Retaining Quotes & Sayings

Yahoo has gone too far in wrongfully accusing us of a conspiracy that doesn't exist. If they are having problems retaining engineers, they should be looking at the internal sources of employee dissatisfaction rather than trying to cover that up with this legal action. — Jonathan Sacks

The room was filled with smoke, dry worn-out smoke retaining in it like a web the insectile cadavers of dry husks of words which had been spoken and should be gone, the breaths exhaled not to be breathed again. But the words went on, and in those brief interruptions between cigarettes the exhalations were rebreathed. — William Gaddis

The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the immigration of a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant to our civilization. — Grover Cleveland

The disassociation between inner belief and outer behaviour allowed many people to enjoy a sense of retaining their inner decency while at the same time not risking any loss of livelihood, any compromise over career ambitions, let alone any potentially more sanctions; hence never revealing any signs of disagreement or openly showing anything less than apparently full commitment to the regime and its policies — Mary Fulbrook

Somehow I've become separated emotionally from everyone and everything. And what I was really searching for out there in the dark streets - the last damned place I could ever find it - was a way to make myself a part of people again emotionally, while still retaining my freedom intellectually. I've got to grow up. For me it means everything. . . . — Daniel Keyes

I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom."
"Excellent!" I cried.
"Elementary," said he. "It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Saddam's goal is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed. — Madeleine Albright

Much is missed if we have eyes only for the bright colors. Nature should be viewed without distinction ... She makes no choice herself; everything that happens has equal significance. Nothing can be dispensed with. This is a common mistake that many people make: They think that half of nature can be destroyed - the uncomfortable half - while still retaining the acceptable and the pleasing side. — Eliot Porter

It was one of those dreams which, while retaining the characteristic dream scenery, are a continuation of one's intellectual life, and in which one becomes aware of facts and ideas which still seem new and valuable after one is awake. — George Orwell

Acting per se, like all art, is a process of abstracting, of retaining only significant detail. But in impersonation any detail can be significant. — Robert A. Heinlein

Emotional baggage, which is carried over from the past, colors our perceptions. Likewise, past conclusions and beliefs, based on reasoning that may or may not have been accurate, also tint our perception of reality. Retaining our capacity for reason is common sense, but definite conclusions and beliefs keep us from seeing life as it really is at any given moment.
Emotional reactions can be unreasonable, and reason can be flawed. It's difficult to have deep confidence in either one, especially when they're often at war with each other. But the universal mind exists in the instant, in a moment beyond time, and it sees the universe as it literally is. It's the universe perceiving itself. It is, moreover, something we can have absolute confidence in, and with that confidence, we can maintain a genuinely positive attitude. — H.E. Davey

Very gently Jacques lowered her feet to the ground, retaining possession of her waist to help her trembling legs hold her up. Shea raised a hand to push back her rain-slick hair. He caught her fingers and raised her palm to his mouth. "You are the most beautiful sight I have ever seen."
She smiled, shook her head at him. "You're crazy, you know that? This is one of the most magnificent lightning storms I've ever seen, and I didn't even notice until now."
He grinned at her suggestively, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Says something."
"Exactly," she agreed. "You're crazy, and I must be, too. — Christine Feehan

A phoenix, Beirut seems to always pull itself out its ashes, reinvents itself, has been conquered numerous times in its 7,000-year history, yet it survives by both becoming whatever its conquerors wished it to be and retaining its idiosyncratic persona. — Rabih Alameddine

I admire artists who are ageing and still retaining their edge. — Paul McGann

Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another - too often ending in the loss of both. — Tryon Edwards

Conceptual relativism is a heady and exotic doctrine, or would be if we could make good sense of it. The trouble is, as so often in philosophy, it is hard to improve intelligibility while retaining the excitement. — Donald Davidson

Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his making friends - whether he may be equally capable of retaining them is less certain. — Jane Austen

My biggest problem is retaining the exact information. — David Cross

We must remind our politicians that we expect them to speak honestly and to be concerned about real issues, and not simply with the obtaining or retaining of power. — Davis McCaughey

Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones. — Ambrose Bierce

Calm down please, sir, if you will,' said the bobby, still retaining a firm hold upon the horse's reins. ' "Stolen" is such an ugly word. It is not technically stealing if you are a British archaeologist and you acquire items of historical significance in the savage realms and liberate them to civilisation. — Robert Rankin

The habit of grown-ups reading living books and retaining the power to digest them will be lost if we refuse to give a little time for Mother Culture. A wise mother, an admired mother and wife, when asked how, with her weak physical health and many demands on her time, she managed to read so much said, "Besides my Bible, I always keep three books going that are just for me - a stiff book, a moderately easy book, and a novel or one of poetry. I always take up the one I feel fit for. That is the secret: always have something 'going' to grow by. — Karen Andreola

Most everybody had made at least one bad, drunken decision in their lives. Called an ex at two in the morning. Or perhaps has a little too much to drink on a second date and wept inconsolably while revealing how simply damaged one was, while nonetheless retaining an uncommonly large capacity for love. That kind of thing was, while regrettable, at least comprehensible. But waking up with someone generationally inappropriate, like your grandfather's best buddy? — Augusten Burroughs

Let us call this quality the Original Mind. This mind looked at the world more directly - not through words and received ideas. It was flexible and receptive to new information. Retaining a memory of this Original Mind, we cannot help but feel nostalgia for the intensity with which we used to experience the world. As the years pass, this intensity inevitably diminishes. We come to see the world through a screen of words and opinions; our prior experiences, layered over the present, color what we see. We no longer look at things as they are, noticing their details, or wonder why they exist. Our minds gradually tighten up. We become defensive about the world we now take for granted, and we become upset if our beliefs or assumptions are attacked. — Robert Greene

But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe - that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life. — Mary Oliver

The handling of our forests as a continuous, renewable resource means permanent employment and stability to our country life. The forests are also needed for mitigating extreme climatic fluctuations, holding the soil on the slopes, retaining the moisture in the ground, and controlling the equable flow of water in our streams. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

What the Obama [ban on torture] ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under US patronage. Obama could stop backing foreign forces that torture, but he has chosen not to do so. — Noam Chomsky

There is nothing but nonviolence to fall back upon for retaining our freedom, even as we had to do for gaining it. — Mahatma Gandhi

Database Management System [Origin: Data + Latin basus "low, mean, vile, menial, degrading, ounterfeit."] A complex set of interrelational data structures allowing data to be lost in many convenient sequences while retaining a complete record of the logical relations between the missing items.
From The Devil's DP Dictionary — Stan Kelly-Bootle

Regret, hurt, bereavement, loss, to permit the flow of even one tear at the upwelling of such feelings was to imperil ancient root systems and retaining walls. Mudslide and black avalanche would result and drown him. — Michael Chabon

Retaining our capacity for reason
is common sense, but definite conclusions and beliefs keep us from seeing life as it really is at any given moment. — H.E. Davey

Really in technology, it's about the people, getting the best people, retaining them, nurturing a creative environment and helping to find a way to innovate. — Marissa Mayer

The biggest challenges are in the same vein. It's about retaining all that stuff. Also, the physical stuff is not as easy as we originally thought. I play a lot of sports and I remember saying, "Oh, I'll be fine, running around or doing anything." — Steven Yeun

The only secret to being in control is to have it in the beginning. Retaining control is still hard, but obtaining control is virtually impossible. — Thomas Bangalter

Hemingway, damn his soul, makes everything he writes terrifically exciting (and incidentally makes all us second-raters seem positively adolescent) by the seemingly simple expedient of the iceberg principle - three-fourths of the substance under the surface. He comes closer that way to retaining the magic of the original, unexpressed idea or emotion, which is always more stirring than any words. But just try and do it! — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Stand back far enough, and the absurdity of this enterprise makes you wonder about the sanity of our species. But consider: When millers mill wheat, they scrupulously sheer off the most nutritious parts of the seed - the coat of bran and the embryo, or germ, that it protects - and sell that off, retaining the least nourishing part to feed us. In effect, they're throwing away the best 25 percent of the seed: The vitamins and antioxidants, most of the minerals, and the healthy oils all go to factory farms to feed animals, or to the pharmaceutical industry, which recovers some of the vitamins from the germ and then sells them back to us - to help remedy nutritional deficiencies created at least in part by white flour. A terrific business model, perhaps, but terrible biology. Surely — Michael Pollan

[T]he dignity of parliament it seems can brook no opposition to it's power. Strange that a set of men who have made sale of theirvirtue to the minister should yet talk of retaining dignity! — Thomas Jefferson

Teachers make a difference, and we would serve our students better by focusing on attracting and retaining the quality teachers by raising teacher pay. — Jeb Bush

I believe that DVD is that which gives some hope to retaining some content in movies that will appeal to an older audience or the more sophisticated audience or the audience that doesn't need or desire to see a movie on a Friday night. — Warren Beatty

I have learned that there's no way to open yourself to the experience of God while retaining your cool, your sense of ironic detachment. — Ken Wilson

I repeat my demand that the occupier leave the land of our beloved Iraq unconditionally, without retaining bases or signing agreements. — Muqtada Al Sadr

Retaining 'Monday Night Football' simply did not make smart financial sense for ABC. We could not reconcile the fees against the revenue. We love football at ABC. It's been a love affair for 36 years. It will go down in the history of sports television, being created on ABC and with this magnificent run. But at this point, given the success we're having with our entertainment product and the financials, we deemed that this was the proper move for us. We're not looking back . — George Bodenheimer

I am sure that I am in possession of a soul that is at the very least, a thousand years old. And I say this not on a whim; I say this as someone who is sure of something, who is not thinking fancifully but who is thinking solidly and fully. So why is it that I am childlike and playful? There is only one answer to this, and that is, after existing for a very long time, one learns the skill of retaining childlikeness and the state of childlikeness, which is called playfulness. The immature are not childlike and they are not playful; rather, they are manipulative and insecure. Manipulation is the game of the immature and insecurity is their state of being. I'm saying this because I want to draw the great distinction in the sand very clearly. The older your soul becomes, the more childlike it will be in texture. But we only make playtime out of small and joyful things; there is no playtime when it comes to bravery, honesty, and trust. — C. JoyBell C.

The key to retaining their respect was to find out what they wanted to do, then tell them to do it. — Christopher Moore

There are many subjects upon which, if we hold an opinion at all, we should hold it tentatively, waiting for more light, and retaining a willingness to be enlightened. Many a bitter and fruitless quarrel might be avoided, if more persons found it possible to maintain this philosophical attitude of mind. Philosophy is, after all, reflection, and the reflective man must realize that he is probably as liable to error as are other men. He is not infallible, nor has the limit of human knowledge been attained in his day and generation. He who realizes this will not assume that his neighbor is always wrong, and he will come to have that wide, conscientious tolerance, which is not indifference, but which is at the farthest remove from the zeal of mere bigotry. — George Stuart Fullerton

The executive possesses means of distracting Parliament from its proper function; it seduces members by the offer of places and pensions, by retaining them to follow ministers and ministers' rivals, by persuading them to support measures - whereby the activities of administration grow beyond Parliament's control. These means of subversion are known are known collectively as corruption, and if ever Parliament or those who elect them - for corruption may occur at this point too - should be wholly corrupt, then there will be an end of independence and liberty. — J. G. A. Pocock

But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure; the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites; and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind. — Samuel Johnson

If any human being earnestly desire to push on to new discoveries instead of just retaining and using the old; to win victories over Nature as a worker rather than over hostile critics as a disputant; to attain, in fact, clear and demonstrative knowlegde instead of attractive and probable theory; we invite him as a true son of Science to join our ranks. — Francis Bacon

Great companies are formed by great people. It's not about attracting great people; it's about retaining them. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hourglass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like the sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, and retaining only the refuse and dregs. And the fourth is like the slaves in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, retain only pure gems. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Barometer of success in later life is not that they always win, but how they deal with failure. An ability to pick themselves up when they fall, retaining their optimism and sense of self, is a far greater predictor of future success than class position in Year 3. — Helen Fielding

If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? ... I think that by retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and ... toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable. — George Orwell

Evolution doesn't invent new cells or organs very often. In the same sense, once organ systems have been established by natural selection, they don't go extinct (though some organs lose their function - for instance the human appendix, which was originally larger in our ancestors, as seen in other mammals, and used to digest cellulose at an earlier stage of mammalian evolution). Through the long course of evolution, organs have retained their physiological functions, even if sometimes they get used in new ways. It's not at all uncommon to find ancient organs co-opted, or perhaps "improved upon" by more recent taxa, while at the same time retaining their basic functions under new environmental circumstances. — Greg Graffin

Before they deploy, they train for the specific operations, but there is a danger that the Army is not retaining the core of its full capabilities. — Des Browne

Ildiko tried to embrace him and frowned when he stepped out of reach, still retaining his hold on her hand.

"I'm filthy, wife, and need a bath of my own." His nostrils flared, and his voice lowered to a more guttural timbre. "Lover of thorns, but you smell good enough to eat."

She arched an eyebrow and glanced at the platters on the table. "Considering our people's respective histories, not to mention that wolf smile when you say such a thing, I'm not sure if I should be flattered or scream for help. — Grace Draven

We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed. Even the most voluminous archives cannot help. — Milan Kundera

Preserve the core, and let the rest flux. In their wonderful bestseller Built to Last, authors James Collins and Jerry Porras make a convincing argument that long-lived companies are able to thrive 50 years or more by retaining a very small heart of unchanging values, and then stimulating progress in everything else. At times "everything" includes changing the business the company operates in, migrating, say, from mining to insurance. Outside the core of values, nothing should be exempt from flux. Nothing. — Kevin Kelly

In those countries where income taxes are lower than in the United States, the ability to defer the payment of U.S. tax by retaining income in the subsidiary companies provides a tax advantage for companies operating through overseas subsidiaries that is not available to companies operating solely in the United States. Many American investors properly made use of this deferral in the conduct of their foreign investment. — John F. Kennedy

A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervour of soul, rather than to cultivate those qualities that seem most popular. — Thomas A Kempis

Nowadays, by contrast, Christianity specialises in soft-focus mood music; its threats of hell, its demand for poverty and chastity, its doctrine that only the few will be saved and the many damned, have been shed, replaced by strummed guitars and saccharine smiles. It has reinvented itself so often, and with such breath-taking hypocrisy, in the interests of retaining its hold on the gullible, that a medieval monk who woke today, like Woody Allen in Sleeper, would not be able to recognise the faith that bears the same name as his own. — A.C. Grayling

There is nothing more entertaining then leaving someone speechless. Yet, there is nothing sadder than realizing that person was incapable of retaining half of what you said, and will repeat the story all wrong to someone else. — Shannon L. Alder

Places that succeed in attracting and retaining creative class people prosper; those that fail don't. — Richard Florida

I support lowering the level of legal immigration by a moderate amount at this time. Legal immigration reform must be based upon principles that are pro-family, pro-work, and pro-naturalization, retaining opportunities for family reunification as the levels are lowered. We must not let this issue become divisive in this country. — William J. Clinton

The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. — George Santayana

The most perfect character is supposed to lie between those extremes; retaining an equal ability and taste for books, company, and business; preserving in conversation that discernment and delicacy which arise from polite letters; and in business, that probity and accuracy which are the natural result of a just philosophy. — John Locke

This segregation is confirmed by the common stereotypes of these two disciplines and their representatives. While scientists are perceived as absentminded, casually dressed individuals who live in a refined world of abstract theory with little practical reality, lawyers are usually perceived as formally dressed people who are practically oriented, concentrating mainly on trivialities (such as negotiating their retaining fee) and engaging professionally in all sorts of nitty-gritty social intercourse - the kind of things that normal people, although worried by them, would rather not have to deal with themselves. — Fritjof Capra

Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain. — Fawn M. Brodie

A mild attack of apoplexy may be called death's retaining fee. — Gilles Menage

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity. — Jeffrey Zeldman

For if there is one lesson worth retaining from the travails of the Cold War and the miseries it brought in its wake, it is the folly of seeking simple answers to complicated questions. It is a lesson which governments still show no sign of learning. — Philip Short

Clergy had a vested interest in retaining the old, ways, which made few demands of them as teachers, as spiritual guides, or as moral examples or agents. — Alister E. McGrath

Ever since the Tim Burton Batman of 1989, it has been de rigueur in movies to focus on the freaky alienation aspect of the superhero's life: This is how talented people make movies for 14-year-olds while retaining their self-respect. — David Edelstein

The most effective way to close down the human mind and to manipulate its sense of self is to program into it some form of dogma. A dogma will always vehemently defend itself from other information and repel any alternative opinion which contradicts its narrow, solidified view. Dogmas become a person's sense of security and means of retaining power, and humanity tends to cling to both until its knuckles turn white. Dogmas take endless forms, and when you can persuade different people to hold opposing dogmas, the manipulation of conflict and control through "divide and rule" becomes easy. — David Icke

Kids today are sold so much, by corporations and media and commercials and advertising and music videos, that I do. A lot of times, they retain that stuff and wear it, and that's the concept of a hipster. It's about owning it and redefining it, on your own level. It's a way of retaining control and meaning, in a world where you're being told to think in a certain way. — Joseph M. Kahn

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self. — Erich Fromm

Through some happy accident of heredity he had escaped his father's tediousness, while retaining a little of his mother's jolly high spirits and humor. This did not make him anything special, but at least he was good-natured. — William Styron

Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made. And we cannot fix the exact point at which our empire shall stop; we have reached a position in which we must not be content with retaining but must scheme to extend it, for, if we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled ourselves. Nor can you look at inaction from the same point of view as others, unless you are prepared to change your habits and make them like theirs. — Alcibiades

Golfers who play a lot of courses often encounter short ledges or retaining walls, and I always had fun hopping down from them. I could jump off something six feet high and land like a cat, no problem. Well, today I can't jump off anything higher than two feet without it just killing me. — Tom Watson

...erosion control in Japan is like a game of chess. The forest
engineer, after studying his eroding valley, makes his first move, locating and building
one or more check dams. He waits to see what Nature's response is. This determines the
forest engineer's next move, which may be another dam or two, an increase in the former
dam, or the construction of side retaining walls. After another pause for observation, the
next move is made and so on until erosion is checkmated." (An Agricultural Testament) — Albert Howard

I was very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it [law of nature], as a resource to which we might be driven by Parliament much sooner than we were aware. — John Adams

I believe that we need to set conditions to close the detention facility at Guantanamo. This includes retaining the option to transfer detainees from this facility elsewhere ... It is in the U.S.'s national security interest to do so. — Pete Visclosky

I believe we should continue to have a partnership of national states each retaining the right to protect its vital interests, but developing more effectively than at present the habit of working together. — Margaret Thatcher

They have neither thought nor being, and merely repeat indifferently and uncomprehendingly everything they hear, retaining within themselves an absolute void. — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

A clever general ... avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return. This is the art of studying moods. Disciplined and calm, he awaits the appearance of disorder and hubbub among the enemy. This is the art of retaining self-possession. — Sun Tzu

[Nietzsche] had the good manners to despise Christianity, in large part, for what it actually was
above all, for its devotion to an ethics of compassion
rather than allow himself the soothing, self-righteous fantasy that Christianity's history had been nothing but an interminable pageant of violence, tyranny, and sexual neurosis. He may have hated many Christians for their hypocrisy, but he hated Christianity itself principally on account of its enfeebling solicitude for the weak, the outcast, the infirm, and the diseased; and, because he was conscious of the historical contingency of all cultural values, he never deluded himself that humanity could do away with Christian faith while simply retaining Christian morality in some diluted form, such as liberal social conscience or innate human sympathy. — David Bentley Hart

But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become less descriptive and more evaluative; then become evaluative, while still retaining some hint of the sort of goodness or badness implied; and to end up by being purely evaluative
useless synonyms for good or for bad. — C.S. Lewis

It little mattered whether my curiosity irritated him: I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far: beyond the verge or provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without fear of uneasy restraint: this suited both him and me. — Charlotte Bronte

When once passion takes part in the game, the human reason, unassisted by Grace, has about as much chance of retaining its hold on truths already gained as a snowflake has of retaining its consistency in the mouth of a blast furnace. — C.S. Lewis

The FBI is engaged in a myriad of efforts to combat cyber threats, from efforts focused on threat identification and sharing inside and outside of government, to our internal emphasis on developing and retaining new talent and changing the way we operate to evolve with the cyber threat. — James Comey

The Bay Area definitely knows the pain of competing for, and retaining, top talent. Offering interesting perks has become a necessity, not a nice-to-have. — Paige Craig

When people think the issue can be solved, it becomes a moral imperative to be part of the solution. We can do a lot more within our school districts to recruit aggressively, select people according to high standards, invest in their training and development, and foster and reward their leadership. Once we invest more in attracting, developing and retaining teachers, potential recruits will begin to see it as a profession worth considering. — Wendy Kopp

Those who have once got an ascendancy, and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage. — Thomas Jefferson

Good parenting, from my perspective, is like building a three-foot retaining wall against a four-foot wave. The kids have to make up that extra foot. That wave wants to drag them into an undertow where sound judgment is suspended, where the valueless, uncaring, and ultimately nihilistic cool reigns. — Greg Gutfeld

Via our left hemisphere language centers, our mind speaks to us constantly, a phenomenon I refer to as "brain chatter." It is that voice reminding you to pick up bananas on your way home and that calculating intelligence that knows when you have to do your laundry. There is vast individual variation in the speed at which our minds function. For some, our dialogue of brain chatter runs so fast that we can barely keep up with what we are thinking. Others of us think in language so slowly that it takes a long time for us to comprehend. Still others of us have a problem retaining our focus and concentration long enough to act on our thoughts. These variations in normal processing stem back to our brain cells and how each brain is intrinsically wired. — Jill Bolte Taylor

It is as if Protestantism by clinging to the Scripture wished to preserve the last faint echoes of God's Word in a world that has fallen silent, a world where only things speak dumbly, a world delivered over to the silence and ruthlessness of the Absolute, - and in his fear of God the Protestant has realized that it is his own goal before which he cowers. For in excluding all other values, in casting himself in the last resort on an autonomous religious experience, he has assumed a final abstraction of a logical rigour that urges him unambiguously to strip all sensory trappings from his faith, to empty it of all content but the naked Absolute, retaining nothing but the pure form, the pure, empty and neutral form of a 'religion in itself', a 'mysticism in itself'. — Hermann Broch

My sister's the type who religiously watches the fear segments of her local Eyewitness News broadcasts, retaining nothing but the headline ... Everything is dangerous all of the time, and if it's not yet been pulled off the shelves, then it's certainly under investigation
so there. — David Sedaris

Frightened, he runs off to the silent fields
and howls aloud, attempting speech in vain;
foam gathers at the corners of his mouth;
he turns his lust for slaughter on the flocks,
and mangles them, rejoicing still in blood.
His garments now become a shaggy pelt;
his arms turn into legs, and he, to wolf
while still retaining traces of the man:
greyness the same, the same cruel visage,
the same cold eyes and bestial appearance. ~ The story of King Lycaon from Ovid's Metamorphosis, Book I, ll. 321-331 tr. Charles Martin — Ovid

We have a long distance to travel,' said the Angel of Death to our friend Gil, as soon as they had left the Villa. 'I will order my chariot.' And he struck the ground with his foot.
A hollow rumbling, like that which precedes an earthquake, sounded under the ground. Presently there rose round the two friends an ash-colored cloud of vapor, in the midst of which appeared a species of ivory chariot, resembling the chariots we see in the bas-reliefs of antiquity.
A brief glance would have sufficed (we will not disguise the fact from out readers) to show that the chariot was not made of ivory, but solely and simply of human bones polished and joined together with exquisite skill, but retaining still their natural form.
The Angel of Death gave his hand to Gil and they ascended the chariot, which rose into the air like the balloons of the present day, but with the difference that it was propelled by the will of its occupants. ("The Friend of Death") — Pedro Antonio De Alarcon

Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty; she looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age. We may add in parenthesis that to preserve all this is the only means of retaining beauty to old age. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The best man, then, must legislate, and laws must be passed, but these laws will have no authority when they miss the mark, though in all other cases retaining their authority. But when the law cannot determine a point at all, or not well, should the one best man or should all decide? According to our present practice assemblies meet, sit in judgment, deliberate, and decide, and their judgments an relate to individual cases. Now any member of the assembly, taken separately, is certainly inferior to the wise man. But the state is made up of many individuals. And as a feast to which all the guests contribute is better than a banquet furnished by a single man, so a multitude is a better judge of many things than any individual. — Aristotle.