Short Devoted Quotes & Sayings

Magazines devoted to the religion of success appear as Makers of America. They mean just about that when they preach evolution, progress, prosperity, being constructive, the American way of doing things. It is easy to laugh, but, in fact, they are using a very great pattern of human endeavor. For one thing it adopts an impersonal criterion; for another it adopts an earthly criterion; for a third it is habituating men to think quantitatively. To be sure the idea confuses excellence with size, happiness with speed, and human nature with contraption. Yet the same motives are at work which have ever actuated any moral code, or ever will. The desire fir the biggest, the fastest, the highest, or if you are a maker of wristwatches or microscopes the smallest; the love in short of the superlative and the "peerless," is in essence and possibility a noble passion. — Walter Lippmann

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. — Seneca.

as she bestowed her heavy censure alike on his virtues as his errors, on his devoted friendship and his ill-bestowed loves, on his disinterestedness and his prodigality, on his pre-possessing grace of manner, and the facility with which he yielded to temptation, her double shot proved too heavy, and fell short of the mark. Nor — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry. The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of — Victor Hugo

As with any great literature, there are probably as many ways to read William Faulkner's writing as there are readers. There are hundreds of books devoted to interpretations of his novels, numerous biographies, and every year high school teachers and college professors guide their students through one or more of the novels. But after all is said and done, there are the books themselves, and the pleasure of reading them can be deep and lasting. The language Faulkner uses ranges from the poetically beautiful, nearly biblical to the coarse sounds of rough dialect. His characters linger in the mind, whether for their heroism or villainy, their stoicism or self-indulgence, their honesty or deceitfulness or self-deception, their wisdom or stupidity, their gentleness or cruelty. In short, like Shakespeare, William Faulkner understood what it means to be human. — William Faulkner

The PBA was a symptom of the Philippines' basketball obsession, not the cause. I was thrilled to be witnessing the professional game from inside Alaska's locker room, but that wasn't what brought me to Manila in the first place. I was inspired by the idea that a Southeast Asian nation populated by five-foot-five men and mostly forgotten by America except for its political corruption, widespread prostitution, and violent Muslim separatist movement could be devoted to hoops with a passion unequaled by any other country. It was a nationwide tale of unrequited love. Forty million short men obsessed with basketball--they might as well have been a nation of blind art historians. — Rafe Bartholomew

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong. — Queen Elizabeth II

I was most incorrigibly devoted to versifying, and all my spouse's wholesome admonitions had no manner of effect on me; in short, I believe this scribbling itch is an incurable disease ... — Laetitia Pilkington

A brief short story may require only a few paragraphs after the climax. On the other hand, in his massive novel 'The World According to Garp,' John Irving's denouement consisted of 10 separate sections, each devoted to an individual character's fate and each almost a story in itself. — Nancy Kress

For the biographer, the final clue to character lies in the yet unread - the scribbled note, the diary page, a notation in the margin of a draft - until the day when even the most devoted portraitist of the dead says, "Enough!" Working in the service of the dead, biographers quit their labors only when the sole remaining task is the impossible - resurrection. — Laura Furman

People without children do have the freedom to do things that caring parents with dependent kids can't - to work long hours, to travel frequently, to relocate, and to do all these things on short notice if necessary. In return, they can achieve positions that devoted parents can't. — Virginia Postrel

Thus far, I've devoted my entire career to publishing genre short fiction, but I now look forward to applying that same level of curation to finding the best new novels and new authors. — John Joseph Adams

Oman's book Wellington's Army is 400 pages in length but just a single page is devoted to the artillery with the opening, 'only a short note is required as to Wellington's use of artillery'. Historians ever since — Nick Lipscombe

Opposite the Half-Axe was the narrow-fronted entrance to a shop devoted to short lengths of rope and wooden poles a man and a half high. Tehol had no idea how such a specialized enterprise could survive, especially in this unravelled, truncated market, yet its door had remained open for almost six centuries, locked up each night by a short length of rope and a wooden pole. — Steven Erikson

Elder Jeffery R. Holland: So we have neighbors to bless, children to protect, the poor to lift up and the truth to defend. We have wrongs to make right, truths to share and good to do. In short, we have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord. We can't quit and we can't go back. — Jeffrey R. Holland

The personality of man is not an apple that has to be polished, but a banana that has to be peeled. And the reason we remain so far from one another, the reason we neither communicate nor interact in any real way, is that most of us spend our lives in polishing rather than peeling... Almost everything in modern life is devoted to the polishing process, and little to the peeling process. It is the surface personality that we work on - the appearance, the clothes, the manners, the geniality. In short, the salesmanship: We are selling the package, not the product. — Sydney J. Harris

Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) is a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success. — Rex Reed