Not The Number Of Friends Quotes & Sayings

I have tried, with little success, to get some of my friends to understand my amazement that the abstraction of integers for counting is both possible and useful. Is it not remarkable that 6 sheep plus 7 sheep makes 13 sheep; that 6 stones plus 7 stones make 13 stones? Is it not a miracle that the universe is so constructed that such a simple abstraction as a number is possible? To me this is one of the strongest examples of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Indeed, I find it both strange and unexplainable. — Richard Hamming

He loved how much they loved each other. It was the thing he thought about when he woke up scared in the middle of the night. Not that they loved him - they were his parents, they had to love him. That they loved each other. They didn't have to do that. None of his friends' parents were still together, and in every case, that seemed like the number one thing that had gone wrong with his friends' lives. But Park's parents loved each other. They kissed each other on the mouth, no matter who was watching. What were the chances you'd ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible. How did his parents get so lucky? — Rainbow Rowell

I was going to say 'my friend Stuart', but I suppose he's not a friend any more. I seem to have lost a number of friends in the last few years. I don't mean that I've fallen out with them, in any dramatic way. We've just decided not to stay in touch. And that's what it's been: a decision, a conscious decision, because it's not difficult to stay in touch with people nowadays, there are so many different ways of doing it. But as you get older, I think that some friendships start to feel increasingly redundant. You just find yourself asking, "What's the point?" And then you stop. — Jonathan Coe

Britney's a really cool girl, We were really close back when we were on the Mickey Mouse Club, and even watching her in interviews I find myself missing her lately. I'm really proud of her, how far she's come and what she's been able to accomplish. And to keep it together: It's so crazy out on the road. I gotta give her credit for not just going berserk and letting everybody get to her. I just passed on my number to her through somebody. It's good to have friends in the business who know what you're going through. — Christina Aguilera

In a country ruled by laws, it seemed to me that nothing was more important than removing politics from the process of choosing judges. During previous administrations in California, governors had often handed out judgeships to friends and cronies like prizes at a company picnic. Not only had this produced a lot of inferior judges, it had placed a number of partisans on the bench who believed that putting on the black robes of a judge gave them a license to rewrite the laws. I wanted judges who would interpret the Constitution, not rewrite it. — Ronald Reagan

Such contentedness and change of view in regard to every kind of life does the infusion of reason bring about. When Alexander heard from Anaxarchus of the infinite number of worlds, he wept, and when his friends asked him what was the matter, he replied, Is it not a matter for tears that, when the number of worlds is infinite, I have not conquered one? — Plutarch

I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude, or they would not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as they would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not, like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them. — Benjamin Franklin

It is a way now, approximately, of being at home. The forum has become one of the most consistent places of her life, like a familiar cafe that exists someone outside geography and beyond time zones.
There are perhaps twenty regular posters on F:F:F:, and some muchlarger and uncounted number of lurkers. And right now there are three people in Chat. But there's no way of knowing exactly who until you are in there, and the chat room she finds not so comforting. It's strange even with friends, like sitting in a pitch-dark cellar conversing with people at a distance of about fifteen feet. the hectic speed, and the brevity of the lines in the thread, plus the feeling that everyone is talking at once, at counmter-purposes, deter her. — William Gibson

Whatever the number of a man's friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many. — Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends; not on number, but the choice of friends. — Abraham Cowley

At such moments Gilberte's plaits used to brush my cheek. They seemed to me, in the fineness of their grain, at once natural and supernatural, and in the strength of their constructed tracery, a matchless work of art, in the composition of which had been used the very grass of Paradise. To a section of them, even infinitely minute, what celestial herbary would I not have given as a reliquary. But since I never hoped to obtain an actual fragment of those plaits, if at least I had been able to have their photograph, how far more precious than one of a sheet of flowers traced by Vinci's pencil! To acquire one of these, I stooped - with friends of the Swanns, and even with photographers - to servilities which did not procure for me what I wanted, but tied me for life to a number of extremely tiresome people. — Marcel Proust

I married a woman from New Orleans, so I had family here. Post-Katrina, I had a number of friends call me up and say they wanted to do something to help the community - not just Habitat for Humanity or Red Cross, we've done that, but what can we do for the community. — James Coulter

There was a way in which my grandmother's true self was not these guests' business; no one's true self was the business of more than a very small number of family members or close friends. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I'm really bad with trolls because I have a lot of really intense friends who are not necessarily doing things so legally. If I get trolled, [my friends will send me] an email with the person's Social Security number, phone number, pictures of his family, his business, his spouse. I see this person in his totality, and I feel so bad. I shouldn't have that power. — Margaret Cho

Oddly enough, Dame Edna is not interested in show business. Her friends in Los Angeles are mostly in the world of petroleum. She used to have some acting friends. Sadly, Joan Rivers has passed on. Larry Hagman was a close friend. A number of others. — Barry Humphries

How to Leave the Planet 1. Phone NASA. Their phone number is (713) 483-3111. Explain that it's very important that you get away as soon as possible. 2. If they do not cooperate, phone any friend you may have in the White House - (202) 456-1414 - to have a word on your behalf with the guys at NASA. 3. If you don't have any friends in the White House, phone the Kremlin (ask the overseas operator for 0107-095-295-9051). They don't have any friends there either (at least, none to speak of), but they do seem to have a little influence, so you may as well try. 4. If that also fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His telephone number is 011-39-6-6982, and I gather his switchboard is infallible. 5. If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and explain that it's vitally important you get away before your phone bill arrives. Douglas Adams — Douglas Adams

One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention. — Clifton Fadiman

We are all hostages of time. We each have the same number of minutes and hours to live within a day, yet to me it didn't feel equally doled out. My illness brought me such an abundance of time that time was nearly all I had. My friends had so little time that I often wished I could give them what time I could not use. It was perplexing how in losing health I had gained something so coveted but to so little purpose. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

The person with the most contacts does not win a prize. Number of friends, likes or fans is only measured by those who want to boast of more contacts. But a contact alone is worth nothing. The real prize comes to those who create the most interactions with the contacts they already have. These interactions sometimes gain them additional followers, usually lead to more interpersonal interactions and will ultimately bring in sales. — Brian Basilico

There are certain things in a man's past which he does not divulge to everybody but, perhaps, only to his friends. Again there are certain things he will not divulge even to his friends; he will divulge them perhaps only to himself, and that, too, as a secret. But, finally, there are things which he is afraid to divulge even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things in his mind. I can put it even this way: the more decent a man is, the larger will the number of such things be. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But I was in this bowling league with a good number of friends who came from across the line. We got the phone call that the border had been closed, and that absolutely nobody was being allowed to cross
not parents, not children, not anybody. Who knew what disguise the assassin had used. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody's business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady's problems, you don't go crying to her with yours - you can't pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don't want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me? — Kathryn Stockett

She was afraid that it was a moral issue, and that was one of his weaknesses. He was Salander's friend. She knew her brother. She knew that he was loyal to the point of foolhardiness once he had made someone a friend, even if the friend was impossible and obviously flawed. She also the friend was impossible and obviously flawed. She also knew that he could accept any number of idiocies from his friends, but that there was a boundary and it could not be infringed. Where exactly this boundary was seemed to vary from one person to another, but she knew he had broken completely with people who had previously been close friends because they had done something that he regarded as beyond the pale. And he was inflexible. The break was for ever. — Stieg Larsson

I know a lot of people who really aren't beautiful because their attitudes are very nasty ... Whether I make the 50 most beautiful list or not, I'm always going to feel like I'm number one most beautiful to myself ... I get that from my mom, and my daddy and my friends who raised me. — Queen Latifah

Judge not the value of a friend by the number of boy- or girlfriends they helped you get. But by the number of books they've recommended to you. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The pursuit of personal happiness and the production of healthy children are two radically contrasting projects, which love maliciously confuses us into thinking of as one for a requisite number of years. We should not be surprised by marriages between people who would never have been friends — Alain De Botton

I hope you will like the little things I have sent you. You seem to be most interested in Railways just now, so I am sending you mostly things of that sort. I send as much love as ever, in fact more. We have both, the old Polar Bear and I, enjoyed having so many nice letters from you and your pets. If you think we have not read them you are wrong; but if you find that not many of the things you asked for have come, and not perhaps quite as many as sometimes, remember that this Christmas all over the world there are a terrible number of poor and starving people. I (and also my Green Brother) have had to do some collecting of food and clothes, and toys too, for the children whose fathers and mothers and friends cannot give them anything, sometimes not even dinner. I know yours won't forget you. So, my dears, I hope you will be happy this Christmas and not quarrel, and will have some good games with your Railway all together. Don't forget old Father Christmas, when you light your tree. — J.R.R. Tolkien

So, where are you from?" Agent Carson asked Reyes. "Originally?"
I whirled around to face him again, this time pinning him with a warning glare. Carson was an FBI agent, but I was all about stealth. Surely she wouldn't pick up on my silent threat.
He studied my mouth, not the least bit worried about my warning glare, then said at last, "Here and there."
I relaxed against the seatback. He didn't say hell. Thank God he didn't say hell. It was always hard to explain to friends how, exactly, one's fiance was born and raised in the eternal flames of damnation. How his father was, in fact, public enemy number one. And how he escaped from hell and was born on earth as a human to be with his true love. As romantic as it all sounded, it was difficult to articulate without garnering a visit from men with butterfly nets. — Darynda Jones

I know what the value [of storytelling] is to me
varied and huge, giving me everything from delight, to knowledge, to access to friends and colleagues, a desirable identity through valued work, escape from pain, and a steady income. Not bad, for something so intangible as making and selling dream-by-number kits. — Lois McMaster Bujold

The truth about any artist, however terrible, is better than the silence ... I know many writers fight fanatically to keep their published self separate from their private reality ... But I've always thought of that as something out of our social, time-serving side; not our true artistic ones. I don't see how the "lies" we write and the "lies" we live can or should be divided. They are seamless, one canvas, for me. While we live we can keep them apart, but not command the future to do the same. The outrage some Thomas Hardy fans have shown over all the revelations about the private man seems to me hypocritical in the extreme. They hugely enrich our understanding of him ... I have had to convince a number of friends and relatives that the kindest act to the [writer] is remembering them - and that all art comes from a human being, not out of mysterious thin air.
(Letter to Jo Jones, September 15, 1980, arguing for the preservation of John Collier's personal papers) — John Fowles

Something that is very hard to learn and accept about real life is that a lot of people, a surprising number of people, don't really care about anyone but themselves. They pretend to care, and they can go through the motions a little bit for a little while, but when real and sad things happen that last longer than a few days, they lose interest fast. It is best to not have these people be your best friends, because they are terrible. Unfortunately, they are everywhere, and, to make things worse, they sometimes procreate. — Katie Heaney

A good man measures his life not in the number of his years but in the quality of his friends. — Todd Stocker

We were facing a great number of uncertainties and dangers. First, whether the Russians would treat us decently, us who had lived through the German occupation; whether the survivors from Transnistria would come back; how many had survived the retreat of the Germans; whether our friends and relatives in the Russian army and those who had fled voluntarily would come home; whether any of them had survived the almost three years of war; whether we'll have food to survive. The Russian military, in pursuit of the retreating Germans, were angry, aggressive and contemptuous of the local population. The ubiquitous question: Why did they kill all the other Jews and left you alive? That thought implied that the survivors were all collaborators of the Nazis, whether they were Jewish or not. — Pearl Fichman