Prevented Quotes & Sayings

I was much affected by the internal troubles of the Punch family; I thought that with a little more tact on the part of Mrs. Punch and some restraint held over a temper, naturally violent, by Mr. Punch, a great deal of this sad misunderstanding might have been prevented. — Edmund Gosse

It appears that God has deliberately left us in a quandary about many things. Why did He not summarize all the rules in one book, and all the basic doctrines in another? He could have eliminated the loopholes, prevented all the schisms over morality and false teaching that have plagued His Church for two thousand years. Think of the squabbling and perplexity we would have been spared. And think of the crop of dwarfs He would have reared! He did not spare us. He wants us to reach maturity. He has so arranged things that if we are to go on beyond the "milk diet" we shall be forced to think. — Elisabeth Elliot

My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world. — Mahatma Gandhi

It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed. — Ian McEwan

She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets on her bunk in a seamanlike way, and put her possessions in the closet in a seamanlike way, and used 'stow' instead of 'tidy' for the process of doing so. After two days at sea, Lyra decided that this was the life for her. — Philip Pullman

Ketoacidosis is prevented by negative feedback. Ketone bodies inhibit fatty acid production and also promote release of insulin which, in turn, inhibits lipolysis. — Richard David Feinman

Few persons are prevented from thinking themselves right by the reflection that, if they be right, the rest of the world is wrong. — Arthur James Balfour

I enjoy the sun and the beauty of summer as long as I can. Who knows whether one of these days I shall not be prevented from doing it? — Alexei Nikolaevich

The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as ghost, specter, poltergeist, angel, devil, or spirit, might there not be something more our purposeful blindness has prevented us from understanding?
We accept the fact that there may be other worlds out in space, but might there not be other worlds here? Other worlds, in other dimensions, coexistent with this? If there are other worlds parallel to ours, are all the doors closed? Or does one, here or there, stand ajar? — Louis L'Amour

Her deep romantic nature prevented her from demanding, from asking for that quenching. She wanted it to come freely, like flowers that are sent and not requested. — Sean Ferrer

Many injuries and deaths can be prevented through an understanding of the dangers of power lines, electrical appliances, extension cords, and lightning. — Richard Neal

I felt like I needed to comfort both the little girl inside me and my mother, assuring them that neither of them could have prevented the rape. I didn't want my mother to blame herself and I didn't want to blame the little girl inside of me for not speaking up at the age of six. — Erin Merryn

We face a fundamental question which can be described as both ethical and ecological. How can accelerated development be prevented from turning against man? How can one prevent disasters that destroy the environment and threaten all forms of life, and how can the negative consequences that have already occurred be remedied? — Pope John Paul II

And it would be a bit out of character. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have started out as a reformer, but he really enjoys being seen as a larger-than-life tough-guy figure. He doesn't go on photographed hunting expeditions, for instance. But he does have hero moments, such as when his convoy stopped in the middle of the Bosphorus Bridge and he allegedly talked down a jumper, prevented him from committing suicide. — Peter Kenyon

Gandhi wanted to meet with Churchill, his most bitter foe, when he visited London in 1931- but it didn't happen. Churchill wanted to go to India personally as prime minister in 1942 to negotiate a final settlement on India with Gandhi and the other nationalist leaders - but the fall of Singapore prevented it from happening. — Arthur L. Herman

One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the unexpected should have been expected. — Norman Ralph Augustine

It is a very strange sensation to inexperience youth to feel itself quite alone the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when half an hour elapsed, and still I was alone. — Charlotte Bronte

If liberals were prevented from ever again calling Republicans dumb, they would be robbed of half their arguments. To be sure, they would still have racist, fascist, homophobe, ugly, and a few other highly nuanced arguments in the quiver. But the loss of dumb would nearly cripple them. — Ann Coulter

The universal practice of closing the eyes of the dead may be thought to have originated in the desire that he might be prevented from seeing his way. — Sabine Baring-Gould

Aristotle and many others say men have more teeth than women; it is no harder for anyone to test this than it is for me to say it is false, since no one is prevented from counting teeth. — Andreas Vesalius

Anger represents a certain power, when a great mind, prevented from executing its own generous desires, is moved by it. — Pietro Aretino

Guilt is not merely a concern with the past; it is a present-moment immobilization about a past event. And the degree of immobilization can run from mild upset to severe depression. If you are simply learning from your past, and vowing to avoid the repetition of some specific behavior, this is not guilt. You experience guilt only when you are prevented from taking action now as a result of having behaved in a certain way previously. Learning from your mistakes is healthy and a necessary part of growth. Guilt is unhealthy because you are ineffectively using up your energy in the present feeling hurt, upset and depressed about a historical happening. And it's futile as well as unhealthy. No amount of guilt can ever undo anything. — Wayne W. Dyer

As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them. — William James

Remember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal or mortals could have prevented this. — Woodrow Wilson

Socialism is not spontaneous. It does not arise of itself. It has abiding principles according to which the major means of production and distribution ought to be socialised if exploitation of the many by the few is to be prevented; if, that is to say, egalitarianism in the economy is to be protected. — Kwame Nkrumah

We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration. The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not "natural." This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction. — Howard Zinn

Statutory regulations, legislative enactments, constitutional provisions, are invasive. They never yet induced man to do anything he could and would not do by virtue of his intellect or temperament, nor prevented anything that man was impelled to do by the same dictates. — Emma Goldman

Slowly, God is opening my eyes to needs all around me. In Scripture, God revisits this issue of caring for the poor- an echo that repeats itself from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible acknowledges that the poor will always be part of society, but God takes on their cause. The Mosaic law of the Old Testament is filled with regulations to prevent and eliminate poverty. The poor were given the right to glean- to take produce from the unharvested edges of the fields, a portion of the tithes, and a daily wage. The law prevented permanent slavery by releasing Jewish bondsmen and women on the sabbatical and Jubilee year and forbade charging interest on loans. In one of his most tender acts, God made sure that the poor- the aliens, widows, and orphans- were all invited to the feasts. — Margaret Feinberg

I just read about John Le Carre, the great spy novelist. He had an absolutely miserable childhood. His mother deserted him when he was young. His father was a playboy and a drunk. He was shifted around to many different homes. He knew he was a writer when he was about nine, but he was dyslexic. So here was a person with an absolutely messed-up childhood and a symptom that prevented him from doing what he wanted to do most. Yet that very symptom was part of the calling. It forced him to go deeper. — James Hillman

John could have prevented all of this from happening, but instead chose to educate us through the obscenity of proof. — David Price

I remember as a very young child being warned that libraries and bookstores were quiet places where noise wasn't allowed. Here was yet another thing the adults had gotten wrong, for these book houses pulsed with sounds; they just weren't noisy. The books hummed. The collective noise they made was like riding on a large boat where the motor's steady thrum and tickle vibrated below one's sneakers, ignorable until you listened, then omnipresent and relentless, the sound that carried you forward. Each book brimmed with noises it wanted to make inside your head the moment you opened it; only the shut covers prevented it from shouting ideas, impulses, proverbs, and plots into that sterile silence. — Wendy Welch

The Seven Deadly Sins of the Press: - Concentrated Power of the Big Press. - Passing of competition and the coming of monopoly. - Governmental control of the press. - Timidity, especially in the face of group and corporate pressures. - Big Business mentality. - Clannishness among the newspaper publishers that has prevented them from criticizing each other. - Social blindness. — Max Lerner

The rules and limitations that once prevented accidents now prevented creativity. — Stanley McChrystal

Throughout the thirty years of our life together the authorities have given us no respite. They were after us all the time. If we published a magazine, they closed it down. If we started a project they prevented us from carrying it through. If we established an association they told us we were breaking the laws and banned its activities. Now they were driving us out of the country. — Nawal El Saadawi

Help me to understand, what my grief has prevented me from seeing - within. — Eleesha

I had gotten the role of Fandral in Thor, but scheduling conflicts (with Chuck) prevented that from going forward. — Zachary Levi

I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today. — Robert McNamara

One honest John Tompkins, a hedger & ditcher,
Although he was poor, did not want to be richer;
For all such vain wishes in him were prevented
By a fortunate habit of being contented. — Jane Taylor

The same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. — Henry David Thoreau

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment. — Barry Commoner

For years, we've grown dependant on American consumers as the world's spenders of last resort. They've kept Europe out of recession, allowed China to industrialise, and prevented global deflation. But at the same time, they've not been looking after their own futures. — Evan Davis

Because he had been- and in many ways still was- such a brilliant man, he no doubt understood the nature of his memory problem. It wasn't pride that prevented him from asking for help but a deep aversion to causing more trouble than necessary for those of us who lived in the normal world. — Yoko Ogawa

Love was long over, but what was lost to him he still loved so harshly that it prevented him from listening even to its trace. — Richard Powers

The best predictor of success is a sense of resiliency, grit, capacity to fail and get up. If you're prevented from feeling discomfort of failure, you have no sense of how to handle those things at all. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

I am so anxious for you not to abdicate and I think the fact that you do is going to put me in the wrong light to the entire world because they will say that I could have prevented it. — Wallis Simpson

Could we have prevented in 100% certainty? I don't think anything is that certain. However, we would have had a very, very good chance for preventing it. — Sibel Edmonds

What should we do?, I asked, and I had a pained feeling I thought was the beginning of love.
In those early months we clung to each other with a rather silly desperation, because, in spite of everything my mother or Mrs Jordan could say, there was nothing that really prevented us from seeing each other. With imagined tragedy hovering over us, we became inseparable, two halves creating the whole: yin and yang. I was victim to his hero. I was always in danger and he was always rescuing me. I would fall and he would lift me up. It was exhilarating and draining. The emotional effect of saving and being saved was addicting to both of us. And that, as much as anything we ever did in bed, was how we made love to each other: conjoined where my weaknesses needed protection. — Amy Tan

Do not grieve. Misfortune will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and cannot be prevented should not be grieved for ... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere. — Kent Nerburn

Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground. — Cyril Connolly

How many serious family quarrels, marriages out of spite, and alterations of wills, might have been prevented by a gentle dose of blue pill!-What awful instances of chronic dyspepsia in the characters of Hamlet and Othello! Banish dyspepsia and spirituous liquors from society, and you have no crime, or at least so little that you would not consider it worth mentioning. — Charles Kingsley

It was not exasperation.... It was anger for the relentless force of evolution that insisted on endowing man with increased powers without removing the vestigial vices that prevented him from using them. — Alfred Bester

My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself. — George Bernard Shaw

Christine always wanted to know what was afoot, and any matter on which she was prevented from giving her opinion she took to be going badly. — Jeremias Gotthelf

the memorial stained-glass window dedicated to the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, on whose side God had been in two world wars, though this hadn't prevented them suffering heavy casualties. — David Nobbs

The illusion that egoists will be pleased, or flattered, by interest taken in their habits persists throughout life; whereas, in fact, persons like Widmerpool, in complete subjection to the ego, are, by the nature of that infirmity, prevented from supposing that the minds of others could possibly be occupied by any subject far distant from the egoist's own affairs. — Anthony Powell

That is the most common excuse, and the most foolish of all. Love has never prevented a man from following his dreams. If she truly loves you, she will want the best for you. — Paulo Coelho

These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another- yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil. How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred years ago. — Milton Friedman

I always wanted to be an actor. It sort of prevented that whole - I never had any of that kind of angsty period old and doing musicals at camp and community theater and plays at school; it was just always what I most enjoyed and always what I intended to pursue. — Joshua Malina

God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others. — Charles Caleb Colton

These sites have torn down the geographical divide that once prevented long distance social relationships from forming, allowing instant communication and connections to take place and a virtual second life to take hold for its users. — Mike Fitzpatrick

Strat yearned to imagine her without even the thin white dress, but it would not be honorable, so he prevented himself from having such a fantasy. — Caroline B. Cooney

You can't have the legislative and executive branch working in a parallel universe ... the partisanship that has gripped Washington has prevented us from dealing with the issues that this country needs to grapple with to determine its future. — Olympia Snowe

Neither must he use himself to cut off actions only, but thoughts and imaginations also, that are unnecessary for so will unnecessary consequent actions the better be prevented and cut off. — Marcus Aurelius

Studying the martial Way is like climbing a cliff: keep going forward without rest. Resting is not permissible because it causes recessions to old adages of achievement. Persevering day in, day out improves techniques, but resting one day causes lapses. This must be prevented. — Mas Oyama

A man would still do something out of sheer perversity - he would create destruction and chaos - just to gain his point ... and if all this could in turn be analyzed and prevented by predicting that it would occur, then man would deliberately go mad to prove his point. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Woman's inaptitude for reasoning has not prevented her from arriving at truth; nor has man's ability to reason prevented him from floundering in absurdity. — Elbert Hubbard

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers
or should I say, nurses?
will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us. — C.S. Lewis

Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I recall the scent of some kind of toilet powder - I believe she stole it from her mother's Spanish maid - a sweetish, lowly, musky perfume. It mingled with her own biscuity odor, and my senses were suddenly filled to the brim; a sudden commotion in a nearby bush prevented them from overflowing - and as we drew away from each other, and with aching veins attended to what was probably a prowling cat, there came from the
house her mother's voice calling her, with a rising frantic note - and Dr. Cooper ponderously limped out into the garden. But that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since - until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another. — Vladimir Nabokov

The system that existed in Germany at that time tragically prevented the people from protecting themselves from tyrannical government. This is a system many people vehemently want to impose in America. — Ron Paul

Consider any year, that has been so unfruitful that many thousands have died of hunger; and yet if, at the end of that year, a survey was made of the granaries of all the rich men that have hoarded up the corn, it would be found that there was enough among them to have prevented all that consumption — Thomas More

The dilemma for women - writing after everything else was finished - has prevented women from reaching their literary potential for centuries. — Joan M. Drury

Services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. — Ezekiel Emanuel

We know that so many of the conditions and diseases that we associate with ageing can often be prevented or in fact their onset delayed if we just took preventative steps earlier in our lives. — Julie Bishop

I say, Bertie, is it really true that you were once engaged to Honoria?"
"It is."
Biffy coughed.
"How did you get out - I mean, what was the nature of the tragedy that prevented the marriage?"
"Jeeves worked it. He thought out the entire scheme."
"I think, before I go," said Biffy thoughtfully, "I'll just step into the kitchen and have a word with Jeeves."
I felt that the situation called for complete candour.
"Biffy, old egg," I said, "as man to man, do you want to oil out of this thing?"
"Bertie, old cork," said Biffy earnestly, "as one friend to another, I do. — P.G. Wodehouse

Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen and heads-men - and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities have committed far more crimes than they have prevented ... Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime. As long as dishonorable success outranks honest effort - as long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The shell game that we play ... is technically called 'renormalization'. But no matter how clever the word, it is still what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. It's surprising that the theory still hasn't been proved self-consistent one way or the other by now; I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate. — Richard P. Feynman

Those who peacefully gather to express sympathy for the family of Michael Brown must have their rights respected at all times. And journalists must not be harassed or prevented from covering a story that needs to be told. — Eric Holder

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Polite conversationalists leave no mark save the scars upon the Earth that could have been prevented had they stood their ground. — David Brower

We aren't allowed to have any opinions. People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn't stop you having your own opinion. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn't be prevented from saying what they think. — Anne Frank

The Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran. For him (Ahmadinejad), Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement. — Bernard Lewis

America has the largest nuclear capability in the world. All this power neither prevented 9/11 nor helped to avenge it. How could it? Who would America have attacked? — John Niven

My father had always dreamed of getting a Ph.D., but certain life circumstances prevented him from following through. It was a tremendous, deep regret. The day I got my Ph.D., I saw in my father's face what it meant that I had done this. — Jhumpa Lahiri

As a result of its investigation, the NIH said that to qualify for funding, all proposals for research on human subjects had to be approved by review boards - independent bodies made up of professionals and laypeople of diverse races, classes, and backgrounds - to ensure that they met the NIH's ethics requirements, including detailed informed consent. Scientists said medical research was doomed. In a letter to the editor of Science, one of them warned, When we are prevented from attempting seemingly innocuous studies of cancer behavior in humans ... we may mark 1966 as the year in which all medical progress ceased. — Rebecca Skloot

It's only when life is broken and shattered into tiny pieces when you understand that love prevented you from falling apart. — P.J. Bayliss

Just always be extremely respectful, was something that was drilled into me, which I think probably prevented me from having sex for a good seven years longer than it should have. — Seth Rogen

Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations. — Rene Descartes

Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn't force me to enter her service. — Megan Whalen Turner

Discovery can give no right of ownership, for whatever is discovered must have been already here to be discovered. If a man makes a wheelbarrow, or a book, or a picture, he has a moral right to that particular wheelbarrow, or book, or picture, but no right to ask that others be prevented from making similar things. Such a prohibition, though given for the purpose of stimulating discovery and invention, really in the long run operates as a check upon them. — Henry George

I grew up pretty much prevented from knowing anything from Communist China except that they were the bad guys that stole our country. — Ang Lee

He had long ago learned that society imposes insults that must be borne, comforted by the knowledge that in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful. It was this knowledge that prevented the Don from losing the humility all his friends admired in him. — Mario Puzo

Here was the plot: A flying saucer creature named Zog arrived on Earth to explain how wars could be prevented and how cancer could be cured. He brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by means of farts and tap dancing. Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golfclub. — Kurt Vonnegut

Directors are not worried about casting beautiful women, but they are not sure that they want to cast great-looking men. My looks have prevented people from seeing my work. — Rob Lowe

There is no point in imagining that if one had been there, one could have prevented a thing that had happened only because it had not been prevented — Alan Paton

California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits - no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it - and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. "The vicious cycle of contempt," as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect. — Michael Lewis

They (i. e., the Pythagoreans ) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors. — Carl Sagan

The concept of equal pay for equal work is not only an impossible task, it can only be accomplished with the total rejection of the idea of the voluntary contract. The idea that a businessman must hire anyone and is prevented from firing anyone for any reason he chooses, and in the name of rights, is a clear indication that the basic concept of a free society has been lost. — Ron Paul

The P.A.S.T. preventative screening and treatment programs are a must for all players. We can extend our lives and live a healthy and pain free life. The programs are very comprehensive. We have lost several players at a young age, maybe the loss of some of our players could have been prevented with the prevention, knowledge, and treatment that P.A.S.T. provides. — James Worthy

There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused. — Charles Caleb Colton