Shorter Quotes & Sayings

Everyone's attention span is getting shorter. As a result, everything - films, music, art - gets watered down and dumber. Every now and again, you get something great, but not often. — Kelis

Jazz shouldn't have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that's required to sound like jazz. For me, the word 'jazz' means, 'I dare you.' — Wayne Shorter

It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Inheriting from Application is shorter than writing an explicit main method, but it also has some shortcomings. First, you can't use this trait if you need to access command-line arguments, because the args array isn't available. For example, because the Summer application uses command-line arguments, it must be written with an explicit main method, as shown in Listing 4.3. Second, because of some restrictions in the JVM threading model, you need an explicit main method if your program is multi-threaded. Finally, some implementations of the JVM do not optimize the initialization code of an object which is executed by the Application trait. So you should inherit from Application only when your program is relatively simple and single-threaded. — Martin Odersky

Larry said that Michelangelo was a poof, so I wondered why he'd sculpted a guy with a really tiny cock. But I know when you go to old houses, the doorways are much smaller, 'cause people were shorter then, so maybe cocks were smaller too. It makes me glad I wasn't born a few centuries ago. — J.L. Merrow

I would say the biggest difference is that a movie is a shorter, more encapsulated experience, and a TV job is like having a regular day job where you get to do what you love. — Sarah Baker

is, in the words of The Westminster Shorter Catechism, "any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God" (Q. 14).6 Sin is mutiny, either by its omission ("want of conformity to") or its commission ("transgression of the law of God"). — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Yes, I'm Daniel Tahi. I know what your lips taste like.I know you roll your eyes when you think someone is an idiot. I know that you wish you were six inches shorter because you hate being taller than most of the boys you've ever met. Your name is tattooed across my chest and written on my heart.You are a fire daughter of earth, fanua afi and I am vasa loloa,son of the ocean. I am yours ... And you can't even remember who I am. — Lani Wendt Young

On the other hand, chess is a mass sport now and for chess organisers shorter time control is obviously more attractive. But I think that this control does not suit World Championship matches. — Boris Spassky

You know, I'm not real tall. I'm 6'0, 6'½, but I think people think I'm shorter than I am because I'm not the most muscular cat in the world. — Mark McGrath

The thing that makes [Bob] Kennedy so good is that he doesn't have a fear of losing. He was willing to go to Europe and get hammered. — Frank Shorter

You're late, asshole!" he said cheerfully. He tried to snatch the six-pack out of Cheyenne's hands but, being shorter by at least half a foot, ended up jumping in the air, his limbs flailing in an exaggerated manner. — Melissa Noel

I don't change the language for children books. I don't make the language simpler. I use words that they might have to look up in the dictionary. The books are shorter, but there's just not that much difference other than that to be honest. And the funny thing is, I have adult writer friends [to whom I would say], "Would you think of writing a children's book?" and they go, "No, God, I wouldn't know how." They're quite intimidated by the concept of it. And when I say to children's books writers, would they write an adult book, they say no because they think they're too good for it. — John Boyne

The arts can open the door to the imagination, pushing the envelope of how peace can be created. It takes courage to take this kind of risk, and courage is what we all need to create a better world. — Wayne Shorter

What works in a story is very different than what works in cinema. For example, dialogue in books: If you translate it too faithfully, it sounds a little stilted, because we often don't speak the way we speak in novels. Oral language is much punchier, shorter sentences. — Yann Martel

French women will always look up at a man, even if he is four inches shorter than she is. — Alan Furst

My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages. — Anne Tyler

I lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn, for about 10 years, and then we moved out to Jersey City after my wife and I bought a house up in the Catskills. I miss Brooklyn, but the commute to the Catskills is about 45 minutes shorter. — Pablo Schreiber

I spent a long time working in restaurants and making no money. It was very character-building, but I think it could have been built in a shorter time. — Graham Norton

Three half-mile repeats on the track at 5-K race pace with a short recovery jog in between shouldn't scare anyone away-and it will improve your speed. — Frank Shorter

Another of Brother Lawrence's helpful ideas was to pray shorter conversational prayers continually through the day rather than trying to pray long sessions of complex prayers. — Rick Warren

Experience has taught me how important it is to just keep going, focusing on running fast and relaxed. Eventually it passes and the flow returns. It's part of racing. — Frank Shorter

There are guys you give the benefit of the doubt if they hold you up a little bit longer than normal, and you have that list of guys you kind of know are going to be a problem when you get there. The window of being patient with them is a lot shorter. — Tony Stewart

It's making a statement about what life is, really. And I'm going to end the line with it. — Wayne Shorter

Buzz has reduced my range. Running safely with him means using fewer and shorter routes, with multiple laps per day or multiple returns there per week. Neither of us minds repeating ourselves. This is what runners do. — Joe Henderson

For the novice runner, I'd say to give yourself at least 2 months of consistently running several times a week at a conversational pace before deciding whether you want to stick with it. Consistency is the most important aspect of training at this point. — Frank Shorter

It's just interesting to me that the physical enactment of that mind moving has gradually changed for you in the last few years. It made me wonder if the change was deliberate in any sense, or procedural, like when A.R. Ammons stuck an adding machine roll into his typewriter to squeeze his verses into shorter lines. — Matthew Zapruder

It matters to ourselves, of course, but it matters terribly to other people. Moral failure or spiritual failure or whatever you call it, makes such a vicious circle ... It seems as if when we love people and they fall short, we retaliate by falling shorter ourselves. Children are like that. Adults have a fearful responsibility. When they fail to live up to what children expect of them, the children give up themselves. So each generation keeps failing the next. — Dorothy Whipple

Wolf's fur was speckled with drops of blood that had beaded on it like rain. The gravel in the alley shone in the half-light from the distant street lamps. The wolf's muzzle, a little shorter and broader than I had seen on Wild Kingdom, was drawn back, black lips from fangs striped white and red like peppermints. Its eyes were blue, rather than any proper lupine shade, and gleamed with a sort of demented awareness. — Jim Butcher

Johnny liked being with Iona; it made him feel like a man. She was petite - a good five inches shorter than him - but it was more than that. She let him pay for her, patronise her, made no demands on his time other than what he was already willing to offer. She made him feel nineteen as well, in her bed with sheets that smelt like cheap laundrette detergent, in bars drinking Snakebite from pint glasses still warm from the dishwasher. — Erin Lawless

Hills are speedwork in disguise. — Frank Shorter

The last day is way shorter than counting to ten. — Leena Ahmad Almashat

Summer is the season of motion, winter is the season of form. In summer everything moves save the fixed and inert. Down the hill flows the west wind, making wavelets in the shorter grass and great billows in the standing hay; the tree in full leaf sways its heavy boughs below and tosses its leaves above; the weed by the gate bends and turns when the wind blows down the road. It is the shadow of moving things that we usually see, and the shadows are themselves in motion. The shadow of a branch, speckled through with light, wavers across the lawn, the sprawling shadow of the weed moves and sways across the dust. — Henry Beston

I can't actually explain why my lines got shorter, but they did. Just as I can't explain why my early poems were 'all image' and my current ones are relatively abstract. The sense of the line changed with the theme, somehow my ear (or brain or heart/mind) fell in love with a short line and very very simple words. — Gregory Orr

Significant changes in the growth rate of money supply, even small ones, impact the financial markets first. Then, they impact changes in the real economy, usually in six to nine months, but in a range of three to 18 months. Usually in about two years in the US, they correlate with changes in the rate of inflation or deflation."
"The leads are long and variable, though the more inflation a society has experienced, history shows, the shorter the time lead will be between a change in money supply growth and the subsequent change in inflation. — Milton Friedman

I would say my being disheartened has more to do with American culture than anything else. We are becoming a very shallow culture. My goodness, the celebrity ethos has taken over completely. Turn on the television and you see that over and over. There's very little substance. And so, everything gets shorter. Everything is entertainment oriented. Our churches reflect that. A thirty-five minute sermon without a Power Point or video clips is rare these days. That's not true in other countries so much. — Philip Yancey

Susan B. Anthony said that the bicycle did more to emancipate women than any other single thing. The bicycle was linked in the psyches of women at that time as a symbol of practical emancipation. Women could go places, wear their skirts shorter to manage the bicycle, and be independent. — Susan Vreeland

Style comes from knowing who you are and who you want to be in the world; it does not come from wanting to be somebody else, or wanting to be thinner, shorter, taller, prettier. — Nina Garcia

He was about an inch shorter than me, about half the width of me, and certainly not as good looking. Not everyone can be me. Who — J.R. Rain

The trend in modern American culture is toward ever more individualized eating ... and with every food added to the list of things one does not eat, the shorter becomes the list of people with whom one can enjoy table fellowship ... for those of us whose health permits, partaking readily of whatever is offered can be a way of affirming that eating together is at least as important as whatever it is that is eaten. — Margaret Kim Peterson

The longer our graduation lines are today, the shorter our unemployment lines will be tomorrow. — George H. W. Bush

This was not Newt's fault; in his younger days he would go every couple of months to the barber's shop on the corner, clutching a photograph he's carefully torn from a magazine which showed someone with an impressively cool haircut grinning at the camera and he would show the picture to the barber, and ask to be made to look like that, please. And the barber, who knew his job, would take one look and then give Newt the basic, all-purpose, short-back-and-sides. After a year of this, Newt realized that he obviously didn't have the face for haircuts. The best Newton Pulsifer could hope for after a haircut was shorter hair. — Neil Gaiman

As the nicknames get shorter, people come closer. — Mita Jain

Doing as many makeovers as I do, I've learned a few things about what makes women feel better about themselves. The starting point is usually getting a new haircut. I don't want to generalize, because every case is different, but I think it's best to err on the side of styling your hair shorter the older you get. In my opinion, it's generally not a good look for women over thirty to have hair way below their shoulders. — Tim Gunn

Dogs should be called by names which are not very long, so that each may obey more quickly when he is called, but they should not have shorter names than those which are pronounced in two syllables ... — Columella

The antithetical or perhaps mirror image to sadness is the experience, similarly unique to one's late years, of a swift, mysterious wave of happiness, also causeless, but of much shorter duration. I cannot remember a time, before my sixties, when the consciousness of happiness would sweep over me and, like a shower of cold water when one is desperately overheated, offer me a passing sensation very close to glee.
Both sadness and fleeting happiness relate, I think, to mortality, to the consciousness of being old and of nearing the end of life ... these sensations ... surge up from the unconscious, to be a gift of long life or fortunate old age. Both sadness and happiness, but sadness more, are related to the fact that nothing of all this will endure for long. [p. 179] — Carolyn G. Heilbrun

The greater your love,
the shorter the distance to the divine. — Matshona Dhliwayo

So, in a way I was hedging and saying that if the Olympic stuff doesn't work out at least I can be a lawyer. — Frank Shorter

When I was a child, which was a shorter period of time for me than it was for most people, my mother sometimes implied that she might take me with her if she decided to consummate her romance with Death. My mother is beautiful, and to anyone who never lived with her, she seems to be a genteel and pleasant lady, if slightly aloof. — Dean Koontz

I have worked out with the Thunder, Lakers, Knicks, Grizzlies, Spurs, and a few others before the draft. I have worked out primarily against shorter and supposedly faster players in these workouts. — Jeremy Lin

Because running fast is more fun than running slow. — Frank Shorter

To me there's no difference between writing YA and adult except that in YA I make the book a little shorter and the protagonists are teens. The difference is in the readers. — Charles De Lint

It's not that guys aren't interested in me, because they are, it's that most of the guys I know are either:
1. Shorter than me;
2. Pansies;
3. On my team;
4. All of the above. — Miranda Kenneally

Numbers don't lie. You always seem to remember your workouts as being a little better than they were. It's good to go back and review what you do. — Frank Shorter

Again, racing for me was about energy management. — Frank Shorter

I have shaved my head. My flowing locks are now quite a bit shorter. — David Ginola

Harry lit up, drew the smoke deep into his lungs and tried to imagine the blood vessels in the wall of the lung greedily absorbing the nicotine. Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction. — Jo Nesbo

I just don't understand our brother. A human." Briec gave a great sigh, causing Gwenvael to roll his eyes in annoyance.
"You don't know anything, Briec. She's different."
"Don't you really mean crazed, baby brother?"
Gwenvael saw Morfyd's white scales swooping toward them. He stood up. Both he and Briec were already in human form and dressed.
"You're just mad she slapped you around." Gwenvael looked at his brother. "Like a bitch."
Briec stood up. Slightly taller than Gwenvael, but still shorter than Fearghus, he tended to be just as much fun to torture as their older sibling. "I let her hit me."
"You had to. Otherwise she would have killed you where you stood. — G.A. Aiken

There was no way Baz was consciously mimicking the pose of the Howl's Moving Castle figurine, yet this was exactly what he was doing. Elijah's imagination completed the shadows into dark wings, but otherwise it was the same: shorter, hesitant Elijah standing before the taller, hunched, aching Baz, tentatively trying to capture his attention. — Heidi Cullinan

I played along, spent the next two hours searching for Mormon men who are attractive, employed, educated, no more than two inches shorter than I, no more than ten years older, who lack over commitment phobia, porn addiction, obvious misogynistic or homosexual tendencies, and the immediate need for a new mommy for their four-plus children. — Nicole Hardy

Lately, a study has suggested that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality, though this accuracy is not worth a bean because it is depressing, and depressed people live shorter lives. Optimists and believers are happier and healthier in their unreal worlds. — Anna Funder

If my opinion runs more than twenty pages," she said, "I am disturbed that I couldn't do it shorter." The mantra in her chambers is "Get it right and keep it tight." She disdains legal Latin, and demands extra clarity in an opinion's opening lines, which she hopes the public will understand. "If you can say it in plain English, you should," RBG says. Going through "innumerable drafts," the goal is to write an opinion where no sentence should need to be read twice. "I think that law should be a literary profession," RBG says, "and the best legal practitioners regard law as an art as well as a craft. — Irin Carmon

My goal is to break three hours in a marathon. — Frank Shorter

His first fall, but the trip was much shorter on a bat. Before he knew — Suzanne Collins

Common sense solutions to lowering your gasoline bills can go far. Carpooling, taking fewer or shorter road trips, and ensuring that your tires are fully inflated can all help stop the pinch at the pump. — Bob Ney

Because of diabetes and all the other health problems that accompany obesity, today's children may turn out to be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their parents. The — Michael Pollan

Another huge advantage of learning as much as you can in different fields is that the more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones. Imagine explaining to an extraterrestrial visitor the concept of a horse. It would take some time. If the next thing you tried to explain were the concept of a zebra, the conversation would be shorter. You would simply point out that a zebra is a lot like a horse but with black and white strips. Everything you learn becomes a shortcut for understanding something else. — Scott Adams

Learn to use yours ears more and your mouth less, or your reign will be shorter than I am. — George R R Martin

Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed. — Blaise Pascal

What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta (the same boy grown to manhood), who sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together. — Beryl Markham

In better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrezarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust. — Victor Hugo

The time of the actual enjoyment is short and swift, and made much shorter through their own fault. For they dash from one pleasure to another and cannot stay steady in one desire. — Seneca.

My days keep getting shorter. When I'm a hundred, I'll be going to bed before I get up. — Lilian Jackson Braun

It is very strange that the years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting. — Elizabeth Taylor

His hair was shorter than I remembered, tawny in this half-light, the tousled edges casually framing the clean, commanding lines of his face. His mouth, normally so stern was relaxed now and as I stared a slight sweet smile touched his lips, its curve softening the straight strong lines of his nose and brow. Finally, inevitably, I met his eyes and felt a connection that seared straight through me, down through my soles and away. Those eyes, darker than mine, the darkest blue, dark and as impenetrable as glaciers. Tonight he was real, so very real that my heart thumped, my blood sang, my legs shook. — Hannah Blatchford

Unfortunately, mortal life is very fragile, and very short. Yours could be shorter than usual. — Rachel Caine

As life speeds by, nostalgia has a shorter pregnancy. Games still in progress are given the straight-to-sepia status of "Instant Classics" no matter how oxymoronic that phrase appears. — Steve Rushin

There's only one movie in my career I've had regrets with cutting it shorter, and I think some scenes maybe I shouldn't have cut. — Ang Lee

The difference between children and adults is that they're shorter - not dumber. — Mo Willems

So then the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association merged to create the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which personally I think is rather a mouthful,' Adelaide said as she set down her wineglass.
'I'm sure others have much shorter terms,' the doctor said, sawing into his steak with more vigor than necessary.
'Such as?' Grace asked.
'There are plenty who just call us bitches, dear. — Mindy McGinnis

Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction. Ignoring the warning on the cigarette packet might not be the most flamboyant act of rebellion a man could allow himself, but at least it was one he could afford. — Jo Nesbo

Look, there's nothing I'm ever going to tell you about me that's the truth. The more you know about me, the shorter your life span is going to be. All you need to know is that I don't miss. In fact, you don't even need to know exactly how good I really am, because if you ever find out, you're going to be dead. (Steele) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

In Boston I got to a point where I thought I was putting out fires more than being a baseball coach. And some of it was my fault. I was getting stubborn. My fuse was a little shorter than it needed to be. And that helps nobody. — Terry Francona

I was genuinely starstruck when I met Kermit the Frog. Like many stars here tonight, he's a lot shorter in real life. — Bret McKenzie

If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason. — Charles Caleb Colton

The life of man is long, perhaps longer than necessary Or perhaps it is shorter than necessary? — Nazim Hikmet

Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; — Harper Lee

THE KEY TO A WONDERFUL LIFE

The key to a wonderful life
Is to never stop wandering into wonder.
Because to live a predictable life,
Only fills a person with strife,
And such a person will always be wondering:
'What a limitless life could be lived beyond the lines?'
Such is a question a curious spirit would never sit and ponder.
So always pursue new ventures in your life,
And be willing to open doors to different light;
This is the only way to keep it magical and always filled with wonder.
Days will feel shorter, but your happiness will grow stronger --
Because living a life without curiosity and adventure,
Is a stale life where days only feel longer and
Longer.

Poetry by Suzy Kassem — Suzy Kassem

If Stuart is a freak ... it is because he has had the superhuman strength not to be defeated by this isolation. It is because he has had the almost unbelievable social adroitness to be able to fit in smoothly with an educated, soft-skinned person like myself and not make me frightened half to death. If Stuart's a freak, I salute freaks. — Alexander Masters

Integrity, a standard of personal morality and ethics, is not relative to the situation you happen to find yourself in and doesn't sell out to expediency. Its short supply is getting shorter - but without it, leadership is a facade. — Denis Waitley

Generalists, people with moderately strong attachments to many ideas, should be hard to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have weaker, shorter negative reactions since they have alternative paths to realize their plans. Specialists, people with stronger attachments to fewer ideas, should be easier to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have stronger, more sustained negative reactions because they have fewer alternative pathways to realize their plans. Generalists should be the upbeat, positive people in the profession while specialists should be their grouchy, negative counterparts. — Karl E. Weick

Hearing may make shorter intuitive leaps than sight, but it too is subject to illusions. The most pleasant of these are 'mondegreens,' named by the author Sylvia Wright from her youthful mishearing of the Scottish ballad that actually says, 'They hae slain the Earl o' Moray / and they layd him on the green'--not, alas, 'the Lady Mondegreen.' Children, with their relaxed expectations for logic, are a rich source of these (pledging allegiance to 'one Asian in the vestibule, with little tea and just rice for all'), but everyone has the talent to infer the ridiculous from the inaudible--and, what's more, to believe in it. Here, at least, we do behave like computers, in that our voice-recognition software has little regard for probability but boldly assumes we live in a world of surrealist poets. We are certain that Mick Jagger will never leave our pizza burning and that the Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hot cement. — Michael Kaplan

There was a burst of applause when George Washington entered and walked to the dais. More applause followed on the appearance of Thomas Jefferson, who had been inaugurated Vice President upstairs in the Senate earlier that morning, and "like marks of approbation" greeted John Adams, who on his entrance in the wake of the two tall Virginians seemed shorter and more bulky even than usual. — David McCullough

As I continue through my acting career I tend to wish I were a little shorter and a few pounds lighter so casting directors would call me in for more diverse roles. — James Preston Rogers

A baby is a small member of the home that makes love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, the bank roll smaller, the home happier, the clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for. - Laurens van der Post and Jane Taylor — David Jeremiah

The club shows are really intense and powerful, but for a shorter time, and the audiences are in close proximity than when I'm performing at The Palace Theatre. — Deborah Cox

The faster you go, the shorter you are. — Albert Einstein

The more a man follows nature, and is obedient to her laws, the longer he will live; the farther he deviates from these, the shorter will be his existence. — Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland

The first two years I was on 'MADtv' were really, really fun. We always thought it was 'Saturday Night Live's very nice, slightly asthmatic, shorter cousin. — Ike Barinholtz