Short Genuine Quotes & Sayings

Whatever the new movie about Apple founder Steve Jobs unearths, one thing is doubtless: we will switch our Apple computers right back on (maybe to talk about it, maybe not) right after we see the film. Could anything short of one genuine civic conscience, related in all sincerity stop us from miring ourselves in pirouettes of unreality, counting stickers on blue and white virtual flypaper as dearer in our imaginations than anyone in our daily lives, perhaps even our own family members? — John Thomas Allen

No one will ever know what manifold difficulties I've had to overcome in order to bring to a conclusion this first part of my chronicle. In certain dreams you feel leaden, numb, paralyzed, incapable of moving even though frightful and ferocious enemies are closing in on you. A constraint, curb, impediment of this order were a constant obstacle to the, oh, so very long and arduous composition of this work. And yet with every one of these stories the fact of having committed it to writing relieved me of a genuine millstone. My only regret is not to have completely unburdened myself. I'm still sadly short of reaching that target. — Jacques Yonnet

The dominance of short-term perspectives has led to routine decisions in the markets that sacrifice the long-term buildup of genuine value in pursuit of artificial, short-term gains. — Al Gore

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
[Letter to William Short, 31 October 1819] — Thomas Jefferson

I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief. — Edgar Allan Poe

It felt so weird, to be on the other side, where you were the one expected to offer condolences, not receive them. I wanted my "sorry" to sound genuine, because it was. That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted to say. — Sarah Dessen

There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare. — Margaret Drabble

To understand antiquity's idea of man, we must examine its gods and heroes, myths and legends. In these we find the classical prototype of genuine man. ... the will to greatness, wealth, power and fame. Anything opposed to it falls short of the authentically human. ...

What a world of difference between this conception and that to which Christ has led us! ...

Jesus' friends are in no way remarkable for their talent or character. He who considers the apostles or disciples great from a human or religious point of view raises the suspicion that he is unacquainted with true greatness. Moreover, he is confusing standards, for the apostle and disciple have nothing to do with such greatness. Their uniqueness consists of their being sent, of their God-given role of pillars for the coming salvation. — Romano Guardini

Many people suffer at the hands of others. The world can be unfair, at times mercilessly so. Millions of people in the world are genuine victims, right now. All of us will be at some point, whether it's for small matters or large, for a long duration or short. But we aren't all victims, not all the time anyway, not for everything. — Kevin DeYoung

Community is another such phenomenon. Like electricity, it is profoundly lawful. Yet there remains something about it that is inherently mysterious, miraculous, unfathomable. Thus there is no adequate one-sentence definition of genuine community. Community is something more than the sum of its parts, its individual members. What is this "something more?" Even to begin to answer that, we enter a realm that is not so much abstract as almost mystical. It is a realm where words are never fully suitable and language itself falls short. — M. Scott Peck

I have always felt that suicide was connected to communication. Not due to a lack of opportunity, but to an impossibility to communicate and be understood. It can be frustrating to try to share something with somebody, something important and real to you, and see in the face of another person that he doesn't care or, worse still, simply doesn't understand you. Of course, it is inevitable that this will happen from time to time, but imagine if it were always that way. Imagine if every time you tried to communicate and connect with another human being you fell short. If you never make any sense to anybody, if you never connect, you hold no value: you are truly alone. There are those who can survive as genuine outsiders, and then there are those who can't. — Alan Emmins

I was honest with her."
"You gave her your version-or mine?"
She flushed with angry color. How short that truce was! He expected her to play the role of the happy bride when he couldn't keep his insults to himself?
"I gave her facts,not assumptions. And this isn't going to work if you're going to continue to deliberately provoke me at every turn!"
He raked an exasperated hand through his long hair. "I'm sorry,that was unintentional. I will make every effort to guard my tongue in mixed company."
She narrowed her eyes on him, guessing, "But not when we're alone?"
"The pretense is for others, not ourselves. Neither of us is delusional."
"Of course not,far be it for me to think there's any reality in this. But if you think I can portray genuine smiles and bubbly happiness while around others when I'm so furious that I'm plotting your demise,well, think again! — Johanna Lindsey

Where Picasso paints cause, Repin paints effect. Repin predigests art for the spectator and provides a short cut to the pleasure of art that is necessarily difficult in genuine art. Repin, or kitsch, is synthetic art. — Clement Greenberg

We should be proud of our country when we have done something to be proud of, when we have lived up to our own standards. But the flip side of genuine pride is being able to recognize when we have fallen short, and to hold ourselves to account. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments-genuine savings-in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, and employees out of work, out of luck, and out of hope. — Bill Moyers

And sociopaths are noted especially for their shallowness of emotion, the hollow and transient nature of any affectionate feelings they may claim to have, a certain breathtaking callousness. They have no trace of empathy and no genuine interest in bonding emotionally with a mate. Once the surface charm is scraped off, their marriages are loveless, one-sided, and almost always short-term. If a marriage partner has any value to the sociopath, it is because the partner is viewed as a possession, one that the sociopath may feel angry to lose, but never sad or accountable. — Martha Stout

And then he laughed. It was short and brief, but genuine and made the dimples stand out on his scruffy cheeks. It was the best sound I'd heard all year. — Karina Halle

The genuine object of debate raised by the [2008 financial] crisis ought to be how to overcome the short-termism to which we have been led by a consumerism intrinsically destructive of all genuine investment in the future, a short-termism which has systematically, and not accidentally, been translated into decomposition of investment into speculation. — Bernard Stiegler

I smiled and looked at her- there she was with such a genuine grin and twinkle in her eyes. I kissed my mother on her forehead and took a long look in to her hazel eyes. I wondered when I would have the next chance to see her as I whispered, 'I love you." Mother didn't respond. She didn't look well- she had a tint of green and yellow to her skin and her thinning hair was a dull salt and pepper color, cut extra short and clinging to her scalp. She had no makeup on, which told me she just had no more energy.

I began to walk out of her room and turned to look at her. I wanted to run up to her, shake her, and beg her to tell me she loved me and was proud of me. But when I looked at her, she was already sleeping. — Jori Nunes

The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic - in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea - known to medical science is work. — Thomas Szasz

Nowhere has truth such a short life as in Sicily; a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, squashed, annihilated by imagination and self interest; shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves onto the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

One of our great problems today is that we have gotten caught up in our culture-wide quest for authenticity. We want our jeans authentic (pre-ripped at the factory), we want our apples authentic (grown locally instead of somewhere else), we want our music authentic (underground bands nobody ever heard of), we want our lettuce authentic (organically manured), we want our literature authentic (full of angst), we want our movies authentic (subtitles), and we want our coffee tables authentic (purchased from a genuine peasant while we were on some eco-tour). In short, we are a bunch of phonies. We are superficial all the way down. — Douglas Wilson

When teachers are forced to teach to the test, students get bored and genuine education ceases, no matter what the test scores may say ... The examination as a test of the past is of no value for increased learning ability. Like all external motivators, it can produce a short term effect, but examinations for the purpose of grading the past do not hook a student on learning for life. — Myron Tribus

For what Luc was in fact proposing was just a game, an enticing game, but, even so, one that could destroy my undoubtedly quite genuine feelings for Bertrand; and it could destroy something else within me, something ill-defined but fiercely felt, which, whether I liked it or not, was opposed to transience. Or, at the very least, to the intentionally transient nature of what Luc what was offering. And then, even if I was able to conceive of any passion or liaison as being short-lived, I couldn't accept in advance that it had to be that way. Like any individual for whom life is a series of charades, I could bear the charades only if they were written by me, and by me alone. — Francoise Sagan

My father lived life to the fullest, even though it was cut short at a young age in 1962. He was known for his intelligence, wit, wisdom, a wonderful sense of humour, a great personality, and a genuine goodwill towards all. — Ajay Mehta

How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan. — Italo Calvino

If you fret that the world grows short of genuine wonders, consider this: the most complex lump of matter in the universe. It works in ways we can only guess at. THrough generations of intense study, scientists have at last come to understand some of its local mechanism, but the connection between local and general remains for them, as for the rest of us, a matter of arm-waving speculation--we know less about what's going on inside of it than we do about the functional structure of the most distant galaxies. It weighs a little over three pounds and is the consistency of toothpaste; you're carrying it between your ears. — Michael Kaplan

We need to be kinder with one another, more gentle and forgiving. We need to be slower to anger and more prompt to help. We need to extend the hand of friendship and resist the hand of retribution. In short, we need to love one another with the pure love of Christ, with genuine charity and compassion and, if necessary, shared suffering, for that is the way God loves us. — Howard W. Hunter

The relevance of these special properties of the hippocampus and their role in map learning comes from a consideration of the massive upsurge in our use of technology for wayfinding. By focusing on the blue dot of a phone map, rather than looking about at our surroundings and making the effort to form a genuine map, we are short-circuiting the processes that we've learned to use over previous millennia. As far as finding our way is concerned, we have become striatal stimulus-response machines, racing through time and space like feverish maze mice hunting for cheese. — Colin Ellard