the block for you." Elise smiled. "I don't need a line. I just need one. — Kiera Cass

In a hypothetical, extremely simple Cloud Ark consisting of only two arklets, only one calculation needed to be performed: namely, the calculation that answered the question "Will Arklet 1 bang into Arklet 2 if both stay on their current courses?" In a three-arklet cloud, it was also necessary to figure out whether Arklet 1 would collide with Arklet 3, and whether 2 and 3 were going to collide. So, that was a total of three calculations. If the cloud expanded to four arklets, six calculations were needed, and so on. In mathematical terms these were known as triangular numbers, a kind of binomial coefficient, but the bottom line was that the number of calculations went up rapidly with the number of arklets in the cloud. — Neal Stephenson

Four hundred forty-six," Cole whispered.
"What?" she asked.
He kept his head down in what seemed to be a prayer. "He counts. You've smiled at him four hundred and forty-six times as of a few minutes ago. He announces the number every time I see him."
"I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't think you were real. Considering my line of work, I should have more faith in humanity." Cole shook his head. "I think it was smile two hundred eighty-six that drove me the most crazy. It was the night train. Blake was so sick, feverish. Honestly, I was considering taking him to the hospital. But no. He didn't want to miss a smile. He wouldn't even let me drive him. Blake walked the whole way in the pouring rain for number two eighty-six. — Debra Anastasia

It's really nice when life comes full circle and you get to work with people four years down the line. — Gillian Jacobs

Meetings should have a single decision-maker/owner. There must be a clear decision-maker at every point in the process, someone whose butt is on the line. A meeting between two groups of equals often doesn't result in a good outcome, because you end up compromising rather than making the best tough decisions. Include someone more senior as the decision-maker. The decision-maker should be hands on. He or she should call the meeting, ensure that the content is good, set the objectives, determine the participants, and share the agenda (if possible) at least twenty-four hours in advance. After the meeting, the decision-maker (and no one else) should summarize decisions taken and action items by email to at least every participant - as well as any others who need to know - within forty-eight hours. — Eric Schmidt

Engineers had not framework for understanding Mandelbrot's description, but mathematicians did. In effect, Mandelbrot was duplicating an abstract construction known as the Cantor set, after the nineteenth-century mathematician Georg Cantor. To make a Cantor set, you start with the interval of numbers from zero to one, represented by a line segment. Then you remove the middle third. That leaves two segments, and you remove the middle third of each (from one-ninth to two-ninths and from seven-ninths to eight-ninths). That leaves four segments, and you remove the middle third of each- and so on to infinity. What remains? A strange "dust" of points, arranged in clusters, infinitely many yet infinitely sparse. Mandelbrot was thinking of transmission errors as a Cantor set arranged in time. — James Gleick

If you're like most members of the Baby Boom generation, you decided somewhere along the line, probably after about four margaritas, to have children. This was inevitable. Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has instilled within each of us a powerful biological instinct to reproduce; this is her way of assuring that the human race, come what may, will never have any disposable income. — Dave Barry

I left General Magic in 1996 to become an Internet hobbyist - got a T-1 line to my house. At one point I had all four food banks of the Bay Area hosted from this house here. — Andy Hertzfeld

There have been times I've planted stuff in songs where four years later I'll be singing it from a subconscious, kind of chameleon little lizard mind ... and at a certain moment, all of a sudden, I'll hear a line from a different vantage point and it'll change its meaning. It's something I wrote but it changed because I did. — Feist

Doctors and scientists said breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead — Roger Bannister

The only rule is that you can't cross this line. If the ball hits you, you're
out. If someone catches a ball you throw, you're out. We'll keep playing until there are five of you left," Dinkleman explained.
I thought to myself, "What the fuck? That was like, four rules, not one. — Phil Wohl

I don't sit down at nine in the morning and begin writing and then take a break for lunch and stop at four. I have no structure like that. I am at my computer constantly, more or less attached to it. I live on-line and hate being off-line and don't care how unhealthy it is. — Augusten Burroughs

Almost all the girls who went home are already engaged to wonderful men. To be a part of the Selection at all makes you a prize. And you made it to the top four of the Elite at the very least. Trust me, Elise, guys will be lined up around the block for you."
Elise smiled. "I don't need a line. I just need one."
"Well, I need a line," Celeste said, making us all chuckle, even Elise.
"I'd like a handful," Kriss said. "A line does sound overwhelming." They looked at me.
"One."
"You're nuts," Celeste decided. — Kiera Cass

On one occasion Barth invited a student to contribute an essay to the journal. The student was Max Lackmann, who was only twenty-four years old at the time. The essay, "Lord, Where Shall We Go?" appeared in the summer of 1934 and clearly drew a line between faithfulness to God's word and faithfulness to the Nazi state. — Dean G. Stroud

Somewhere along the line, a concert became a variety show. It was no longer enough for four dudes to play together in front of some guitar amps. Costume changes, an army of dancers, and Broadway theatrics suddenly became standard for a 'concert.' — Shawn Amos

We have four blocks here. Block A, where we are now, is administration and recreation. Block B is software development. Block C is research and storage. Block D is where the main Stormbreaker assembly line is found." "Where's breakfast?" Alex asked. — Anthony Horowitz

Claire scraped her chair back, walked over to the cordless phone lying on the counter, and dialed from the business card still stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. Four rings, and a cheerful voice answered on the other end and announced she'd reached Common Grounds. "Hi,'" Claire said. "Can I talk to Sam, please?'"
"Sam? Hold on.'" The phone clattered, and Claire could hear the buzz of activity in the background - milk being steamed, people chatting, the usual excitement of a busy coffee shop. She waited, jittering one leg impatiently, until the voice came back on the line. "Sorry,'" it said. "He's not here tonight. I think he went to the party.'"
"The party?'"
"You know, the zombie frat party? Epsilon Epsilon Kappa? The Dead Girls' Dance?'"
"Thanks,'" Claire said. She hung up and turned to face Michael and Eve, who were staring at her in outright surprise. She held up the phone. "The power of technology. Embrace it. — Rachel Caine

If your rod weighs six ounces, your reel nine, and your line another ounce or two, it means that you are holding a pound of weight in your casting hand - much of the time at arm's length - all the time you fish. Try carrying a pound of butter around that way for four or five hours. — Ted Trueblood

Our practices - our most spiritual practices - are hanging laundry on the line, raising children, building strong relationships, practicing kindness as much as we can, striving for excellence in the workplace, and developing deeper self-knowledge. I wrote The Four Purposes of Life to assist in these endeavors. — Dan Millman

I come from a very illustrious line of divorces. We love to get divorced in my family. My mother and father have been married four times each - eight ceremonies with the best of intentions. — Joshua Ferris

There were upsides to the whole mess. While Douglas was holding me hostage, I'd met a girl - I mean, screw dating websites and house parties; apparently all the really eligible ladies are being held in cages these days. I would have liked to see Brid fill out a dating questionnaire, though. What would she put? "Hi, my name is Bridin Blackthorn. I'm next in line to rule the local werewolf pack. I like long walks on the beach and destroying my enemies. I have four older brothers, so watch your step. We'll be forming a queue to the left for potential suitors."
And, trust me, there would be a queue. — Lish McBride

But Gedalah had something in mind. He sent four men to collect a dozen pumpkins, and he had them set in the pylons that supported the overhead power line that ran the train, one pumpkin to each pylon.
"What are they for?" Mendel asked.
"Nothing," Gedaleh said. "They're there to make the Germans wonder why they're there. We've wasted maybe two minutes; they're methodical, they'll waste a lot more. — Primo Levi

Clinical trials have proven that projectile vomiting is up to FOUR times more efficient than ordinary vomiting. You don't even have to run to the bathroom! With practice, and careful placement of your chair within thirty feet
and line of sight
of your bathroom, you can project your lunch from the comfort of your armchair. — Chris Dolley

By contrast, my wife at fifty-two yeas old seems to me just as attractive as the day I first met her. If I were to say this out loud, she would say, 'Douglas, that's just a line. No one prefers wrinkles, no one prefers grey.' To which I'd reply, 'But none of this is a surprise. I've been expecting to watch you grow older ever since we met. Why should it trouble me? It's the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or fourty-three. It's that face.'
Perhaps she would have liked to hear this but I had never got around to saying it out loud. I had always presumed there would be time and now, sitting on the edge of the bed at four a.m., no longer listening out for burglars, it seemed that it might be too late. — David Nicholls

And then it happens. Up and down the row, the victors begin to join hands. Some right away, like the morphlings, or Wiress and Beetee. Others unsure but caught up in the demands of those around them, like Brutus and Enobaria. By the time the anthem plays its final strains, all twenty-four of us stand in one unbroken line in what must be the first public show of unity among the districts since the Dark Days. You can see the realization of this as the screens begin to pop into blackness. It's too late, though. In the confusion they didn't cut us off in time. Everyone has seen. — Suzanne Collins

He places the skull in the palm of my hand. There are four canines; the top two are so long and curved I can feel them pricking my skin. There's a green tinge round the eye socket and in a fine line across the cranium. I'm not sure what animal it's from.
'Stoat,' Harris says, as if I've spoken out loud. 'They hunt grouse and partridge. I found it behind my house. I buried the body in the furze until it was just bone.'
His hand is still beneath mine, supporting it. I think of him seeing the small dead creature and digging a tiny grave for it. Planning ahead for all those months just so he'd see the skeleton. Or maybe he severed the animal's head and that was the only part he buried.
'It's been waiting for you all this time. Like I have. — Sanjida Kay

For a moment I think to myself, which connection is quicker to God? Telepathically or by email? Maybe there's a quicker turnaround time if I email my problems. I should probably start by apologizing and doing something spiritual to make up for my long absence. Would an Angel with poor customer service etiquette respond to my email? Is there an 800 holy number to dial? If so, which manual would the Angel be reading from? The Bible or the Qur'an? Does it matter? Would the Angel have Sister Mary sitting next to her, watching and coaching her on how to talk to people with issues? And how do you handle four billion calls a day? I suppose I would have to wait my turn in line, just like everyone else. — Sadiqua Hamdan

I was born in St. Louis and lived in Pittsburgh for a bit, before my family moved to Nigeria, where they're from. We lived there for three or four years and came back to the States when I was about ten. I realised that I'd gone from place to place not fitting in. The thing that helped me fit in when moving around and not having a ton of friends was that I could make art. That was the through-line. — Babatunde Adebimpe

He cleared his throat and held up one hand dramatically.
"Green grass breaks through snow.
Artemis pleads for my help.
I am so cool."
He grinned at us, waiting for applause.
"That last line was four syllables." Artemis said.
Apollo frowned. "Was it?"
"Yes. What about I am so bigheaded?"
"No, no, that's six syllable, hhhm." He started muttering to himself.
Zoe Nightshade turned to us. "Lord Apollo has been going through this haiku phase ever since he visited Japan. Tis not as bad as the time he visited Limerick. If I'd had to hear one more poem that started with, There once was a godess from Sparta-"
"I've got it!" Apollo announced. "I am so awesome. That's five syllables!" He bowed, looking very pleased with himself. — Rick Riordan

By the time I was four, I would walk around the corner and wait at a local streetcar stop, get on the streetcar with somebody who looked like they could be my mother and go to the end of the line. — Maureen Forrester

For a spinner growing up in England, it is challenging to become an off-spinner. The line and length needs to be altered on each of the four days of county cricket or five days of Test matches. The pitches in England don't have a set pattern. It changes with each day, and accordingly, the length varies. — Harbhajan Singh

It's boring."
"Oh," I said. I rubbed at my jaw. "You think I should have gone four-color?"
Bob stared at me for a second and said, "I have nightmares about Hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you."
I glowered up at the skull and nodded. "Okay, fine. You think it needs more drama."
"More anything. Drama would do. Or breasts."
I sighed and saw where that line of thought was going. "I am not going to hire a leggy secretary, Bob. Get over it."
"I didn't say anything about legs. But as long as we're on the subject ... — Jim Butcher

So what do you think?' He asked, holding up the book.
'I think Salinger is a closet paedophile,' I replied placidly and was surprised and comforted by this minuscule, acidic, bitter Sylvia Plath like mocking, sniping tone that had crept into my voice. 'The main character Seymour is a fully grown man and a pervert who befriends young girls with his storytelling and swimming, just to get close enough to groom them in preparation for the inevitable sexual assault he lusts after. You might have noticed for example in A Perfect Day For Bananafish he grabs the young girls-'
'Sybil.'
'He grabs Sybil's ankles while lying on the beach and again when he pushes her in the water,' I continued. 'He goes too far when he kisses the bottom of her foot which makes even a four-year-old yell out in fear, knowing a line had been crossed. Frustrated Seymour walks away and goes back to his hotel where he kills himself in shame. — J.D. Gallagher

Emily Dickinson seems rather tame because she pretty much uses the same meter every time. It's called 'common meter.' It's a line of four beats that's followed by a line of three beats. — Billy Collins

A man goes through many changes in 2000 meters. Some are not very pretty. Some make you hate yourself. Some make you wonder if you've been rowing for only three or four days. To avoid that fate, we prepared for all possibilities. If a meteor landed 10 feet off our stern, we would not blink. [We] Would be aware, yet impassive, to the outside world. Every ounce of energy would be funneled into the water, and not wasted by looking around, worrying about opponents, wondering about things that didn't concern our primary goal-to be the first across the finish line. — Brad Alan Lewis

As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, — Henry David Thoreau

Russell piped in singing, "Four pounds of back bacon, three French toasts, two turtlenecks, and a beer ... ." He leaned his body over Ellis. On the last line, Rob joined him. " ... in a tree!" They stopped, and Russell asked, "How does the beer stay in the tree? Wouldn't it fall out? — Wade Kelly

So is there anything intrinsically wrong with the fact that 25 percent of employed Yale graduates end up in this industry? Yeah. I think so. Of course this is my own opinion, but to me there's something sad about so many of us entering a line of work in which we're not (for the most part) producing something, or helping someone, or engaging in something that we're explicitly passionate about. Even if it's just for two or three years. That's a lot of years! And these aren't just years. This is twenty-three and twenty-four and twenty-five. If it were a smaller percentage of people, perhaps it wouldn't bother me so much. But it's not. — Marina Keegan

At Oklahoma City, the Hardings visited with oilman Jake Hamon, now in line for Secretary of the Interior. Hamon's private life, as lively as Harding's, was far less private. Jake had taken up with redheaded Clara Barton Smith. He appointed Clara his secretary, married her off to his nephew, Frank Hamon, and then dispatched Frank to the West Coast, leaving Jake and Clara to live blissfully as man and niece. Harding ordered Hamon to dump Clara if he wanted a role in Washington. The Hardings departed; a Harding transition official arrived. Hamon hosted a dinner for him, and Clara - angry at the thought of being jettisoned - threw a duck in Hamon's face. They argued in their rooms. If Hamon abandoned her, Clara wanted cash. Hamon struck her with a chair. Clara shot him, and four days later he died. The news reached the Hardings at Balboa, Panama. "Too bad he had that one fault," Warren mused, "that admiration for women. — David Pietrusza

I try and make it to the word exactly what I said four years ago and what I said was that those who've come here illegally should not be given a special pathway, a favored pathway to become permanent residents merely by virtue of having come here illegally. That they should be in line with everybody - they should be given the opportunity to get in line with everybody else but they go to the back of the line. — Mitt Romney

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns. — Vladimir Nabokov

Mindy Sue, you are a pretty, lively, successful female, fluent in French and German. You are a professional woman but also sportif. You care buckets, I can see that. How did you get yourself in this terrible predicament? How did you become a four-line seventy-five-cents-a-word advertisement in the back pages of The New York Review of Books? — Donald Barthelme

Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, they would have to collect their belongings and change trains in Jackson, Tennessee, to board the Illinois Central Railroad, the legendary rail system that, for a great portion of the twentieth century, carried upward of a million colored people from the Deep South up the country's central artery, across the Mason-Dixon Line, and into a new world called the Midwest. It carried so many southern blacks north that Chicago would go from 1.8 percent black at the start of the twentieth century to one-third black by the time the flow of people finally began to slow in 1970. Detroit's black population would skyrocket from 1.4 percent to 44 percent during the era of the Migration. — Isabel Wilkerson

Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to [God] the Father except through me." Peter, one of the four fishermen Jesus called, later said of Jesus, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." Jesus did not claim to be one dish on the buffet line of spirituality from which we can pick and choose the elements that best suit our taste. And if his claims are true, then his call demands everything, and we have no other choice - like those fishermen before us - but to drop everything and follow him. — David Platt

There are two different types of time. Chronos time is what we live in. It's regular time. It's one minute at a time, staring down the clock until bedtime time. It's ten excruciating minutes in the Target line time, four screaming minutes in time-out time, two hours until Daddy gets home time. Chronos is the hard, slow-passing time we parents often live in. Then there's Kairos time. Kairos is God's time. It's time outside of time. It's metaphysical time. Kairos is those magical moments in which time stands still. I have a few of those moments each day, and I cherish them. — Glennon Doyle Melton

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. — Vladimir Nabokov

Four circles to the kissing come, The smaller are the benter. The bend is just the inverse of The distance from the centre. Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb There's now no need for rule of thumb. Since zero bend's a dead straight line And concave bends have minus sign, The sum of squares of all four bends Is half the square of their sum. — Frederick Soddy

And if we really want to stay current and relevant, we have to use social media. And by that I mean Facebook. There are one billion people on Facebook. Maybe older people should have our own social media. We can call it What Did That Doctor Do to Your Face Book? In fact, we can have our own text and Facebook abbreviations. We can have our own WTF, LOL, and LMAO. GNIB: Good news, it's benign. OMG: Oh, my gout. DMMLIMNWD: Don't make me laugh, I'm not wearing Depends. WAI: Where am I? ITIHSBCR: I think I had sex but can't remember. ILI: I like Ike. TKDC: The kids didn't call. DTLSTY: Does this look swollen to you? CTDMELOFM: Call the doctor - my erection lasted over four minutes. PAMUHNASIHSB: Put a mirror under his nose and see if he's still breathing. Bottom line: we can't be dial-up in a Wi-Fi world. — Billy Crystal

In the emergency of growing up, we all need heroes. But the father I grew up with was no hero to me, not then. He was too wounded in the head, too endlessly and terribly sad. Too funny, too explosive, too confusing. Heroes are uncomplicated. *This* makes them do *that* ... But the war does not make sense. War senselessly wounds everyone right down the line. A body bag fits more than just its intended corpse. Take the 58,000 American soldiers lost in Vietnam and multiply by four, five, six - and only then does one begin to realize the damage this war has done ... War when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable. It is not an occasion for heroism. It is an occasion only for survival and death. To regard war in any other way only guarantees its inevitable reappearance. — Tom Bissell

In America, where you'd have thought the country's so huge it couldn't happen quite so cosily, everyone's giving his imprimatur to everyone else. You line up three or four well-known poets and a couple of eminent academics on the dustjacket, and the rest of academe follow like sheep. That's death really, if you take pleasure in it. Mind you, the occasional puff's hard to resist, but you shouldn't inhale. — Michael Longley

Ahead of them lay an expressway access road. Except that there were no guardrails or markings. No road signs either. And no other vehicles at all. Yet the road, following a narrow curve, led to a broad ribbon of asphalt tracing a straight line all the way to the horizon. Again, it had no lines painted on it and there were no signs. Rosa thought there would have been space for four traffic lanes on it, but it was covered with the dust and loose soil that had blown over it.
No other sign of life. Just the two of them, the car, and a forgotten road to nowhere.
"Where does it go?"
"To the end of the world. — Kai Meyer

For work: I bought some pens. Normally, I used makeshift pens, the kind of unsatisfactory implements that somehow materialized in my bag or in a drawer. But one day, when I was standing in line to buy envelopes, I caught sight of a box of my favorite kind of pen: the Deluxe Uniball Micro. "Two ninety-nine for one pen!" I thought. "That's ridiculous." But after a fairly lengthy internal debate, I bought four. It's such a joy to write with a good pen instead of making do with an underinked pharmaceutical promotional pen picked up from a doctor's office. My new pens weren't cheap, but when I think of all the time I spend using pens and how much I appreciate a good pen, I realize it was money well spent. Finely made tools help make work a pleasure. — Gretchen Rubin

The family tree of Christ startlingly notes not one woman but four. Four broken women - women who felt like outsiders, like has-beens, like never-beens. Women who were weary of being taken advantage of, of being unnoticed and uncherished and unappreciated; women who didn't fit in, who didn't know how to keep going, what to believe, where to go - women who had thought about giving up. And Jesus claims exactly these who are wandering and wondering and wounded and worn out as His. He grafts you into His line and His story and His heart, and He gives you His name, His lineage, His righteousness. He graces you with plain grace. Is there a greater Gift you could want or need or have? Christ comes right to your Christmas tree and looks at your family tree and says, I am your God, and I am one of you, and I'll be the Gift, and I'll take you. Take Me? — Ann Voskamp

I write a line and then I revise the line and then I write two lines and then I revise lines one and two and then I write one, two and three and I revise one and two and then I write seven and eight and then I see that should be line four and I continually work it over as I go. — Edward Hirsch

I have assumed, for the present purpose, that Jesus of Nazareth did and said more or less what the four gospels in the New Testament say he did and said. I have written about all that, in debate with those who take radically different viewpoints, in considerable detail elsewhere. Likewise, I have assumed that St. Paul wrote Ephesians and Colossians, something which many scholars in the last century or so have doubted. Actually, the argument of the book doesn't depend on either of these assumptions, and for that reason, in addition to the risk of clogging up the present line of thought, I won't refer to these questions again. — N. T. Wright

It would take little more than $50 billion to raise every poor person above the official poverty line, yet the percentage of the population classified as poor hardly budges, while annual welfare spending amounts to four times that much. Where's the money going? — Robert Higgs

Basically for everything that comes out of Five Four, I've come up with the idea or changed it in some way. I'm also working with Putnam Accessory Group, a private label hat manufacturer. I'm in the process of re-branding a line they have called Chuck. It was mostly hats and bags, but I'm adding apparel and eyewear and whatever I feel like adding to turn it more into a brand. I'm supposed to be working with Pharrell on Billionaire Boys Club, but that's on hold. — Mark McNairy

You don't actually find a strong correlation between- top-line GDP growth and making money in the market. It- it seems like you should. The fastest-growing countries should give you the highest return. They simply don't. But, there's only four of us- that- that believe that story. Everyone else in the world believes that if you grow fast like China, you'll outperform in the stock market. — Jeremy Grantham