Take Diversion Quotes & Sayings

collectivity, on the other hand, is the place of what the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal calls "divertissement," an untranslatable word which roughly means "distraction" or "diversion": It is the escape from life's problems, and also its invitations, into activities that in ultimate terms are meaningless. It is a constant turning to superficial actions as a way to avoid facing the true realities of human life. The soap operas and situation comedies easily become an addiction. They take the place of the "bread and circuses" of ancient Rome. There was plenty wrong with Roman society and the Roman emperors offered the diversion of food and entertainment to make people forget the banality and meaninglessness of the lives they lived. Our society does much the same and has ever so much more in the way of sophisticated tools for doing so. — William H. Shannon

The committee discloses that even after the U.S. government learned of the diversion of U.S. designs for nuclear warheads in late 1995, the Clinton Administration failed to take steps immediately to improve security. — Charles Bass

The interesting thing about the Internet is that it has created a kind of alternative circle of friends for people. — Joanne Harris

If you just stop expecting perfection from everyone and everything, you might see the good stuff outweighs the bad. And then someday you'll look in the mirror and see the same thing. Because the person you're most disappointed in is yourself. — Erin Lange

[Steven] King is an entertainment. King is a diversion. But when you try to take him as a guide to life, he won't work. The circles he draws on the deep are weak and irresolute. And this is so in part because King...is a sentimental writer. In his universe, the children...are good, right, just and true.... But bring this way of seeing the world out into experience and you'll pretty quickly pay for it. Your relation to large quadrants of experience...will likely be paranoid and fated to fail.... — Mark Edmundson

I don't see you making it to the top; nobody's going to help you get there. You have to do it all on your own. But if you want it so bad, prove me wrong. — Nabil N. Jamal

My take on tithing in America is that it's a middle-class way of robbing God. Tithing to the church and spending the rest on your family is not a Christian goal. It's a diversion. The real issue is: How shall we use God's trust fund-namely, all we have-for His glory? In a world with so much misery, what lifestyle should we call our people to live? What example are we setting? — John Piper

As long as he denies his own agency, real change is unlikely because his attention will be directed toward changing his environment rather than himself. — Irvin D. Yalom

I believe in giving rewards and positive reinforcement for a job well done, but can we raise ourselves a little higher than the dogs and give rewards that have longer-term benefits? How can a poor food choice be a true reward anyway? — Jill Johnson

Ranting about her being hard to understand? Wait until you lose her. You will clearly understand, what an effortless power a woman has! — Manasa Rao

Sometimes in the mountains the animals make paths by using the same route again and again. If you don't know what you're doing, you might think it's a path made by humans
it looks that way. If you follow that path, the path of beasts, you won't get anywhere at all. People lost in the wilderness, they follow these paths and only get more and more lost. Sometimes they lose their way and they die. It's not a path for humans, it's a dangerous diversion. Are you sure that's the road you want to take? It won't get you where you want to go. — Jake Adelstein

The man I am will always raise a protest against the man I wanted to be and the two will live together to the end, but the man I wanted to be will be the one on whom judgement will be passed. — Julien Green

I told my girls, 'Look at Rihanna: She's one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She's really famous, really powerful, really rich. Yet in every single video she can only wear panties. Poor Rhianna! We'll know when she is properly powerful and successful when we see her in a lovely cardigan.' — Caitlin Moran

Just when had I become so self-absorbed? I was a form of self-preservation, I realized now; I had resolved that ... I could survive Colonel Wood's cruelty if my heart, my mind, had shrunk to a size designed to absorb my own troubles only. — Melanie Benjamin

mean anything." She seemed subdued, sad. — Peter Benchley

He loved Thelma, Jonathan said, he had never loved anyone but Thelma, he had loved Thelma for nineteen years and would always love her even though Thelma didn't give a rat's ass about him and never had. — Nora Ephron

The novel, as a genre, was once considered a diversion every bit as frivolous as Facebook, but over the years, we've managed to convince ourselves that reading fiction is as important to our mental digestion as fresh fruits and vegetables are to the processes that take place a little further down. — Lynn Coady

So watch your step, friends. Make sure there's no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God. — Eugene H. Peterson

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?
But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion. — Blaise Pascal