Recounts Quotes & Sayings

I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to understand but who is obviously calm, someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquility, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to reenter and be riven. An acrobat after spinning through the air in a mockery of flight stands erect on his perch and mockingly takes his bow as if what he is being applauded for was easy for him and cost him nothing, although meanwhile he is covered with sweat and his smile is edged with a relief chilling to think about; he is indulging in a show-business style; he is pretending to be superhuman. I am bored with that and with here it has brought us. I admire the authority of being on one's knees in front of the event.
- Innocence, from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead — Harold Brodkey

It's funny because you do often read in recounts of very famous albums, people tend to focus on mistakes in really positive ways, and there's certain mistakes of my own that I always do find on every record that I needed to accept. I find it really interesting to talk about. I always write songs at the wrong tempos, and I have to learn to accept that a little bit. — Zach Condon

In her memoir, Anne Robinson recounts the wake-up call which motivated her to stop drinking. Leaving her eight-year-old daughter alone in their car while she went to buy liquor, she returned to find her daughter with tears running down her cheeks. The guilt and horror Ms. Robinson felt at this sight jolted her into sobriety. — Anne Robinson

Chris Hillman (of the Byrds) recounts ... 'What happened to the Buffulo Springfield at the Whisky was similar to what happened to us at Ciro's ... everybody wanted to be there. It became the place to be ... a great gig.' — Johnny Rogan

Pete Kilner, of West Point's Center for the Advancement of Leader Development and Organizational Learning, recalls a company commander in Iraq telling him why he'd stayed very strict about the rules of engagement in the war's very worst days. "The guys hate me now," Kilner recounts him saying, "but they're going to thank me for the rest of their lives. I saw what happened in 2003. The guys who were out there being the mad killers everyone thought were so cool, they came back, they drank and beat their wives. They divorced and killed themselves. I'm not going to let my guys do that. — Phil Zabriskie

In the letters he sends to his friend, Werther recounts both the events of his life and the effects of his passion; but it is literature which governs the mixture. For if I keep a journal, we may doubt that this journal relates, strictly speaking, to events. The events of amorous life are so trivial that they gain access to writing only by an immense effort: one grows discouraged writing what, by being written, exposes its own platitude: "I ran into X, who was with Y" "Today X didn't call me" "X was in a bad mood," etc.: who would see a story in that? The infinitesimal event exists only in its huge reverberation: Journal of my reverberations (of my wounds, my joys, my interpretations, my rationalizations, my impulses): who would understand anything in that? Only the Other could write my love story, my novel. — Roland Barthes

Killing Lincoln is a must-read historical thriller. Bill O'Reilly recounts the dramatic events of the spring of 1865 with such exhilarating immediacy that you will feel like you are walking the streets of Washington DC on the night that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. This is a hugely entertaining, heart-stopping read. — Vince Flynn

Whoever recounts to you the faults of your neighbour will doubtless expose your defects to others. — Saadi

Ryan is my bridge to the past, to memories that lose some of their sting when he recounts them. — Tatum O'Neal

Inside the KGB offices, staff members were busy burning all the files. Putin later stated, "We burned so much stuff that the furnace exploded."46 He recounts that despite the local office's efforts to get the Soviet military to come to their rescue, and in general to defend their positions in East Germany, "Moscow was silent. . . . I only really regretted that the Soviet Union had lost its position in Europe, although intellectually I understood that a position built on walls . . . cannot last. But I wanted something different to rise in its place. And nothing different was proposed. That's what hurt. They just dropped everything and went away. . . . We would have avoided a lot of problems if the Soviets had not made such a hasty exit from Eastern Europe. — Karen Dawisha

Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire recounts her decision to leave her husband after decades of struggle with his alcoholism. Several days later, he wrote to her: "The miracle occurred; I realized that in addition to all the suffering I had caused, I was not my own master. I decided this slavery must stop once and for all." And it did. — Deborah Cavendish, Duchess Of Devonshire

The book recounts stories from my half-century of experience in the world of architecture and my journey of discovery of the importance of considering humans and nature as part of any project. It's illustrated with my own watercolors I hope it will inspire the next generation of architects to design places we can all enjoy. — Sim Van Der Ryn

Those who find ecstasy do so not by visiting the shrines of civilization but by trudging in the swamps of human destitution and misery. Our literature of ecstasy recounts the dark nights of the soul and encounters with mystics in the slums and in the refugee camps of genocidal wars. — Alphonso Lingis

An apocryphal story recounts the dilhemma of a man during the Civil War who could not decide whether to join the Confederate or Union forces. Finally he put on a gray coat and blue pants, and both sides shot him. — John Frohnmayer

While THE NEW COOL takes the reader inside a season, limns a team and coaching staff, and masterfully recounts a gripping competition, this is anything but your conventional sports book. And not simply because the 'big game' is ... a curious robotics contest. Like the kids he vividly captures, Neal Bascomb has himself performed a masterful bit of engineering here. — L. Jon Wertheim

Marsh recounts an anecdote about a psychopath who was being tested with a series of pictures and who failed over and over again to recognize fearful expressions, until finally she figured it out: "That's the look people get right before I stab them. — Paul Bloom

There is no right by the federal or state constitution to manual recounts. There is no law that says that you must count dimpled ballots, constitutional or otherwise. — Bill Vaughan

In 1854, at the young age of twenty, Spurgeon became pastor of a church in London (New Park Street Chapel), which later became the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Spurgeon had barely been in London twelve months when a severe case of cholera swept through London. Spurgeon recounts his efforts to care for and visit the numerous sick in the midst of horrific conditions: "All day, and sometimes all night long, I went about from house to house and saw men and women dying, and, oh, how glad they were to see my face! When many were afraid to enter their houses lest they should catch the deadly disease, we who had no fear about such things found ourselves most gladly listened to when we spoke of Christ and of things Divine."16 — Brian Croft

A man depends largely on woman for the light in the family as he is not well equipped at finding meaning for himself. Life is often dry and barren for him unless someone bestows meaning on life for him. With a few words, a woman can give meaning to a whole day's struggle and a man will be so grateful. A man knows and wants this; he will edge up to it, initiate little occasions so that a woman can shed some light for him. When he comes home and recounts the events of the day, he is asking her to bestow meaning on them. This is the light-bearing quality of a woman. — Robert A. Johnson

Literature recounts history, explores knowledge, narrates universal themes of human existence, actives human conscience, enhances understanding of human motives, and explicates the nuances of human behavior. — Kilroy J. Oldster

It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been "hijacked" by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and actions of the Prophet. — Sam Harris

But whosoever recount his true merits to Thee, what is it that he recounts to Thee but Thine own gifts? Oh, if men would know themselves to be men ... — Augustine Of Hippo

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami - a man who has achieved self-mastery - convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise.
"I told you not to bite," said the swami, "but I did not tell you not to hiss."
"Many people, like the swami's cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite," writes Tavris. — Susan Cain

Scripture repeatedly recounts the intentional actions of the providential God. The — Bruce R. Reichenbach

A story contained in the family lore of Brigham Young's descendants illustrates the submissive nature of humility. It recounts that in a public meeting the Prophet Joseph, possibly as a test, sternly rebuked Brigham Young for something he had done or something he was supposed to have done but hadn't - the detail is unclear. When Joseph finished the rebuke, everyone in the room waited for Brigham Young's response. This powerful man, later known as the Lion of the Lord, in a voice everyone could tell was sincere, said simply and humbly, "Joseph, what do you want me to do?" — Truman G. Madsen

The curious thing about The Ring and the Book, to which I will now return, is that although each character recounts the same events, and although there is no difference in what they tell, there is a fundamental difference, which belongs to the realm of human psychology, the fact that each of us believes we are justified. For example, the count admits he is a murderer, but the word "murderer" is too general. We know this from reading other books. — Jorge Luis Borges

THE LONG WALK is a raw, wrenching, blood-soaked chronicle of the human cost of war. Brian Castner, the leader of a military bomb disposal team, recounts his deployment to Iraq with unflinching candor, and in the process exposes crucial truths not only about this particular conflict, but also about war throughout history. Castner's memoir brings to mind Erich Maria Remarque's masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front. — Jon Krakauer

Barry recounts all this in prose of often startling beauty. Just as he describes people stopping in the street to look at Roseanne, so I often found myself stopping to look at the sentences he gave her, wanting to pause and copy them down. — Margot Livesey

Turkle recounts the story of Marcia, a tenth grader she interviewed about Sim City. Marcia had developed a set of guidelines for playing the game, including this one: "Raising taxes always leads to riots."46 Turkle worries gravely about Marcia's inability to conceive of a simulation in which the rules would differ, in which, for example, "increased taxes led to increased productivity and social harmony."" Turkle calls for a new kind of literacy that would teach Marcia and her peers how to develop a reading competency of simulation. — Ian Bogost

The story of Warner Brothers' movie, 'Mildred Pierce,' recounts the enormous and unrewarded sacrifices that a mother (Joan Crawford) makes for her spoiled, greedy daughter (Ann Blythe). — Manny Farber

Group, was only 29 when his father died suddenly in New York. His elder brother took the reins, but died of cancer just five years later, leaving behind a young widow and three children. Prior to that, another brother had decided to quit the family business. In parallel, a one year long textile strike spearheaded by Datta Samant had brought the textile industry to ruin; Morarjee Mills, the family's mainstay, was incurring massive losses. Piramal recounts that he survived those troubled times by reminding himself of one particular story: — Ashwin Sanghi

In my opinion, it is not in our interest to have complicated negotiations with a region, and then have to follow it up with 535 negotiations at home. I have experienced recounts, and it is better to vote once. — William M. Daley

A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Indeed, as Peter Whittle recounts, during World War II efforts to solve the question so sapped the energies and minds of Allied analysts ... that the suggestion was made that the problem be dropped over Germany, as the ultimate instrument of intellectual sabotage. — Brian Christian