Magnifying Quotes & Sayings

People who want a sane, static, measurable world take the first aspect of an event or person and stick to it, with an almost self-protective obstinacy, or by a natural limitation of their imaginations. They do not indulge in either deepening or magnifying. — Anais Nin

The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic. — Jon Stewart

He reminded me of Gerald Roma from grade school, who used to burn ants with a magnifying glass. He was never quite right. It was weird that he spontaneously combusted during finals week our freshman year in college. Payback was a bitch. — Darynda Jones

We sing inspirational songs, songs of praise and worship, and about how good and how big God is. We are magnifying the Lord. — Fred Hammond

Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available. — Theodor W. Adorno

A ship's engine far away on the water expands the summer-night horizon. Both joy and sorrow swell in the dew's magnifying glass. Without really knowing, we divine; our life has a sister ship, following quietly another route. While the sun blazes behind the islands. — Tomas Transtromer

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them. — Samuel Johnson

it is very important to the traveller, whether the moon shines brightly or is obscured. It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth, when she commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been abroad alone in moonlight nights. She seems to be waging continual war with the clouds in your behalf. Yet we fancy the clouds to be her foes also. She comes on magnifying, her dangers by her light, revealing, displaying them in all their hugeness and blackness, - then suddenly casts them behind into the light concealed, and goes her way triumphant through a small space of clear sky. — Henry David Thoreau

See this Swiss army knife, Lawless! It's gotta magnifying glass and a million blades but I only need one, so step right the fuck back! — Jonathan Dunne

Just because we say networks are important doesn't mean that networks explain everything. We're just adding additional information. Networks don't work like a match - they work like a magnifying glass. — Nicholas A. Christakis

We waste our lives when we do not pray and think and dream and plan and work toward magnifying God in all spheres of life. God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. — John Piper

Presently he rose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves were crowded with small broken objects - hardly recognizable domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles - made of glass, of clay, of discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.
'It seems cruel,' she said, 'that after a while nothing matters ... any more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labeled: "Use unknown".' — Edith Wharton

Many look back to the Israelites, and marvel at their unbelief and murmuring, feeling that they themselves would not have been so ungrateful; but when their faith is tested, even by little trials, they manifest no more faith or patience than did ancient Israel. When brought into strait places, they murmur at the process by which God has chosen to purify them. Though their present needs are supplied, many are unwilling to trust God for the future, and they are in constant anxiety lest poverty shall come upon them, and their children shall be left to suffer. Some are always anticipating evil or magnifying the difficulties that really exist, so that their eyes are blinded to the many blessings which demand their gratitude. The obstacles they encounter, [294] instead of leading them to seek help from God, the only Source of strength, separate them from him, because they awaken unrest and repining. — Ellen G. White

My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way. — Marquis De Sade

If the pursuit of God's glory is not ordered above the pursuit of man's good in the affections of the heart and the priorities of the Church, man will not be well served, and God will not be duly honored. I am not pleading for a diminishing of missions but for a magnifying of God. When the flame of worship burns with the heat of God's true worth, the light of missions will shine to the darkest peoples on earth. And I long for that day to come! — John Piper

I don't want to hate the president
i don't want to go to harvard
i don't want to win the pulitzer prize
i just want to sit in my bathtub
and think about relationships i will never have
with people i will never meet
and then go lay in my bed
with a magnifying glass
and count all the stiches in my sheets
until i fall asleep
and wake up
to repeat again. — Ellen Kennedy

Instead of getting an iPad, I now use my iPhone with a giant magnifying glass attached to my face. — Tony Hsieh

Authenticity is about returning and magnifying who you are, instead of trying to become someone who you think you should be. It's about peeling off the false adornments and standing wholly, holy, and true. — Akosua Dardaine Edwards

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass. — John Coltrane

I examined every detail under a magnifying glass without once finding the slightest clue. And in doing so I always felt the piercing inquiring gaze of the page boy who had come to demand his dues, who was waiting in the gray light of dawn on the empty field for me to accept the challenge and avert the misfortune lying ahead of him. — W.G. Sebald

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. — Herman Melville

This is the definition of clutter: things that exist in your outer life to distract you from the inner things that you're avoiding. If you avoid something, it grows.... The great thing is, the reverse is also true: when you honestly look at something, it shrinks. When you see the situation for what it is, bypassing the emotional layers that coloured it and made it into a clutter monster, it becomes simple. That's how peaceful clutter busting is. You're honestly looking at each layer of distraction, questioning the thing, letting it go, and realizing what's underneath. Looking directly at something has the power of a magnifying glass in the sun. The sun is you; the glass, your attention — Brooks Palmer

The surface of the shoes seemed to pulse with hundreds of reflections and refractions. In the firelight, it was like looking at boiling corpuscles of blood under a magnifying glass. — Gregory Maguire

Affection should not be too sharp eyed, and love is not made by magnifying glasses. — Thomas Browne

The eyes of childhood are magnifying lenses. — Edward Teller

As he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon his face ... As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded well-trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent. For twenty minutes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the most exact care the distance between marks which were entirely invisible to me, and occasionally applying his tape to the walls in an equally incomprehensible manner. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Sensuality is beautiful, and dominance and submission in the right context is a passionate art. A muse which ignites the flame of femininity, enrapturing both partners in complete euphoria, magnifying both the masculine and the feminine in one tantalizing unit. — Sai Marie Johnson

She reaches down into her bulging tote bag and pulls out a small plastic box with a hinged lid. It contains a round pill box with a threaded lid from which she tips out a vitamin pill, a fish-oil pill, and the enzyme tablet that lets her stomach digest milk. Inside the hinged plastic box she also carries packets of salt, pepper, horseradish, and hand-wipes, a doll size bottle of Tabasco sauce, chlorine pills for treating drinking water, Pepto-Bismol chews, and God knows what else. If you go to a concert, Bina has opera glasses. If you need to sit on the grass, she whips out a towel. Ant traps, a corkscrew, candles and matches, a dog muzzle, a penknife, a tiny aerosol can of freon, a magnifying glass - Landsman has seen everything come out of that overstuffed cowhide at one time or another. — Michael Chabon

There is no exact principle to be found here. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground - unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive at revelation on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way." "I do have a dreadful love for — Elizabeth Gilbert

A lot of young viewers, but I also have a lot of older viewers. This chapter is for my older fans - those of you who are slightly more mature. If any kids are reading this book, turn the page now. This chapter is not appropriate for children. It's for adults who experience adult situations, such as eating dinner before 6:00 and struggling to read menus in dim lighting conditions. Many adults, myself included, have trouble reading menus when they go out to eat at restaurants because the font is way too small. I know there are products to help with this problem, like reading and magnifying glasses, but I have a better idea. Make the font size larger. There should be a worldwide standard for menu font size. I've included a sample menu below with a suitable font size. You'll notice — Ellen DeGeneres

In public, I hardly ever show feelings. That's what happens when everything you do is put under a magnifying glass. But if you've spent some time hiding behind your public mask, and you're back in your own environment, then all that suppressed emotions still has to be set loose. As a result you are going to behave like a nutcase. I think thats why so many people who are famous go nuts. — Robert Pattinson

a collection that included, among other items, an Allen wrench set, some pliers, a power drill, several clamps, some hacksaws, an impact-wrench set, a brace of cold-tolerant bungie cords, assorted files and rasps and planes, a crescent-wrench set, a crimper, five hammers, some hemostats, three hydraulic jacks, a bellows, several sets of screwdrivers, drills and bits, a portable compressed gas cylinder, a box of plastic explosives and shape charges, a tape measure, a giant Swiss Army knife, tin snips, tongs, tweezers, three vises, a wire stripper, X-acto knives, a pick, a bunch of mallets, a nut driver set, hose clamps, a set of end mills, a set of jeweler's screwdrivers, a magnifying glass, all kinds of tape, a plumber's bob and ream, a sewing kit, scissors, sieves, a lathe, levels of all sizes, long-nosed pliers, vise-grip pliers, a tap-and-die set, three shovels, a compressor, a generator, a welding-and-cutting set, a wheelbarrow - and so on. And — Kim Stanley Robinson

The walls of the rational, empirical world are famously porous. What come through are dreams, imaginings, inspirations, visions, revelations. There is no use in stooping over these with a magnifying lens. — Wendell Berry

Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained — Samuel Johnson

Lies are ants, the truth is the sun, and questions are a magnifying glass waiting to be picked up by the curious. — Craig Stone

In play, the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behaviour; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself. Play contains in a concentrated form, as in the focus of a magnifying glass, all developmental tendencies; it is as if the child tries to jump above his usual level. — Lev S. Vygotsky

Honoring Christ, magnifying Christ, making much of Christ. That was the meaning of Paul's life. It should be the meaning of ours. And Paul prays it will be the meaning of his death as well. We live and we die to make much of Christ. — John Piper

Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses. — George Eliot

I love the whole kind of notion of transformation for me is (what) excites me about not only acting, but storytelling. I love, I love that notion of a slightly larger-than-life artistic truth, you know, magnifying real emotional truth (or) finding something about human condition (which), you wouldn't necessarily think you can learn from characters such as Kong or Gollum, but actually they are, you know, these huge amplifications of a human psyche and I suppose those kind of roles have always attracted me definitely. — Andy Serkis

This apparent hurly-burly and disorder turn out, after all, to reproduce real life with its fantastic ways more accurately than the most carefully studied out drama of manners. Every man is in himself all humanity, and if he writes what occurs to him he succeeds better than if he copies, with the help of a magnifying glass, objects placed outside of him. — Theophile Gautier

I'm terrified of getting involved with someone who disappoints me or leaves me empty and alone. I'm terrified of rejection, so I set my expectations so high that they can never be met, and I dig around with a magnifying glass looking for flaws in very person I date. There's always a flaw to exploit, and I'll find it so I never have to get too close. — Rachel Machacek

If you think you can organize your own salvation you are magnifying the very sin that keeps you from it. — David Brooks

If you have given up your heart for the Tower, Roland, you have already lost. A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast. To be a beast is perhaps bearable, although the man who has become one will surely pay hell's own price in the end, but if you should gain your object? What if you should, heartless, storm the Dark Tower and win it? What could you do except degenerate from beast to monster? To gain one's object as a beast would only be bitterly comic, like giving a magnifying glass to an elephant. But to gain one's object as a monster ... To pay hell is one thing. But do you want to own it? — Stephen King

Obedience does not consist in paying God back and thus turning grace into a trade. Obedience comes from trusting in God for more grace - future grace - and thus magnifying the infinite resources of God's love and power. — John Piper

As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point to set fire to the human spirit. — Thomas Merton

I want to get a vending machine, with fun sized candy bars, and the glass in front is a magnifying glass. You'll be mad, but it will be too late. — Mitch Hedberg

The last and most painful irony is that the two longtime rival armies in the securitization market - the investment banks and the GSEs - would end up magnifying each other's sins rather than keeping each other in check. — Bethany McLean

It's only when you look at an ant through a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realize how often they burst into flames. — Harry Hill

Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person. — Patti Smith

Often I'd take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face. — David Sedaris

Does a mirror preserve everything that has been reflected in it? Is there a record of light, thin membranes compressed layer upon layer that one has to ease apart with the finger-tips so that the colors don't dissipate, so that the moments don't blot and the hours don't run together into inconsequential splotches? So that a song of preserved years lies in your palm, a miniature of your life and times, with every detail meticulous in clear, chanting angel-fine enamel, as on the old manuscripts, at which you can peer through a magnifying glass and marvel at so much effort? So many tears for nothing? For light? For bygone moments? — Marlene Van Niekerk

Now individual consciousness, as typified in human beings, has great advantages and great disadvantages. Individuality means a narrowing, and narrowness can be useful. It is good for close-up work. We have invented the magnifying glass and the microscope to narrow our vision, because narrowness makes for precision. But narrowness also makes for a failure of purpose, for exhaustion of the will; for purpose depends upon a broad vision, a clear sight of one's objective. — Colin Wilson

I was honored and pleased that she was confiding in me in this fashion. I met her eyes, and for the first time I perceived that there was something broken behind them, like a tiny crack in a diamond that becomes visible only when viewed through a magnifying lens; normally it is hidden by the brilliance of the stone. I wanted to know what it was, what had caused her to create the pearl of which she had spoken. But I thought it would be presumptuous of me to ask; such things are revealed by a person when and to whom they choose. So I attempted to convey through my expression alone my desire to understand her and said nothing further. — Mohsin Hamid

The Human brain is a hotbed of imagination, capable of taking a simple stimulus and magnifying it many times greater than it is ... let your mind run wild! — Red Phoenix

Don't waste even a minute magnifying your perceived inadequacies. You can't do it all. Why berate yourself for not achieving the impossible? — Karen Finerman

Only the myopic magnifying lens of the television camera maintains the demonstration, march, and picketing as a modality of political expression; they have otherwise faded into meaninglessness since the end of the Vietnam War with the shift of urban form and activity. These acts and activities have been displaced over the past decade from the square and main street to the windswept emptiness of City Hall Mall or Federal Building Plaza. To encounter a ragtag mob of protesters in such places today renders them enve more pathetic, their marginality enforced by a physcial displacement into so unimportant, uninhabited, and unloved a civic location. — Trevor Boddy

He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James.
"No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader. — George Eliot

One time Marian showed me some sand. When she gave it to me, she said, "These are very interesting stones." It just looked like sand, but she asked me to took through a magnifying glass. Then those small stones were as interesting as the stones I have in my office. The stones in my office are bigger, but under the glass the sand was quite similar.
If you say, "This is a rock from the moon", you will be very much interested in it. Actually I don't think there is a great difference between rocks we have on the earth and those on the moon. Even if you go to Mars, I think you will find the same rocks.
I am quite sure about it.
So if you want to find something interesting, instead of hopping around the universe like this, enjoy your life in every moment, observe what you have now, and truly live in your surroundings. — Shunryu Suzuki

When Francie brought a ticket and a dime back and pushed them across the counter, he gave her the wrapped shirt and two lichee nuts in exchange. Francie loved these lichee nuts. There was a crisp easily broken shell and the soft sweet meat inside. Inside the meat was a hard stone that no child had ever been able to break open. It was said that this stone contained a smaller stone and that the smaller stone contained a smaller stone which contained a yet smaller stone and so on. It was said that soon the stones got so small you could only see them with a magnifying glass and those smaller ones got still smaller until you couldn't see them with anything but they were always there and would never stop coming. It was Francie's first experience with infinity. — Betty Smith

A good deal of editing a manuscript looks like mechanical work, as if anyone with time on their hands and a magnifying glass could do it. But at a certain point, you need a strong interpretive conviction and, as you say, an "intangible" relationship to what you are doing. — Oliver Harris

Am touched that you are trying to comprehend me. A friend could not be more loving. I am more touched, still, that you are trying to understand - through rational thought - that which cannot be understood at all. There is no exact principle to be found here. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground - unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive at revelation on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way." "I do have a dreadful love for understanding," Alma admitted. "Indeed you do love it, though it is not dreadful, — Elizabeth Gilbert

We stink more of the world than we stink of sack cloth and ashes. A lot of contemporary churches today would feel more at home in a movie house rather than in a house of prayer, more afraid of holy living than of sinning, know more about money than magnifying Christ in our bodies. It is so compromised that holiness and living a sin-free life is heresy to the modern church. The modern church is, quite simply, just the world with a Christian T-shirt on! — Nicky Cruz

A poor self-image is the magnifying glass that can transform a trivial mistake or an imperfection into an overwhelming symbol of personal defeat. — David D. Burns

When Galileo made his astonishing discovery of mountains on the moon, his telescope didn't actually have enough magnifying power to support that finding. Instead, he recognized the zigzag pattern separating the light and dark areas of the moon. Other astronomers were looking through similar telescopes, but only Galileo "was able to appreciate the implications of the dark and light regions," Simonton notes. He had the necessary depth of experience in physics and astronomy, but also breadth of experience in painting and drawing. Thanks to artistic training in a technique called chiaroscuro, which focuses on representations of light and shade, Galileo was able to detect mountains where others did not. — Adam M. Grant

It had been Bosch's experience that when you looked back at a life, you used a magnifying glass. Everything was bigger, amplified. — Michael Connelly

I watched TV religiously when I was a kid, but nowadays - with the Internet - there's so many people writing about TV on the Internet, that everything's sort of under a magnifying glass. — Oscar Nunez

If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade,
the droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real element, and forcing it on our distinct notice,
we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the most important long-term changes that arose as a result of this case was the creation of the "murder bag" for use by police. Spilsbury had been shocked to see police officers having to remove rotting flesh and body parts from the scene of the crime using their bare hands. To address this problem, a series of meetings were held between Scotland Yard and Spilsbury, which led to the development of the murder bag, which contained rubber gloves, tweezers, evidence bags, a magnifying glass, compass, ruler, and swabs. Such a bag is now an essential part of any major inquiry and may contain various items, depending on the specific department. Common modern additions include a fiberglass brush, lifting tape, powder, utility knife, scissors, a blood test, a semen test, swabs, alcohol hand spray, scalpels, and goggles — Nigel McCrery

Now one day - and we know the day, August 1, 1774 - Priestley put calx of mercury underneath a glass. He focused the sun's hot rays on the calx with his new 12" diameter magnifying glass. It began to give off a gas. The calx of mercury changed back into mercury, and Priestley trapped the gas with his pneumatic trough. And then he sat and looked, and thought, and looked some more. He happened to have a lighted candle nearby. Without really thinking about it Priestley exposed the candle to the gas. The flame suddenly flared into brilliance! What was this wondrous gas? If — Benjamin Wiker

I am more touched, still, that you are trying to understand - through rational thought - that which cannot be understood at all. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground, unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way. — Elizabeth Gilbert

When I was little, I would burn ants with a magnifying glass. But now that I'm older, I'm more of a cat guy. — Anthony Jeselnik

When it comes to such open-heart reflection, I'm a firm believer in the observer effect, which states that anything you try to observe is automatically changed by the mere fact that you're looking at it. The way I see it, if you try to study your emotions on a microscopic level, the best you can do is understand how it feels to hold the magnifying glass. — Neal Shusterman

Christ was the son, I am a magnifying glass, and you are an ant. — Jarod Kintz

Drama is drama, and it's really ... if it's something small, you put a magnifying glass up to it; if it's something big, you use a wide lens. — Gore Verbinski

Everyone thinks his family is strange," Del said, scratching Scootie behind the ears, "but it's just that ... because we're closer to the people we love, we tend to see them through a magnifying glass, through a thicker lens of emotion, and we exaggerate their eccentricities. — Dean Koontz

I want you to think back to when you were a kid. Remember the day you learned you could burn ants with a magnifying glass? Oh, what a great day that was! You got to be God. You decided who lived, who died. I must've burned ants for an hour, just laughing. Then I saw one on my arm. Let me tell you something, when you burn yourself with a magnifying glass, you're on your own. You can't even tell your mom, because she gives that face, Oh, he is that stupid. — Bill Engvall

In quixotically trying to conquer death doctors all too frequently do no good for their patients' "ease" but at the same time they do harm instead by prolonguing and even magnifying patients' dis-ease. — Jack Kevorkian

The only line that's wrong in Shakespeare is 'holding a mirror up to nature.' You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art. — Montgomery Clift

the city is humanity intensified - a magnifying glass that brings out the very best and worst of human nature — Timothy J. Keller

Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy. — Cory Doctorow

This is the ultimate narcissistic white-girl game. I would picture how I would handle the attack differently. Or the same. Inevitably, I'd think about my own death, which next to staring at your face in a magnifying mirror is probably the worst thing you can do for yourself. The ambulance-chasing aspect combined with the Monday-morning quarterbacking of it all is the luxury afforded to those of us left untouched by trauma. Sometimes I would use these tragedy-porn shows to unlock deep feelings or cut through the numbness. I would read terrible stories to punish myself for my lucky life. Some real deep Irish Catholic shit. Either way, it was all gross and all bad for my health. — Amy Poehler

I just feel like I understand Cameron Diaz better than I ever have before, and I don't like it. I don't like to see everything I see. It's like a magnifying mirror only soulful, and I'm not looking at her, I'm looking at us, you know? And our pores are huge. — Julie Klausner

Sometimes I daydream about merging my body with my computer so that I can more fully enter the landscapes of Google Earth, lush surface world without pollution or traffic, planet seen from the vantage point of space and roving surveillance vehicles, a motionless field, magnifying the normal imperfections and irregularities of the earth so that the planet is rendered transparent, misshapen and yet intoxicating in its languishing distinction from the real. — Andrew Durbin

That's the problem with wishes, they ensnare you. In fairy tales they're nothing but trouble, magnifying the greed and vanity of the person for whom they are granted. — David Sedaris

There were absolutely amazing photographs everywhere, on everyone's Facebook page and everyone's iPhone and Instagram, just floating around in cyberspace for eternity. People took hundreds and thousands of digital pictures; one or two, even twenty or a hundred, were bound to be great. All anyone had to do was click through them all and post the ones they liked, deleting the rest. But using film meant you never knew what was going to be a good picture, let alone a great one, until you were standing there looking at a contact sheet with a magnifying glass and deciding which to print.
Maybe nobody cared anymore, but then again, writers probably felt the same way when word processors were invented. Anyone with a story and a keyboard could write their memoir now, write the great American novel, or tweet a 140-character trope that gets retweeted and it read by hundreds of people every hour of every day. — Nora Raleigh Baskin

I met her eyes, and for the first time I perceived that there was something broken behind them, like a tiny crack
in a diamond that becomes visible only when viewed through a magnifying lens; normally it is hidden by the brilliance of the stone. — Mohsin Hamid

Life is shining a light through a magnifying glass on me, looking for me to stumble. I think that's my biggest fear. — Lily Cole

Invite the Sacred to participate in your joy in little things, as well as in your agony over the great ones. There are as many miracles to be seen through a microscope as through a telescope. Start with little things seen through the magnifying glass of wonder, and just as a magnifying glass can focus the sunlight into a burning beam that can set a leaf aflame, so can your focused wonder set you ablaze with insight. Find the light in each other and just fan it. — Alice O. Howell

If we love God's fame and are committed to magnifying His name above all things, we cannot be indifferent to world missions. — John Piper

It seems cruel," she said, "that after a while nothing matters ... any more than these little things that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labelled: 'Use unknown.'"
"Yes, but meanwhile -"
"Ah, meanwhile - — Edith Wharton

He walked from one end of the basement to the other, the lamplight magnifying his shadow. It turned him into a giant on the wall, walking back and forth. When he stopped pacing, his shadow loomed behind him, watching. Someone was always watching. — Markus Zusak

The more power you use-

-the more detailed the observation of your specimen.

The more power you have, the narrower your field of vision.

Exactly, you say. The more power you have, my friends, the less you see of the whole. — Rosemary Nixon

In all that you do, give the best of yourself so that your spirit is returned to you, and offer the best of yourself to each person so that they can return your love. You'll see that the world will become a magnifying mirror, reflecting back at you everything that you gave without self-interest, and more. Because the only way to surround yourself with smiles is to smile, and the only way to surround yourself with love is to give it to others. — A.G. Roemmers

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase. — Stephen R. Covey

I find mirrors detestable; I dislike seeing myself. Of course, there's a mirror in the bathroom, but it's a magnifying one for shaving. Photographs are fine, but I don't like mirrors because they take you by surprise. — Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

He let out a short laugh. You sound like Sherlock Holmes. You gonna pull out a magnifying glass? A pipe, maybe? — James Dashner

But at some point in her passage, the trees began to change. They stretched taller, and the soft, pale bark darkened, roughened. She put her hand to a tree and touched the lichen growing dark green upon brown, and it felt like old cork, dry and crumbling. Here the sun mellowed, took on the cast of late afternoon, and the shadows seemed to fall a bit longer; the forest had sunk into a deeper silence, magnifying what sounds did arise. The sudden, quick crash of a fox bounding through the brush was as loud as the slam of a great wooden door. — Malinda Lo

The one thing about kids is that you never really know exactly what they're thinking or how they're seeing. After writing about kids, which is a little bit like putting the experience under a magnifying glass, you realize you have no idea how you thought as a kid. I've come to the conclusion that most of the things that we remember about our childhood are lies. We all have memories that stand out from when we were kids, but they're really just snapshots. You can't remember how you reacted because your whole head is different when you stand aside. — Stephen King

Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses which make little things large, of dwarfs giants, of suspicions truths. — Miguel De Cervantes