Taper Quotes & Sayings

A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself
and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the race, which pales before the light of common day. — Henry David Thoreau

Deflation means a slowdown of income growth. Markets shrink, new capital investment and employment also taper off, so wages decline. That is what's happening as deliberate policy in Europe and the United States. Falling or stagnant prices are simply the result of having less income to spend. — Michael Hudson

Better
while life is quick And every pain immense and joy supreme, And all I have and am Flames upward to the dream ... Than like a taper forgotten in the dawn, Burning out the quick. — Lola Ridge

To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp. — William Crookes

On older trees still than these huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf was deformed ... the taper was interrupted..and the ivy slowly strangled to death the promising sapling. — Thomas Hardy

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, adorns and cheers our way; and still, as darker grows the night, emits a brighter ray. — Oliver Goldsmith

Didn't I stand there once,
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I'd never go back?
And hadn't you kissed the rain from my mouth?
And weren't we gentle and awed and afraid,
knowing we'd stepped from the room of desire
into the further room of love?
And wasn't it sacred, the sweetness
we licked from each other's hands?
And were we not lovely, then, were we not
as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame? — Cecilia Woloch

I ... express a wish that you may, in your generation, be fit to compare to a candle; that you may, like it, shine as lights to those about you; that, in all your actions, you may justify the beauty of the taper by making your deeds honourable and effectual in the discharge of your duty to your fellow-men. — Michael Faraday

Glass shattered, vampires roared, humans screamed. The noise battered at me, just as the tidal wave of scores of brains at high gear washed over me. When it began to taper off, I looked up into Eric's eyes. Incredibly, he was excited. He smiled at me. "I knew I'd get on top of you somehow," he said.
Are you trying to make me mad so I'll forget how scared I am?"
No, I'm just opportunistic."
I wiggled, trying to get out from under him, and he said, "Oh, do that again. It felt great. — Charlaine Harris

Most projects start out slowly - and then sort of taper off. — Norman Ralph Augustine

Do not rush the taper. Don't get brave. Brave is often foolish and looking for that instant gratification of instant "clean." It won't work. — Taite Adams

Kids absolutely not reading. I think it's because they're so screen-oriented [TVs, computers, smartphones]. They do read - girls in particular read a lot. They have a tendency to go toward the paranormal, romances, Twilight and stuff like that. And then it starts to taper off because other things take precedence, like the Kardashian sisters. — Stephen King

What you do during the offseason is, first, build a base. That takes about three weeks, and then you try to get as strong as you can before you go to spring training. Once you get there, you taper down and it's just a maintenance program for the next six or seven months. — Josh Beckett

The aim of the taper is to minimise accumulated fatigue and fill up the fuel stores to arrive at the start line fresh. — Dan Golding

It is better to adopt the simplest explanation, even if it is not simple, even if it does not explain very much. A bright light is not necessary, a taper is all one needs to live in strangeness, if it faithfully burns. — Samuel Beckett

Shoulder width is an absolute requirement for displaying the V taper that will make or break your physique. — Dorian Yates

Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence. — Donald Barthelme

Life let us cherish, while yet the taper glows,
And the fresh flow'ret pluck ere it close;
Why are we fond of toil and care?
Why choose the rankling thorn to wear? — Johann Martin Usteri

In all my wanderings through this world of care,
In all my griefs
and God has given my share
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting, by repose:
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw;
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return
and die at home at last. — Oliver Goldsmith

Strike on the tinder, ho!
Give me a taper! Call up all my people!
This accident is not unlike my dream:
Belief of it oppresses me already.
Light, I say, light! — William Shakespeare

There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbours, but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writers digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour. — Charles Lamb

When I started off as an actress, I did at a play at the Taper Too Theatre here in Los Angeles, called 'In The Abyss Of Coney Island.' That was more of a dramatic play. It was a small theater house. This was the first time I was literally on the road, doing a play, for four months. — Vivica A. Fox

At the top of the cellar steps Broadman knelt down and fumbled in his tinderbox. It turned out to be damp.
'I'll kill that bloody cat,' he muttered, and groped for the spare box that was normally on the ledge by the door. It was missing. Broadman said a bad word. A lighted taper appeared in mid-air, right beside him.
HERE, TAKE THIS.
'Thanks,' said Broadman.
DON'T MENTION IT.
Broadman went to throw the taper down the steps. His hand paused in mid-air. He looked at the taper, his brow furrowing. Then he turned around and held the taper up to illuminate the scene. It didn't shed much light, but it did give the darkness a shape ...
'Oh, no - ' he breathed.
BUT YES, said Death. — Terry Pratchett

Start slowly, then taper off. — Walt Stack

Start slow and taper off. — Walt Stack

'A sound Conservative government,' said Taper, musingly. 'I understand: Tory men and Whig measures.' — Benjamin Disraeli

If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all from yourselves, said the modern Christ.
But none of us could bear to pass through the tunnel which led from the house into the world on the other side of the walls, where there were leaves on the trees, where water ran beside the paths, where there was daylight and joy. We could not believe that the tunnel would open on daylight: we feared to be trapped into darkness again; we feared to return whence we had come, from darkness and night. The tunnel would narrow and taper
down as we walked; it would close around us, and close tighter and tighter around us and stifle us. It would grow heavy and narrow and suffocate us as we walked. — Anais Nin

His excitement was the taper that ignited our sluggish souls. — Sarah Winman

When he turns inland he sees two moving white columns in the sky. At first glance he thinks they are emissions of smoke. The two encroaching formations ripple into funnels and then spread out beneath the labyrinthine coral of clouds into fans. His vision blurs for a moment. Then he realises he is witnessing two perfectly synchronised flocks of birds. The abstract shapes they form are flawless. He stands with his hands in his pockets as the birds taper into a long undulating line, which gently vanishes behind the surface of things. The same thing has happened to his father. He has vanished behind the surface of things. — Glenn Haybittle

[On her morphine addiction:] I was meant to 'taper off.' At times I felt such pains as must afflict a creature while a bigger beast eats and claws at its middle. God-awful things were hiding underneath my bed, and it was no use telling me they were not there - I knew they were, and felt their dreadful ever-changing shapes. — Evalyn Walsh McLean

For 3 days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but the phone calls taper off. — Johnny Carson

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off. — Johnny Carson

Tis Man's to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason. — Robert Browning

To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flames from wasting by repose. — Oliver Goldsmith

Turn, gentle Hermit of the Dale, And guide my lonely way To where yon taper cheers the vale With hospitable ray. — Oliver Goldsmith

She had a bracelet on one taper arm, which would fall down over her round wrist. Mr. Thornton watched the replacing of this troublesome ornament with far more attention than he listened to her father. It seemed as if it fascinated him to see her push it up impatiently, until it tightened her soft flesh; and then to mark the loosening - the fall. He could almost have exclaimed - 'There it goes, again! — Elizabeth Gaskell

The glorious transmutation of autumn had come on: all the vast Canadian shores were clothed with a splendour never seen in France; to which all the pageants of all the kings were as a taper to the sun. — Willa Cather

The souls of people, on their way to Earth-life, pass through a room full of lights; each takes a taper - often only a spark - to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls, by rare fortune, are detained longer - have time to grasp a handful of tapers, which they weave into a torch. These are the torch-bearers of humanity - its poets, seers and saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, toward the light. They are the law-givers and saviors, the light-bringers, way-showers and truth-tellers, and without them, humanity would lose its way in the dark. — Plato

a family will visit constantly, daily or even twice a day. Then maybe every other day. Then just weekends. After months or years, the visits taper off, until it's just, say, birthdays and Christmas. Eventually, most families move away, as far as they can get. — Paul Kalanithi

Hope, like the gleaming taper — Oliver Goldsmith

Again, after a blank moment, there would be a flickering taper-gleam in his eyeballs. It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and was doing its best to kindle the heart's household fire, and light up intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

A tapered diamond or bur will impart an inclination of 2 to 3 degrees to any surface it cuts if the shank of the instrument is held parallel to the intended path of insertion of the preparation. Two opposing surfaces, each with a 3-degree inclination, would give the preparation a 6-degree taper. — Herbert T. Shillingburg Jr.

Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. — William Shakespeare

My cousin Elroy spent seven years as an IBM taper staring at THINK signs on the walls before he finally got a good idea: He quit. — Edward Abbey

The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. — Virginia Woolf

Why, after all, did she do these things? why seek pinnacles and stand drenched in fire? Might it consume her anyhow! Burn her to cinders! Better anything, better brandish one's torch and hurl it to earth than taper and dwindle away ... — Virginia Woolf

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. — Thomas Jefferson

If you're going to stop masturbating, you can't taper off. You've got to quit, cold jerky! — Lenny Bruce

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth. — Emma Lazarus

But what,' said Mr Swiveller with a sigh, 'what is the odds so long as the fire of soul is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the wing of friendship never moults a feather! What is the odds so long as the spirit is expanded by means of rosy wine, and the present moment is the least happiest of our existence! — Charles Dickens

John Brown's zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light; his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him. The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery. — Frederick Douglass

As far back as 1813, Thomas Jefferson understood that ideas were not really property, or if they were property they differed from real estate. He wrote, "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." If — Kevin Kelly

Softly the breezes from the forest came,
Softly they blew aside the taper's flame;
Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower;
Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower;
Mysterious, wild, the far-heard trumpet's tone;
Lovely the moon in ether, all alone:
Sweet too, the converse of these happy mortals,
As that of busy spirits when the portals
Are closing in the west; or that soft humming
We hear around when Hesperus is coming.
Sweet be their sleep. — John Keats

What are the odds so long as the fire of the soul is kindled at the taper of conviviality, and the wing of friendship never molts a feather? — Charles Dickens

I go to the gym every day. That tends to taper off when I'm at a tournament. During tournaments, I'm not trying to build fitness. I'm simply trying to keep away any kind of tension. I go for long walks to clear my head. — Viswanathan Anand

As the moths around a taper,
As the bees around a rose,
As the gnats around a vapour,
So the spirits group and close
Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It lies in the power of man, either permissively to hasten, or actively to shorten, but not to lengthen or extend the limits of his natural life. He only (if any) hath the art to lengthen out his taper that puts it to the best advantage. — Francis Quarles

She was ushered into a passage where the only light came from the tallow taper in the rabbi's hand. The house smelled of chicken soup. In the thousand miles she and Rosa and the children had traveled from Siberia, passed along like parcels from settlement to Jewish settlement, sometimes in houses, often in huts, that smell had been the one constant, as if they had followed its trail by sniffing, like dogs. However poor their hosts, a hen had been killed in their honor because hospitality demanded it. — Ariana Franklin

Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight; With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings. — John Keats

As the profoundest philosophy of ancient Rome and Greece lighted her taper at Israel's altar, so the sweetest strains of the pagan muse were swept from harps attuned on Zion's hill. — Edward Thomson

Now I must take you to a very interesting part of our subject-to the relation between the combustion of a candle and that living kind of combustion which goes on within us. In every one of us there is a living process of combustion going on very similar to that of a candle, and I must try to make that plain to you. For it is not merely true in a poetical sense-the relation of the life of man to a taper; and if you will follow, I think I can make this clear. — Michael Faraday

I'd like not to have these great puffy lobes on my ears - I'd like them to taper in. — Nicholas Haslam

And hold up to the sun my little taper. — Lord Byron

What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper," To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust. — Lord Byron