Spectacularly Quotes & Sayings

From what Natalie could observe, by middle age, every person's life had rolled some distance downhill, even if it was a very gentle slope, coming to rest at a place of disappointment. Some spheres of an individual's life might have gone spectacularly well but there would always be an obstinate slab of disappointment in another department - a stalled career, inability to have kids, a dismal marriage, whatever. — Debra Oswald

Scotland really is a spectacularly beautiful country with so much history. I always go to Culzean Castle in Ayrshire. — Susan Eisenhower

My father would have been spectacularly ill-suited to working for an institution of any kind, and I suspect that, to a lesser degree, that's true of me, too. — Amy Bloom

There's a cluster of five galaxies called Stephan's Quintet, which we see through the Hubble telescope spectacularly colliding with each other. But we see them colliding 280 million years ago. If there are aliens in one of those colliding galaxies with a telescope powerful enough to see us, what they are seeing on Earth, at this very moment, here and now, is the early ancestors of the dinosaurs. — Richard Dawkins

I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse. — Robert Metcalfe

They haven't been unhappy these last few years, quite the opposite. But it's been a long, long time since she felt that sense of giddy love that effervesces in the pit of your stomach and spectacularly upends the world. — Blake Crouch

Liraz was special. Specially antisocial. Spectacularly, even. — Laini Taylor

Gingee, Gingee, it's meeeeeeeeeeee!!!'
I could hear her panting up the stairs to my room. She kicked open my bedroom door and ran from the door and leapt onto the bed, covering me with kisses.
'I LOBE you, my big big sister.'
I couldn't get her off me.
'Libby, just let me ... '
'Kissy kissy kiss, snoggy snog.'
'That's enough, now let me ... '
'Mmmmmm, groovy baby.'
What is she talking about? She is supposed to be in kindergarten to learn how to grow up, not turn into an even madder person.
Then she stood up on the bed and starting thrusting her hips out and singing her favorite:
'Sex bum sex bum I am a sex bum.'
Quite spectacularly mad. — Louise Rennison

Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes thought of as primitive, dull and dimwitted. In fact, of course, they can be lethally fast, spectacularly beautiful, surprisingly affectionate and very sophisticated. — David Attenborough

In Chile, everything from "kindergarten to cemeteries and community swimming pools were put out for bid." Between 1985 and 1992, over two thousand government industries were sold off throughout Latin America. Much of this property passed into the hands of either multinational corporations or Latin America's "superbillionaires," a new class that had taken advantage of the dismantling of the state to grow spectacularly rich. — Greg Grandin

I do understand why women started to reject the word "feminism." It ended up being invoked in so many bafflingly inappropriate contexts that - if you weren't actually aware of the core aims of feminism and were trying to work it out simply from the surrounding conversation - you'd presume it was some spectacularly unappealing combination of misandry, misery, and hypocrisy, which stood for ugly clothes, constant anger, and, let's face it, no fucking. — Caitlin Moran

I conduct very few interviews with veterans. The contemporaneous, or near-contemporaneous, record for WWII is so spectacularly deep that latter-day recollections are largely unnecessary for a historian. Of course, in considering any account, I'm looking for additional sources that can confirm or enlarge that version of events. — Rick Atkinson

If Star Wars had been released in the late '60s, or late '80s, or late '90s, adjusting for technology, it fits spectacularly well. — Cass Sunstein

there were the occasional idiots who thought witches poisoned people and worshipped their devil (which was a spectacularly odd concept to me; why would someone from a different religion worship someone else's devil?). — Sally Dubats

I continue to explain that plot inconsistencies in B movies are consistent, and should not be allowed to undermine one's enjoyment of the action, nor the fundamental credibility of the storyline: the good & bad guys are clearly delineated & easily recognizable, the hero duffs over the baddies, things blow up loudly & spectacularly, the good guy wins. Entirely credible. — Robert Fripp

He was in that mostly empty-headed state of grace which is sometimes such fertile soil ; it's the ground from which our brightest dreams and biggest ideas (both good and spectacularly bad) suddenly burst forth, often full-blown. — Stephen King

that meant he was spectacularly horny. This — J.R. Ward

With 'Ilustrado,' I set out to change the way we read literature, and I think I failed spectacularly. In fact, I know I failed. In reaching further than I could, I may not have produced a life- or literature-changing book, but I did produce one I am proud of. — Miguel Syjuco

The life of a bestselling novelist sounds like it ought to be spectacularly glamorous and fun, but in fact I spend most of my time incognito, and in fact were you to pass me in the street you would think I was just another dowdy suburban mom. — Jane Green

I think that the resistance against Darwin is not just the difficulty of seeing the power of a spectacularly beautiful explanation: it is the fear of realizing the extraordinary power that such an explanation has in shattering rests of old world views. — Carlo Rovelli

Peter was lost. More than lost, really. Spectacularly, hopelessly, "tell the search party not to get their hopes up" lost. If there was a contest for getting lost being held at that moment, Peter wouldn't win because he wouldn't be able to find it. That's how lost he was. — Mark Hill

In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it. Patients — Atul Gawande

There is, in part, the glamour of science, which, since it is so spectacularly and usefully right over so many things, is often given authority where it has none. — Raymond Tallis

In 2012 there was a megafoolish, if well-funded, effort by a group called Americans Elect to raise an independent Cincinnatus to run for president via an Internet draft. It flopped, spectacularly. — Joe Klein

Since the time of Richard Nixon, there has been a strange lack of will in the media to identify the real cause for Americans' anger at politicians who fall, publicly and spectacularly. — Mimi Kennedy

Nobody thought the direct business model would work. But work it did, and spectacularly. Until it didn't. And therein lies the tale. — Heather Simmons

Yes, and you did it spectacularly. They were the best non words ever not spoken. — Robert Thier

Why not simply surrender to one's doom, since one was so clearly, so spectacularly, doomed? — Paul Russell

The amphibious landing of U.S. Marines on September 1950 at Inchon, on the west coast of Korea, was one of the most audacious and spectacularly successful amphibious landings in all naval history. — Bernard Brodie

I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities. — Ken Burns

To the extent that genomes can be thought of as compressed encodings of biological structures, they are spectacularly efficient. All the trillions of cells in the human body-not just the tens of billions in the brain-are guided in one way or another by the information contained in 30,000 or so genes. The best high-quality set of pictures of the body- the National Institutes of Health Visible Human Project, a series of high-resolution digital photos of slices taken from volunteer Joseph Paul Jernigan (deceased)-takes up about 60 gigabytes, enough (if left uncompressed) to fill about 100 CD-ROMs-and still not enough detail to capture individual cells. The genome, in contrast, contains only about 3 billion nucleotides, the equivalent (at two bits per nucleotide) of less than two-thirds of a gigabyte, or a single CD-ROM. — Gary F. Marcus

Back in the late 1990s, venture capitalists got very excited about the Internet. A whole lot of money was poured into some companies that failed rather spectacularly, and a lot of people lost a lot of money. — Bill Maris

There are some days where the mysterious art screams spectacularly, for instance on a rainy day under the city lights at night! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

If I'm going to do something, I do it spectacularly or I don't do it at all. — Al-Waleed Bin Talal

For the past two years, President Obama has promised our children the moon, stars, rainbows, unicorns and universal health care for all. But the White House Santa's cradle-to-grave entitlement mandates are a spectacularly predictable bust. — Michelle Malkin

Nook people express appreciation in the moment by maintaining how much we will miss what is presently happening. Our priorities are spectacularly disordered. A nook person might spend the last few years of her twenties thinking she is dying. Convinced of it. Nook — Durga Chew-Bose

spectacularly chiseled tanned chest. He said how much he appreciated us coming down and helping out with the lab and said that maybe he would run into me again. Now I have always considered myself to be pretty cool and unflappable. But I gotta say, I couldn't even form words. I just grinned like an idiot and could barely spit out, "You're — Philippa Levine

It does not seem ever to have been satisfactorily answered why the two first operational atomic bombs were used - against the strongly voiced wishes of the leading physicists responsible for developing them - to destroy two cities instead of being deployed in the equivalent of spectacularly shooting out candles. — Richard Dawkins

One of the best ways to get promoted, besides sleeping with the right people, is to fail spectacularly. — Marshall Thornton

She is furious with herself for her own stupidity. Opening herself up like this, voluntarily, to a lifetime of worry and anguish. It was madness. Sheer lunacy. A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bear to lose. Faith that the world will not destroy you. — Khaled Hosseini

And every time I did spectacularly well in my classes, and I'm here to tell you that I did spectacularly well, I could always see the look of surprise on my professors' faces. You don't think I noticed? What you saw on Dave's face, I saw every damned day of my academic career. So what, Andres? I wanted to do something, to be something - and I did it. I don't think I deserve a medal, and I don't think I'm particularly special. I wanted to do something, and I figured out a way to do it. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

He advises them that tough lands produce tough peoples, so, if they wish to retain the empire he has enabled them so spectacularly to gain, they must not even think about removing themselves to some softer, enervating environment. — Herodotus

We've got some fundamental choices to make about the kind of country we want to be. Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well, or are we going to build an economy where everyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead? — Barack Obama

I'm the kind of person who would rather get my hopes up really high and watch them get dashed to pieces than wisely keep my expectations at bay and hope they are exceeded. This quality has made me a needy and theatrical friend, but has given me a spectacularly dramatic emotional life. — Mindy Kaling

With the possible exception of the Shakers, it is difficult to think of an American movement that has failed more spectacularly than antipornography feminism. — Andrea Dworkin

I'm freezing," moaned Isabella. "I shall freeze to death."
"Cheer up, my southern flower." Jake hauled on the oars. "This was your brilliant idea. Anyway, you can die spectacularly of pneumonia, and someone will write a great tragic opera about you."
Isabella gave him a teeth-chattering grimace, but her expression turned dreamy and distant as if she was already imagining her last heart-rending aria.

Cassie cleared her throat in exasperation. "Can we not talk about spectacular deaths? — Gabriella Poole

There's nothing quite like the idea of failing spectacularly to excite a film maker — Mike Figgis

Sometimes," he said, "the right thing doesn't feel right at all. Sometimes it feels spectacularly fucking lousy. — Kathleen Peacock

It was an isidious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it. It was hope, too, that prevented a person taking counsel from experience. — Kate Morton

So far as I know, childbirth is generally painful in only one of the millions of species on Earth: human beings. This must be a consequence of the recent and continuing increase in cranial volume... Childbirth is painful because the evolution of the human skull has been spectacularly fast and recent. — Carl Sagan

Wall Street investment banks are like Las Vegas casinos: They set the odds. The customer who plays zero-sum games against them may win from time to time but never systematically, and never so spectacularly that he bankrupts the casino. — Michael Lewis

Better to fail spectacularly than do something mediocre. — Randy Pausch

Chen pointed to the cub. "There's your brute." Then he pointed to the pups. "And there's your domestication. For the most part, Westerners are descendants of barbarian, nomadic tribes such as the Teutons and the Anglo-Saxons. They burst out of the primeval forest like wild animals after a couple of thousand years of Greek and Roman civilization, and sacked ancient Rome. They eat steak, cheese, and butter with knives and forks, which is how they've retained more primitive wildness than the traditional farming races. Over the past hundred years, domesticated China has been bullied by the brutish West. It's not surprising that for thousands of years the Chinese colossus has been spectacularly pummeled by tiny nomadic peoples. — Jiang Rong

He saw now the ways in which they tried to be careful with each other, afraid of hitting those raw places where they might hurt each other almost without trying. But sparing another person is a tricky thing. It's easy to think you're succeeding when you're failing spectacularly. — Holly Black

HubSpot has used the lean startup method to build a spectacularly successful company. What I particularly love about HubSpot is that they are so geeked out on data analysis and making evidence-based decisions, which are at the heart of the Lean Startup process. — Eric Ries

Together they crawled through the attic space, looking for the source of a roof leak they'd discovered in the last bathroom. Jax was out in front,
braving the spiderwebs. Maddie was behind him, working really hard at not looking at his butt.
And failing spectacularly.
So when he unexpectedly twisted around, holding out his hand for the clipboard she was now holding, he caught her staring at him.
"I, um - You have a streak of dirt," she said.
"A streak of dirt."
Yes." She pointed to his left perfectly muscled butt cheek. "There."
He was quiet for a single, stunned beat. She couldn't blame him, given that they were both covered in dirt from the filthy attic. "Thanks," he finally
said. "It's important to know where the dirt streaks are."
"It is," she agreed, nodding like a bobble head. "Probably you should stain-stick it right away. I have some in my purse."
"Are you offering to rub it on my ass? — Jill Shalvis

In no issue of foreign policy could her prevarication and indecisiveness be said to have led to disastrous consequences for her country. On the international stage there was no better survivor. At home her achievement can only be judged with hindsight. A combination of good sense and longevity settled the church, and it was no fault of hers that confessional issues became so divisive forty years after her death. She gave her country pride, and set its commercial development on a course that was eventually to be spectacularly successful; for that she deserves more credit than she is usually given. — David Loades

The history of the Jews has been written overwhelmingly by scholars of texts - understandably given the formative nature of the Bible and the Talmud. Seeing Jewish history through artifacts, architecture and images is still a young but spectacularly flourishing discipline that's changing the whole story. — Simon Schama

We are in one galaxy called the Milky Way. When you look at the Milky Way's next-door neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, your telescope is a time machine taking you back two and a half million years. There's a cluster of five galaxies called Stephan's Quintet, which we see through the Hubble telescope spectacularly colliding with each other. But we see them colliding 280 million years ago. If there are aliens in one of those colliding galaxies with a telescope powerful enough to see us, what they are seeing on Earth, at this very moment, here and now, is the early ancestors of the dinosaurs. Are — Richard Dawkins

Microsoft is still living down its disastrous introduction of Clippy, a ghastly piece of artificial intelligence - I'm using that term very loosely - that would observe people's behavior as they worked on a document and try to bust in, offering 'advice' that tended to be spectacularly useless — Clive Thompson

I can't decide if this movie is so spectacularly, breathtakingly dumb as to induce stupidity in anyone who watches, or so brutally brilliant that it disarms all reason. What's the difference? — A.O. Scott

your entire life has been a succession of things you were not equipped for, and while you may have, as you so charmingly say, 'screwed some of them up,' you have, in the main, come through spectacularly well. You are surrounded by allies, and each of us is, in our own way, uniquely suited to the challenges ahead - as are you, or you wouldn't be here. — Seanan McGuire

A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bear to lose. — Khaled Hosseini

To have an incredible increase in self esteem, all you have to do is start doing some little something. You don't have to do spectacularly dramatic things for self esteem to start going off the scale. Just make a commitment to any easy discipline. Then another one and another one. — Jim Rohn

When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment. — Charles Dickens

Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insideious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it. — Kate Morton

One Monday, just for sport, Charlie grabbed an eggplant that a spectacularly wizened granny was going for, but instead of twisting it out of his hand with some mystic kung fu move as he expected, she looked him in the eye and shook her head - just a jog, barely perceptible really - it might have been a tic, but it was the most eloquent of gestures. Charlie read it as saying: O White Devil, you do not want to purloin that purple fruit, for I have four thousand years of ancestors and civilization on you; my grandparents built the railroads and dug the silver mines, and my parents survived the earthquake, the fire, and a society that outlawed even being Chinese; I am mother to a dozen, grandmother to a hundred, and great-grandmother to a legion; I have birthed babies and washed the dead; I am history and suffering and wisdom; I am a Buddha and a dragon; so get your fucking hand off my eggplant before you lose it. — Christopher Moore

I told you, I just think we should slow down. I mean, we haven't even had a real date yet and I
- "
"Ohhhh." Jesse nodded to himself. "That's what this is. I get it."
"What?"
"First date. Girls like dates. I'm such an idiot, I should have thought of that."
This was backfiring spectacularly. — Robin Benway

America has given us a pretty decent modern world and doesn't always get enough thanks for that. But for reasons that genuinely escape me, it has also become spectacularly accommodating to stupidity. Where — Bill Bryson

Touching her now, after her gratifyingly loud and spectacularly animated release, calmed me even as it stoked a frenzied fire of need. I wanted to touch her everywhere. And for always. What — Penny Reid

Our president may lie, but he will lie effectively and spectacularly, with all the epic stagecraft and lighting and special effects available to the White House publicity apparatus. He is never a hack, never a half-assed, off-the-cuff, squirming, my-dog-ate-my-homework sort of liar. Or at least he wasn't until George W. Bush came around.

'They hate our freedoms' was possibly the dumbest, most insulting piece of bullshit ever to escape the lips of an American president. As an explanation for the appalling tragedy of 9/11... it was insufficient even as a calculated effort to snow an uneducated public. — Matt Taibbi

One might ask why big business data is still so often used on faith, even after it has failed spectacularly. The answer is of course that big business data happens to facilitate superquick and vast near-term accumulations of wealth and influence. — Jaron Lanier

One other note on this same subject. Think about it logically. If the trafficking of methamphetamine and other narcotics is such a spectacularly efficient and profitable business endeavor for the Hells Angels ... if we're moving hundreds of millions of dollars of this shit all over the world . . . then why are so many of our members dead fucking broke? — Chuck Zito

This is possibly the most shameful situation I've ever gotten myself in in my life, and I've done some pretty dumb things in my life. So to actually make a new No. 1 is spectacularly stupid. — Russell Crowe

He hadn't developed into the accomplished running quarterback many had predicted he would become over the course of the season.

But he had come to personify this team. He was raw and untested when the season began, but he played his two best games in the two biggest games on the schedule. He wasn't the player anybody expected him to be, but he got the job done-at times spectacularly. — Neil Hayes

The gospel Christ taught was spectacularly designed to unsettle and disturb, not lull into pleasant serenity. — Terryl L. Givens

I tried to quash my anger and fear. If I was being set up to fail, then I would fail spectacularly. — Fran Wilde

Writers are often given the gift of being spectacularly unhappy, so that they can record the full depth of feeling. — Grace Bridges

They say, if you care about something, you have to set it free and if it comes back to you, it was meant to be."
"They're full of shit."
Obviously, I failed spectacularly at being philosophical. — Kristen Ashley

In order to succeed spectacularly you have to be willing to fail spectacularly. — Biz Stone

Endurance is critical if you want to succeed spectacularly at anything God sets before you. — Craig Groeschel

When failing spectacularly the trick is to employ an inverted Schadenfreude. Take ownership of your misfortune. — Dean Cavanagh

Be spectacularly great at what you do. Wear your passion on your sleeve and hold your heart in the palm of your hand. And work hard. Really hard. — Robin S. Sharma

Love has a way of making us stupid, Will Henry. It blinds us to certain blatant realities, in this case the spectacularly high mortality rate among monstrumologists. Rarely do we live past forty - my father and von Helrung being the exceptions. — Rick Yancey

The lesson of Buffett was: To succeed in a spectacular fashion you had to be spectacularly unusual. — Michael Lewis

The Eurozone has clearly gone spectacularly wrong, pulling down all the continental economies. — Timothy Garton Ash

But her beauty and stillness broke the balance in me. In my small apartment, she kissed me, and the ground opened up, swallowed me, buried me right there in that moment. How many awful poems did I write thinking of her? I know now what she was to me - the first glimpse of a space-bridge, a wormhole, a galactic portal off this bound and blind planet. She had seen other worlds, and she held the lineage of other worlds, spectacularly, in the vessel of her black body. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The role of Ronald Reagan had been deliberately diminished; the role of the Europeans, who, with the exception of Helmet Kohl, were often keen to undermine America when it mattered, had been sanitized; and the role of Mr. Gorbachev, who had failed spectacularly in his declared objective of saving communism and the Soviet Union, had been absurdly misunderstood. — Margaret Thatcher

The sun, a red wheel, was sinking slowly in the west. Besides being spectacularly beautiful, the early-summer sunset was exceedingly soft and gentle: black mulberry leaves turned as red as roses; pristine white acacia petals shed an enshrouding pale-green aura. Mild evening breezes made both the mulberry leaves and the acacia petals dance and whirl, filling the woods with a soft rustle. — Mo Yan

I am a passionate reader, having been tutored very early by my mother. I avidly devoured all books on chemistry that I could find. Formal chemistry at school seemed boring by comparison, and my performance was routine. In contrast, I did spectacularly well in mathematics and sailed through classes and exams with ease. — Richard J. Roberts

I'm spectacularly disorganised. I wrote my latest book in seven different notebooks scattered throughout my house. — Sue Townsend

If you must fail, fail spectacularly. — Ransom Riggs

There is no way to avoid the reality that the American government in the past years has been the most spectacularly hypocrisy-driven government in the world. We rival the Soviet Union in some stages, in some ways, in hypocrisy. — Michael Scheuer

Pain is surprising; we cannot understand why we have been abandoned in love ... why we are unable to sleep at night ... Identifying reasons for such discomforts does not spectacularly absolve us of pain, but it may form the principal basis of a recovery. While assuring us that we are not uniquely cursed, understanding grants us a sense of the boundaries to, and bitter logic behind, our suffering. 'Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.' - Proust — Alain De Botton

I have friends, some of whom are spectacularly good writers, who really want someone to edit them. I don't register that impulse. It's like the impulse for wanting a dog. — Fran Lebowitz

The Moon was the most spectacularly beautiful desert you could ever imagine. Unspoilt. Untouched. It had a vibrancy about it and the contrast between it and the black sky was so vivid, it just made this impression of excitement and wonder. — Charles Duke

You think horror enters spectacularly. It doesn't. It just prosaically turns up. Even in the first seconds you know you'll find it a room. — Glen Duncan

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. — Andrea Dworkin

We live a pleasant life shopping at the Food Shoppe ... taking the kids to the Weinery-Beanery, ... and eating bran flakes .. and then, with no warning, we wake up one morning stricken with middle age, full of loneliness, dumb, in pain. Our work is useless, our vocation is lost, and nobody cares about us at all. This is not bearable. In despair, we go do something spectacularly dumb, like run away with Amber the cocktail waitress, and suddenly all the women in our life look at us with unmitigated disgust. — Garrison Keillor

You? Really now, Mr. McGee. You are spectacularly huge, and a tan that deep is almost vulgar, and you have a kind of leathery fading boyish charm, but this is not and never was a game for dilettantes, for jolly boys, for the favor-for-an-old-buddy routine. No gray-eyed wonder with a big white grin can solve anything or retrieve anything by blundering around in my life. Thanks for the gesture. But this isn't television. I don't need a big brother. So why don't you just go on back to your fun and games? — John D. MacDonald