Preparatory Quotes & Sayings

A consultation process is what some authority sets in motion preparatory to doing what it intended all along. — Keith Waterhouse

A morning breeze blew through the campus of Prufrock Preparatory School, rustling the brown lawn and knocking against the stone arch with the motto printed on it.
"Memento Mori"-"Remember you will die." The Baudelaire orphans looked up at the motto and vowed that before they died, they would solve this dark and complicated mystery that cast a shadow over their lives. — Lemony Snicket

To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It's very important to understand that we never do the same thing twice; each of our projects is unique. We'll never do another 'Gates.' Each project is a unique image. We do not know in advance how the work will look. I do preparatory drawings, but they are only projections of our vision. — Christo

Suddenly, as Avis clung to her father's neck and ear while, with a casual arm, the man enveloped his lumpy and large offspring, I saw Lolita's smile lose all its light and become a frozen little shadow of itself, and the fruit knife slipped off the table and struck her with its silver handle a freak blow on the ankle which made her gasp, and crouch head forward, and then, jumping on one leg, her face awful with the preparatory grimace which children hold till the tears gush, she was gone - to be followed at once and consoled in the kitchen by Avis who had such a wonderful fat pink dad and a small chubby brother, and a brand-new baby sister, and a home, and two grinning dogs, and Lolita had nothing. — Vladimir Nabokov

... Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as interesting as his character and points of view. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

I enjoy the preparatory elements of travel - packing my bags and choosing my outfits - but my favourite part is getting there. — Dominic Monaghan

Another round," she goads, and holds out a hand for the cards. "I bet a week of laundry."
Across from us, Cal stops his preparatory stretching to snort. "You think Mare does laundry?"
"Do you, Your Highness?" I snap back, grinning. He just pretends not to hear me. — Victoria Aveyard

In one point of view, we, the abolitionists and colored people, should meet [the Dred Scott] decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the downfall and complete overthrow of the whole slave system. — Frederick Douglass

We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time. — E.L. Doctorow

The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs. Norris had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others, when Sir Thomas's assurances of their both being alive and well made it necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while. — Jane Austen

For philosophy is the study of wisdom, and wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human; and their causes." Wisdom is therefore queen of philosophy, as philosophy is of preparatory culture. For if philosophy "professes control of the tongue, and the belly, and the parts below the belly, it is to be chosen on its own account. But it appears more worthy of respect and pre-eminence, if cultivated for the honour and knowledge of God. — Clement Of Alexandria

We should remember that with such preparatory reading, a good pace to maintain is to try and finish a book every week or two. This may seem intimidating at first, and if it were considered a hobby, it would be overwhelming. But the task is the education of your children, which is not a hobby but a vocation. The word vocation comes from the Latin verb voco, which means "I call." A person's vocation is his calling; a parent's vocation is to learn in order to teach. — Wesley Callihan

It is very hard to talk to a person who believes that he or she has the moral high ground. You have to prevent that the Politically Correct individual views you as somebody who doesn't HAVE an idea on morality. Therefore, the first step to successfully debate the left is to establish an alternative moral position and explain to the opponent that this moral position is at least equally legitimate as his or her moral position. You can think of this as a preparatory step that needs to be taken before the real debate can actually begin. — Paul Nielsen

this life is a kind of preparatory school for the great life that is awaiting us beyond death and time. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

I went to a school that was founded on a lot of very radical ideals of how education should be changed. But what's happening to schools like that sort of all over the country is in economic pressure they're becoming more and more preparatory because that's what people will really pay the money for private schooling for now. — Ezra Miller

The Christmas parties were orgies of drinking and singing and groping and pawing. Cartoon staffers invested their own money in preparatory liquor. — Joseph Barbera

Refusing! And she is after me with a broom, trying to sweep my rotten carcass into the open. Why, shades of Gregor Samsa! Hello Alex, goodbye Franz! "You better tell me you're sorry, you, or else! And I don't mean maybe either!" I am five, maybe six, and she is or-elsing me and not-meaning-maybe as though the firing squad is already outside, lining the street with newspaper preparatory to my execution. — Philip Roth

It was when I entered the military preparatory school and put on its uniform, that a feeling of strength came to me, as if I had become master of my own destiny. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

The preparatory education of candidates for knighthood was long and arduous. — Thomas Bulfinch

I was at the Royal Art School. That was a preparatory school specially for art teachers. You see, it was not so much for the development of artists. But we had there terribly stiff training. — Josef Albers

But Brinker came in. I think he made a point of visiting all the rooms near him the first day. "Well, Gene," his beaming face appeared around the door. Brinker looked the standard preparatory school article in his gray gabardine suit with square, hand-sewn-looking jacket pockets, a conservative necktie, and dark brown cordovan shoes. His face was all straight lines - eyebrows, mouth, nose, everything - and he carried his six feet of height straight as well. He looked but happened not to be athletic, being too busy with politics, arrangements, and offices. There was nothing idiosyncratic about Brinker unless you saw him from behind; I did as he turned to close the door after him. The flaps of his gabardine jacket parted slightly over his healthy rump, and it is that, without any sense of derision at all, that I recall as Brinker's salient characteristic, those healthy, determined, not over-exaggerated but definite and substantial buttocks. — John Knowles

This preparatory sort of idealism is the one that, as I just suggested, Berkeley made prominent, and, after a fashion familiar. I must state it in my own way, although one in vain seeks to attain novelty in illustrating so frequently described a view. — Josiah Royce

Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird. Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people's ideas, it's what we are used to! Am I right, am I right? cried Razumihin, — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The object of Sufi preparatory study, however, being to illustrate, expose and out-manoeuvre superficial ambition. — Idries Shah

While photography to Cartier-Bresson is constantly an intuitive process, it is never purely instinctive. It is founded on continuous intellection, on ceaseless consideration during all moments previous to, or preparatory for, the pressing. It does not only operate in the blinding flash of a moment seized; it works all the time. The snatched picture merely cuts across the vein of observable incident or accident which is always beating, whether or not the fingers actually press. — Lincoln Kirstein

Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautiful machines. This makes us the greatest country in the world. Unemployment is a myth. Dissatisfaction is a fable. In preparatory school America is beautiful. It is the gem of the ocean and it is too bad. It is bad because people believe it all. Because they become indifferent. Because they marry and reproduce and vote and they know nothing. — John Cheever

There are two bodies - the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design — Edgar Allan Poe

I was a good student with mathematical ability and interests. As such, I took the usual college preparatory program in high school for one looking to become an engineer: all the available courses in mathematics and science. — Dale T. Mortensen

It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England. — Thomas B. Macaulay

She couldn't picture anyone falling madly in love with such a person as Fish. What a name, Fish ... Fish: think cold, slippery, detached. Benedict: think dry scholarly monk from the Dark Ages. Denniston: think English preparatory school, stolid country squire. Nothing about his name sounded the least bit romantic. — Regina Doman

Every premeditated murder is always governed by a preparatory ceremonial and is always followed by a propitiatory ceremonial. The meaning of both eludes the murderers mind. — Jean Genet

The correct statement of the laws of physics involves some very unfamiliar ideas which require advanced mathematics for their description. Therefore, one needs a considerable amount of preparatory training even to learn what the words mean. — Richard P. Feynman

Not every writer needs a plan, but in my experience many believe they don't need a plan when, frankly, they do. I was that kind of writer: I thought, ha ha ha, stupid people saying I should outline or do preparatory work, those silly assholes with their misunderstanding of my genius. If you find you're lost in the woods of your own fiction and feel like giving up
it might be because you have no plan. You can retrofit one. Doing that will help put you back on track and give your current writing a jolt of needed organization. — Chuck Wendig

Preparatory human beings. - I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honor to courage above all! For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day - the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences. — Friedrich Nietzsche

For true art there is no such thing as preparatory schooling, but there are certainly preparations; the best, however, is when the least pupil takes a share in master's work. Colour-grinders have turned into very good artists. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Playing scales is like a boxer skipping rope or punching a bag. It's not the thing in itself; it's preparatory to the activity — Barney Kessel

To teach a child an instrument without first giving him preparatory training and without developing singing, reading and dictating to the highest level along with the playing is to build upon sand. — Zoltan Kodaly

(The subjects of What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life) have convinced me that past failing can as easily prove preparatory as predictive. Age does not of itself limit on enable us. The choice is ours. — Bruce Frankel

The first years of my life are of no imprtance. At the age of nine, I was packed off to a preparatory school in the South of England, and for the next four years led the usual life of a preparatory-school boy. I indulged in midnight feasts and was periodically beaten. — Ludovic Kennedy

The love of our private friends is the only preparatory exercise for the love of all men. — John Henry Newman

Dealing with our negative emotions is a crucial preparatory step to taking effective action. You have to grapple with the hard stuff, with the hard realities of the world. This builds your confidence that you can handle those intense situations when they arise. — Tim DeChristopher

Mr Abrahams was a preparatory schoolmaster of the old-fashioned sort. He cared neither for work nor games, but fed his boys well and saw that they did not misbehave. The rest he left to the parents, and did not speculate how much the parents were leaving to him. Amid mutual compliments the boys passed out into a public school, healthy but backward, to receive upon undefended flesh the first blows of the world. — E. M. Forster

Be convinced that, if man were able to reach the end without preparatory studies, such studies would not be preparatory but tiresome and utterly superfluous. — Maimonides

A number of revelators and UFO contactees have since mentioned to me that just before the appearance of an entity they were aware of a strange buzzing sound. Witnesses of unexplained aerial phenomenon have also referred to a buzzing or rushing sound shortly before the 'flying saucer' appeared over them. I am also reminded that great deal of poltergeist activity produces a preparatory 'signal' of a buzzing, rasping, or winding noise. — Brad Steiger

Predilection, n. The preparatory stage of disillusion. — Ambrose Bierce

So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear. — Johann Gottfried Herder

We cannot count on strategic warning. We might get it, and we might be able to take useful preparatory actions that would be impossible without it. We certainly ought to plan to exploit such a possibility should it occur. — Anonymous

The reason is still difficult to explain, but it is not complicated. That inner voice that will not be denied, once we learn to listen to it, had whispered since the beginning, "Business is not what your life is about. Founding VISA and being its chief executive officer is something you must do, but it's only preparatory." — Dee Hock

Thus, though Christians are in no way bound by the Jewish ceremonial or civil laws (because they were all in some way preparatory for Christ), we are still under the Ten Commandments in one way, though not in two other ways. — Peter Kreeft

The other aspect of idealism is the one which gives us our notion of the absolute Self. To it the first is only preparatory. This second aspect is the one which from Kant, until the present time, has formed the deeper problem of thought. — Josiah Royce

Qinghua was first established as a preparatory school in 1911. In 1928, it became a university. In 1929, my father joined Qinghua as a professor, so that was also the year that I moved to that campus because my father brought the whole family along. — Chen-Ning Yang

The secret associations, the schools, in the name of principles, and the middle classes, in the name of interests, were approaching preparatory to dashing themselves together, — Victor Hugo

He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within - or sometimes only maim him and distort him! — Charles Dickens

All who in this world render true service to God or man receive a preparatory training in the school of sorrow. The weightier the trust and the higher the service, the closer is the test and the more severe the discipline. — Ellen G. White

Please excuse the torn edges of this note. I am writing to you from inside the shack the Baudelaire orphans were forced to live in while at Prufrock Preparatory School, and I am afraid that some of the crabs tried to snatch my stationery away from me. On Sunday night, please purchase a ticket for seat 10-J at the Erratic Opera Company's performance of the opera Faute de Mieux. During Act Five, use a sharp knife to rip open the cushion of your seat. There you should find — Lemony Snicket

The first Sunday after my coming to the plantation, he called them together, and began to read the twelfth chapter of Luke. When he came to the 47th verse, he looked deliberately around him, and continued - "And that servant which knew his lord's will," - here he paused, looking around more deliberately than before, and again proceeded - "which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself" - here was another pause - "prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." "D'ye hear that?" demanded Peter, emphatically. "Stripes," he repeated, slowly and distinctly, taking off his spectacles, preparatory to making a few remarks. "That nigger that don't take care - that don't obey his lord - that's his master - d'ye see? - that 'ere nigger shall be beaten with many stripes. Now, 'many' signifies a great many - forty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty lashes. That's Scripter! — Solomon Northup

Being is primary and doing is secondary for them. Celebration comes first and work takes a back seat in their lives. Work is preparatory to celebration. — Rajneesh

A nurse's aid threw the contents of a patient's water glass out a window, the mass of water hitting the ground dislodging a pebble which rolled across the angled pavement and fell with a click on a stone culvert in the ditch below, startling a squirrel having at some sort of nut right there on the concrete pipe, causing the squirrel to run up the nearest tree, in doing which it disturbed a slender brittle branch and surprised a few nervous morning birds, of of which, preparatory to flight released a black-and-white glob of droppings, which glob fell neatly on the windshield of the tiny car of one Lenore Beadsman, just as she pulled into a parking space. Lenore got out of the car while birds flew away, making sounds. — David Foster Wallace

The siblings wished that if Mr. Poe were really jealous of them he would attend Prufrock Preparatory School himself, and they could work at the bank. — Lemony Snicket

Preparatory faith is formed by experiences in the past-by the known, which provides a basis for belief. But redemptive faith must often be exercised toward experiences in the future-the unknown, which provides an opportunity for the miraculous. — Jeffrey R. Holland

Writers' trousers are famously unpredictable in many ways, but I haven't met another author whose trousers simply disintegrated en route to a reading. There I was, young and nervous and not wearing a frock due to poor body image issues, stuck on a late afternoon train, leafing through my notes in a preparatory way and yet also feeling, somehow, chilly. — A. L. Kennedy