Sharpness Quotes & Sayings

I'm always amused by the idea that certain people have about technique, which translate into an immoderate taste for the sharpness of the image. It is a passion for detail, for perfection, or do they hope to get closer to reality with this trompe I'oeil? They are, by the way, as far away from the real issues as other generations of photographers were when they obscured their subject in soft-focus effects. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

I watch people get older and lose their intellectual acuity; you lose that sharpness, that cleanness, that brain that you worked so hard on and that you were gifted with and lose the gifts that were given. — Bryce Courtenay

I one day saw, in the assembly of this prince, a man with a knife in his hand, which he placed upon his own neck; he then made a long speech, not a word of which I could understand; he then firmly grasped the knife, and its sharpness and the force with which he urged it were such, that he severed his head from his body, and it fell on the ground.14 I was wondering much at the circumstance, when the King said to me: Does any among you do such a thing as this? I answered, I never saw one do so. He smiled, and said: These our servants do so, out of their love to us. He — Ibn Battuta

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people. — Jim Rohn

You cannot underestimate the sharpness of people's BS radar. They can spot a soulless, bureaucratic tactic a million miles away. — Gary Vaynerchuk

It is fear that I stand most in fear of, in sharpness it exceeds every other feeling. — Michel De Montaigne

I wish it back," she said in uncharacteristic sharpness. "I don't care to cast blame. I just want it back. It is, after all, my personal property. Not meant for anyone else to read." "Full of juicy secrets, is it?" Julian asked, eyes glinting. "About you? Or about all of us?" "Perhaps I shall have to track down this ghost and claim the journal myself," Rowan said. "Sounds like interesting reading." Emma lifted her chin. "I assure you, you would find it frightfully dull." "Your blush tells a different tale." Julian smirked. — Julie Klassen

With all their sharpness and being pointy - their sole purpose was to stab you. — Jessica Sorensen

Pounding an edge to sharpness will not make it last. — Laozi

Good," said the First Speaker. "And tell me, what do you think of all this. A finished work of art, is it not?"
"Definitely!"
"Wrong! It is not." This, with sharpness. "It is the first lesson you must unlearn. The Seldon Plan is neither complete nor correct. Instead, it is merely the best that could be done at the time. Over a dozen generations of men have pored over these equations, worked at them, taken them apart to the last decimal place, and put them together again. They've done more than that. They've watched nearly four hundred years pass and against the predictions and equations, they've checked reality, and they have learned. — Isaac Asimov

All I can do in my writing is to stimulate a certain amount of thought, clarify some technical facts and date my work. But when I preach sharpness, brilliancy, scale, etc., I am just mouthing words, because no words can really describe those terms and qualities it takes the actual print to say, here it is. — Ansel Adams

It isn't about the sharpness of the blade, but the hand that holds it.' Science doesn't do good or ill by itself- it's the intention behind it. — Megan Shepherd

The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers. — Kenneth Branagh

As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other's angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep — Edith Wharton

For a man who was to exhibit such acute political sharpness later in his career, Napoleon completely misread the revolution's opening stages. 'I repeat what I have said to you,' he wrote to Joseph on July 22, a week after the fall of the Bastille, 'calm will return. In a month, there will no longer be a question of anything. So, if you send me 300 livres [7,500 francs] I will go to Paris to terminate our business. — Andrew Roberts

The test of character posed by the gentleness of God's approach to us is especially dangerous for those formed by the ideas that dominate our modern world. We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a pose, not with genuine intellectual method and character. Only a very hardy individualist or social rebel
or one desperate for another life
therefore stands any chance of discovering the substantiality of the spiritual life today. Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright. — Dallas Willard

Our feet thump on the ground, and we can no longer smell even a trace of the fishes' bodies that once bumped up against the shore because they're decayed now, gone to bone, the smell of them lost in the scent of our living, our flesh, the salt of our tears and sweat, the sharpness of green grass and plants trampled underfoot. We're breathing the same air, singing the same song. — Ally Condie

Be an example to your men, in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself, and let the troops see that you don'tin your endurance of fatigue and privation. always be tactful and well-mannered and teach your subordinates to do the same. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide. — Erwin Rommel

The modern writers who have suggested, in a more or less open manner, that the family is a bad institution, have generally confined themselves to suggesting, with much sharpness, bitterness, or pathos, that perhaps the family is not always very congenial. Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. — G.K. Chesterton

The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat. Along the stern rail there is a line of telescopes; each brings the shore into focus at a given distance. If the boat is becalmed, one of the telescopes will be in continual use; it will seem to tell the whole, the unchanging truth. But this is an illusion; and as the boat sets off again, we return to our normal activity: scurrying from one telescope to another, seeing the sharpness fade in one, waiting for the blur to clear in another. And when the blur does clear, we imagine that we have made it do so all by ourselves. — Julian Barnes

It's not an honest face. It's not a kind face. It's a face made of anger and secrets and lies. From the tight, guarded mouth to the clenched, square jaw to the glossy shimmer of I-dare-you that coats the surface of her eyes, Aimee's face is a scary place for Meghan's gaze to rest. But beneath the gloss, behind the sharpness and tension, deep at Aimee's core, Meghan can see something warm and real. It's the same unnameable thing she saw in the sickroom on the first day of school. It's the same thing she feels pulsing softly deep in her own chest. — Madeleine George

For only when we can outwait the dark will the sharpness of experience recede like a tide to reveal what has survived beneath it all. Often what seems tragic, if looked at long enough, reveals itself as part of a larger transformation. — Mark Nepo

They were a well-mixed bunch of men whose mental sharpness ranged from that of a butter knife to an overripe plum. — Annelie Wendeberg

I love the sharpness and political tone of RoboCop and I think that such a film is now urgently needed. — Jose Padilha

You think me cruel."
"No." Magiano hesitates for a long moment. "Maybe a little."
"I'm not branding them because I am cruel," I say calmly. "I'm doing it as a reminder of what they've done to us. To the marked. You're so quick to forget."
"I never forget," Magiano replies. This time, there is a slight sharpness to his tone. His hand hovers near his side, where his childhood wound continues to plague him. "But branding the unmarked with your crest will not make them any more loyal to you."
"It makes them fear me."
"Fear works best with some love," Magiano says. "Show them that you can be terrifying, yet generous." The gold bands in his braids clink. "Let the people love you a little, mi Adelinetta. — Marie Lu

Chefs don't use white pepper just to avoid spoiling the whiteness of pommes puree or bechamel. It has a more peppery aroma, with sharpness and sweetness, too. — Yotam Ottolenghi

You cannot do everything you want with the 3D camera, it's too big, and the digital quality of those cameras is a little bit limiting. With film, you have a lot more subtly, like with highlights and color. In terms of sharpness they (both formats) are very close; but in terms of nuance, of color and contrast, film is far superior. — Michel Gondry

I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications. — Michel De Montaigne

Close your mouth,
block off your senses,
blunt your sharpness,
untie your knots,
soften your glare,
settle your dust.
This is the primal identity. — Lao-Tzu

Every time he studied this instrument, with its slender, gleaming steel rod that tapered down to such needle-like sharpness, he wondered why it was necessary to have things like this in the world. If it were truly only for chopping ice, you'd think a completely different design might do. The people who produce and sell things like this don't understand, he thought. They don't realize that some of us break out in a cold sweat at just a glimpse of that shiny, pointed tip. — Ryu Murakami

Those who know don't talk. Those who talk don't know. Close your mouth, block off your senses, blunt your sharpness, untie your knots, soften your glare, settle your dust. This is the primal identity. Be like the Tao. It can't be approached or withdrawn from, benefited or harmed, honored or brought into disgrace. It gives itself up continually. That is why it endures. — Lao-Tzu

Why did happy memories fade and blur until one could scarcely recall them at all, while horrible memories seemed to retain their blinding clarity and painful sharpness? — Judith McNaught

Sir Makin is almost the handsome knight of legend, dark locks curling, tall, a swordman's build, darkest eyes, his armour always polished, blade keen. Only the thickness of his lips and the sharpness of his nose leave him shy of a maiden's dream. His mouth too expressive, his look too hawkish. In other matters too Sir Makin is "almost". Almost honourable, almost honest. About his friendship, though, there is no almost. — Mark Lawrence

Real sharpness comes without effort. — Li Mu

Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refused to walk any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings." Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys. — Howard Zinn

Anger dulls the sharpness of mind, hardens the softness of feelings, and replaces the sweetness of the world with bitterness. — Debasish Mridha

Her hand closes on smooth metal. Her fingers test the sharpness of the edge. Perfect. It's a fresh blade.
The girls' voices rustle in her head. Their clamoring pushes out all rational thought. She rolls up her sleeve.
The bite of the blade kills the noise. It wipes out the memory of those staring faces. Willow looks at her arm, at the life springing from her. Tiny pinpricks of red that blossom into giant peonies. — Julia Hoban

Humour is often stronger and more effective than sharpness in cutting knotty issues. — Horace

Wherever you are in the world, there's always something about the Australian light. There's something about the sharpness of it, something about the clarity of it, something about the colours of Australia. And hopefully, something optimistic about Australian painting too. — Ken Done

Now we are creatures of the darkness
Blessed with eternal love to last!
The knowing dawned on me with sharpness
Enhanced by glimpses of the past. — Tatyana K. Varenko

The very falsehood that stained her, was a proof how blindly she loved another
this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man
while he himself was rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude!
how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of her words
'There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.' He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself. — Elizabeth Gaskell

Sulphuric acid was added to vinegar for extra sharpness, chalk to milk, turpentine to gin. Arsenite of copper was used to make vegetables greener or to make jellies glisten. Lead chromate gave bakery products a golden glow and brought radiance to mustard. Lead acetate was added to drinks as a sweetener, and red lead somehow made Gloucester cheese lovelier to behold, if not safer to eat. There was hardly a foodstuff, it seems, that couldn't be improved or made more economical to the retailer through a little deceptive manipulation. — Bill Bryson

'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures. — Michel De Montaigne

Sharpness is overrated. — Keith Carter

Homesickness is a great teacher. It taught me, during an endless rainy fall, that I came from the arid lands, and like where I came from. I was used to dry clarity and sharpness in the air. I was used to horizons that either lifted into jagged ranges or rimmed the geometrical circle of the flat world. I was used to seeing a long way. I was used to earth colors
tan, rusty red, toned white
and the endless green of Iowa offended me. I was used to a sun that came up over mountains and went down behind other mountains. I missed the color and smell of sagebrush, and the sight of bare ground. — Wallace Stegner

My breath is halted, like grasping for air after crying far too long and hard. It is like a hiccup, with a shivering sharpness of nerves. It is like icicles running down your spine or aluminum in your mouth, an eerie amount of emotions that cannot compare to the actual feelings you've managed to live through. I just watched you die, I say to myself silently. — Joseph McGinnis

She expected the pain, when it came. But she gasped at its sharpness; it was not like any pain she had felt before. He kissed her and slowed and would have stopped. But she laughed, and said that this one time she would consent to hurt, and bleed, at his touch. He smiled into her neck and kissed her again and she moved with him through the pain. The pain became a warmth that grew. Grew, and stopped her breath. And took her breath and her pain and her mind away from her body, so that there was nothing but her body and his body and the light and fire they made together. — Kristin Cashore

A philosophical thought has probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French — Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Everything can change in Petersburg except its weather. And its light. It's the northern light, pale and diffused, one in which both memory and eye operate with unusual sharpness. In this light, and thanks to the directness and length of the streets, a walker's thoughts travel farther than his destination ... — Joseph Brodsky

Seal the openings, shut the doors, dull the sharpness, untie the knots, dim the light, become one with the dust. This is called the profound union. — Laozi

At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it? I minded me of all Alan's kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost for ever that doughty friend. At the same time, the sickness that hung upon me seemed to redouble, and the pang in my side was like a sword for sharpness. I thought I must have swooned where I stood. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Or perhaps is is that time doesn't heal wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones - the angle of your hips, the sharpness of your shoulders, as well as the luster of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the openness of your smile - has collapsed under the weight of your griefs. — Thrity Umrigar

The golden rule is work fast. As for framing, composition, focus-this is no time to start asking yourself questions: you just have to trust your intuition and the sharpness of your reflexes. — Jacques-Henri Lartigue

The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline. — Jacob Bronowski

Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. — Thomas A. Edison

Like Pascal, Nietzsche, and Simone Weil, Kierkegaard is one of those writers whom it is very difficult to estimate justly. When one reads them for the first time, one is bowled over by their originality . . . and by the sharpness of their insights. . . . But with successive readings one's doubts grow, one begins to react against their overemphasis on one aspect of the truth at the expense of all the others, and one's first enthusiasm may all too easily turn to an equally exaggerated aversion. Of all such writers, one might say that one cannot imagine them as children. The more we read them, the more we become aware that something has gone badly wrong with their affective life; . . . it is not only impossible to imagine one of them as a happy husband or wife, it is impossible to imagine their having a single intimate friend to whom they could open their hearts. — W. H. Auden

When you meet the man [Brassai] you see at once that he is equipped with no ordinary eyes. And the sharpness of vision and depth of insight are revealed in Brassai's lifelong photographic exploration of Paris - its people, places, and things. — Henry Miller

She gives birth in pain, she heals males' wounds, she nurses the newborn and buries the dead; of man she knows all that offends his pride and humiliates his will. While inclining before him and submitting flesh to spirit, she remains on the carnal borders of the spirit; and she contests the sharpness of hard masculine architecture by softening the angles; she introduces free luxury and unforeseen grace. — Simone De Beauvoir

Color is gradually applied, or layered, dark to light (on a white or light-colored surface), building increasingly complex values, hues and textures. Although every colored pencil type works well with layering, harder pencils have a slight edge over the softer varieties because the points maintain their sharpness longer. — Gary Greene

So when it happened suddenly this was how it happened. She had often wondered. But the magazine stories had got it all wrong. It was not an affair of sudden heartbeats, and hot and cold flushes, as though one were going to have influenza, it was just this quiet recognition. But in the approach of love there must be a sharpness, for that moment of beauty that had come down like a sword had cut her life in two. When she crossed the bridge she had crossed from her girlhood to womanhood. — Elizabeth Goudge

How then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives which were people. — Virginia Woolf

My aloneness had never bothered me; I hadn't even been aware of it. But now it overwhelmed me. The awareness washed over me with painful sharpness and deep grief. Now that I had company. — Linda Olsson

It will be easier, my lord, if you will sit, as even your collar is above my eye level." "Very well." He dragged a stool to the center of the room and sat his lordly arse upon it. "And since you don't want to have stray hairs on that lovely white linen," Anna went on, "I would dispense with the shirt, were I you." "Always happy to dispense with clothing at the request of a woman." The earl whipped his shirt over his head. "Do you want your hair cut, my lord?" Anna tested the sharpness of the scissor blades against her thumb. "Or perhaps not?" "Cut," his lordship replied, giving her a slow perusal. "I gather from your vexed expression there is something for which I must apologize. I confess to a mood both distracted and resentful." "When somebody does you a decent turn," she said as she began to comb out his damp hair, "you do not respond with sarcasm and innuendo, my lord. — Grace Burrowes

He has a strange face. It's all sharpness and angles and incredibly fair skin. But then he's got this thatch of black hair that's such a contrast. It's like two cultures had a massive fight over his face and neither won. — Melina Marchetta

The "losers" in memory competitions, this research suggests, stumble not because they remember too little. They have studied tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of words, and often they are familiar with the word they ultimately misspell. In many cases, they stumble because they remember too much. If recollecting is just that - a re-collection of perceptions, facts, and ideas scattered in intertwining neural networks in the dark storm of the brain - then forgetting acts to block the background noise, the static, so that the right signals stand out. The sharpness of the one depends on the strength of the other. — Benedict Carey

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions - trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday — Virginia Woolf

Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life
its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness
conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. — Susan Sontag

I'll always be happy if they'd leave me alone in that delightful and unknown furthest corner, apart from struggles, putrefactions and nonsense; the ultimate corner of sugar and toast, where the mermaids catch the branches of the willows and the heart opens to a flute's sharpness. — Federico Garcia Lorca

When you lose velocity off of your fastball, one thing that suffers is your off-speed pitches - the action on your off-speed pitches. Once you lose arm speed, it takes away rotation from your off-speed pitches. The rotation is what gives them the sharpness and the nastiness. — Tim Hudson

It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men: kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest: sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self interest are the traits of success. — John Steinbeck

There are many, many details of action involved in the simplicity and sharpness of being in this very moment, here, now. — Chogyam Trungpa

Then summer fades and passes and October comes. We'll smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure. — Thomas Wolfe

I like dialogue that is slightly more brittle than life. I have always admired and wished to write one of those 1940s film scripts where every line is written with a sharpness and economy that is frankly artificial. — Tom Stoppard

Ever seen a bullet-smashed windscreen?
The hole at the center becomes an eye. You see less through it but you gain focus, sharpness. That's how it is -- our wounds become our eyes. Seeing outside becomes seeing inside.
Listen. — Bilal Tanweer

Opinions, theories, and systems pass by turns over the grindstone of time, which at first gives them brilliancy and sharpness, but finally wears them out. — Antoine Rivarol

The best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed by those that feel their sharpness. — William Shakespeare

If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness. — Lao-Tzu

The things that we preceive as beautiful may be different, but the actual characteristics we ascribe to beautiful objects are similar. Think about it. When something strikes us as beautiful, it displays more presence and sharpness of shape and vividness of color, doesn't it? It stands out. It shines. It seems almost iridescent compared to the dullness of other objects less attractive. — James Redfield

What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness. — Flann O'Brien

The trouble is, when you gift a girl with flowers your choice can be construed so many different ways. A man might give you a rose because he feels you are beautiful, or because he fancies their shade or shape or softness similar to your lips. Roses are expensive, and perhaps he wishes to show through a valuable gift that you are valuable to him.
When a man gives you a rose what you see may not be what he intends. You may think he sees you as delicate or frail. Perhaps you dislike a suitor who considers you sweet and nothing else. Perhaps the stem is thorn, and you assume he thinks you likely to hurt a hand too quick to touch. But if he trims the thorns you might think he has no liking for a thing that can defend itself with sharpness. There's so many ways a thing can be interpreted. — Patrick Rothfuss

Hearing wulfen howl is ... well, it's horrible. The sound is glassy, hovering at the upper ranges of hearing, and it's full of paws on snow and running with the icy wind hitting the back of your throat like stares. Underneath the glassy edge is the song of flesh ripped apart, the sweetness of hot blood, and the savagery of crunching bones with sharp teeth.
The worst part is how it climbs into your brain, pressing itself like a hard sharpness into the soft folds, and drags open the doors socialization slams shut to keep the howling ravening thing down inside down and tame.
The thing on four clawed legs that lives in all of us. — Lilith Saintcrow

Sharpness is a bourgeois concept — Henri Cartier-Bresson

When I then turned toward the scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully. For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning. Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown. — Augustine Of Hippo

Do not use the sharpness of your speech on your mother who taught you how to speak. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

I will perform the function of a whetstone, which is about to restore sharpness to iron, though itself unable to cut.
[Lat., Fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quae ferrum valet, exsors ipsi secandi.] — Horace

The popular and scientific views of "race" no longer coincide. The word "race," as applied scientifically to human groupings, has lost any sharpness of meaning. To-day it is hardly definable in scientific terms, except as an abstract concept which may, under certain conditions, very different from those now prevalent, have been realized approximately in the past and might, under certain other but equally different conditions, be realized in the distant future. — Julian Huxley

They were kissing again, carefully at first, learning the shape and texture of each other's lips, testing the sharpness of the teeth behind them.
It's too fast, said a panicky voice in his mind. And too dangerous. He'll drink your juices, taste your brain, crack your soul open like an egg!
Hell, I think I want him to do all that. — Poppy Z. Brite

Violins are the lively, forward, importunate wits, that distinguish themselves by the flourishes of imagination, sharpness of repartee, glances of satire, and bear away the upper part in every consort. — Richard Steele

Hope, and fear. Twin forces that tugged at us first in one direction and then in another, and which was the stronger no one could say. Of the latter we never spoke, but it was always with us. Fear, constant companion of the peasant. Hunger, ever at hand to jog his elbow should he relax. Despair, ready to engulf him should he falter. Fear; fear of the dark future; fear of the sharpness of hunger; fear of the blackness of death. — Kamala Markandaya

Take my memories of my mother, and the feelings that went with them. I do not want to know them at all. Take the ache in my throat when I think of Molly, take all the sharp-edged, bright-colored days I recall with her. Take their brilliance and leave me but the shadows of what I saw and felt. Let me recall them without cutting myself on their sharpness. Take my days and nights in Regal's dungeons. It is enough to know what was done to me. Take it to keep, and let me stop feeling my face against that stone floor, hearing the sound of my nose breaking, smelling and tasting my own blood. Take my hurt that I never knew my father, take my hours of staring up at his portrait when the great hall was empty and I could do so alone. Take my - Fitz. Stop. You give her too much, there will be nothing left of you. — Robin Hobb

One of the blessings of age is to learn not to part on a note of sharpness, to treasure the moments spent with those we love, and to make them whenever possible good to remember, for time is short. — Eleanor Roosevelt

To me the special quality (which of course many men have as well) is first of all a sharpness, a clarityIt cuts through - especially intellectual ossification. Itgets to the point. To me the dakini principle stands for the intuitive force. — Tenzin Palmo

arse' is a traditional usage - nothing to be ashamed of." The Baron nodded. "It has a commendable grown-up sharpness to it. 'Ass,' on the other hand, is quite frankly for spinsters and little children." Tiffany turned the words on her tongue for a moment and said, "Yes, sir. I think that is probably the long and the short of it. — Terry Pratchett

It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. — John Steinbeck

I guess the producers saw me and knew I was literate and I always tried to be alert and it's funny because you have to have a sharpness to do those shows, especially some of the ones I did in later years. — June Lockhart

[Smart] is an elusive concept. There's a certain sharpness, an ability to absorb new facts. To ask an insightful question. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first. A certain creativity that allows people to be effective. — Bill Gates

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I love to praise what I love, and I won't for a minute believe that love is blind
indeed, it gives clearness without sharpness, and surely that is the best light in which to look at anything. — Katherine Anne Porter

And at last, in the evening, one after another the sounds die out, and the harmony falters, and silence falls. With the sunset sharpness was lost and, like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep, darkly here without a light to it, save what came green suffused through leaves, or pale on the white flowers by the window. [Lily — Virginia Woolf

the Western principle of the sanctity of human life - a principle which is unique in the sharpness with which it separates the wrongness of taking the life of any human being, no matter how severely defective, from the wrongness of taking the life of any non-human animal, no matter how intelligent - can, as I have argued elsewhere, be explained as the legacy of the Judeo-Christian world view, in which humans, but not animals, are made in the image of God and have immortal souls. For those of us who do not accept the authority of the Judeo-Christian religions, this explanation should lead to a critical re-examination of our belief in the sanctity of all and only human life. One — Peter Singer