Terrifically Quotes & Sayings

Read the editorial page of your local paper. It introduces you to opinion and can be terrifically provocative and perhaps a great motivating force for you to get involved in your community, regardless of your political ideology. — Sarah Jessica Parker

I'm terrifically absentminded. — James Jannard

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road. — J.D. Salinger

But here is the thing. When he gets on me, I suddenly feel I am fat. I feel am terrifically fat, so fat that Rudy is a tiny thing and hardly there at all. — Raymond Carver

Hollywood's a big place, and they make all sorts of different movies. Some movies I'm attracted to; a lot of the movies I'm not. But there are some terrifically talented people over there that I'd love to work with. — David Wenham

How terrifically dynamic is our time! We can mobilize all the spiritual, all the moral, all the political strength of Africa and Asia on the side of peace. Yes, we! We, the people of Asia and Africa! — Sukarno

Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it. — Edward Snowden

I feel a terrifically painful disturbance in the natural law of things between men and women that must be balanced in the next few thousand years. What has been done in the name of holding up masculine energy as God and feminine energy as subservient has really wiped out everything. — Rebecca De Mornay

It dawns on me that maybe I'm just terrifically lazy; that I might be appropriating other people's invisible sicknesses and disorders and scribbling them on the clipboard at the end of my bed to fool the nurses; so I can indulge in rest cures all day, every day. That I'm even fooling myself. — Jalina Mhyana

Movies are terrifically optimistic enterprises. — Christopher Walken

Yes, the hunky barista looks even more terrifically masculine with three days' growth on his chin. Guys under 50 mostly do. But when your beard is partly or largely grey, that stubble can just look a little unwashed. Sadly, when you're over 50, different rules apply. — Russell Smith

And no one could have known if he had ever looked at her either as, without any semblance of progress in either of them, they draw slowly together as the wagon crawls terrifically toward her in its slow palpable aura of somnolence and red dust in which the steady feet of the mules move dreamlike and punctuate by the sparse jingle of harness and the limber bobbing of jackrabbit ears, the mules still neither asleep nor awake as he halts them. — William Faulkner

Hi,' he said. He always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired. He didn't want you to think he was visiting you or anything. He wanted you to think he'd come in by mistake, for God's sake. — J.D. Salinger

Some jobs require a more consistent challenge to moral courage than others. Politics is one. In such a setting terrifically good men and women will still be found wanting occasionally. No one does the right thing all the time. It would be more generous and fair to consider their batting average than to judge them only by their last worst act. — Michael Josephson

Don't be thick, James. Ladies know all about mistresses. And it isn't as if you're married. If you carry on like that once you *are* married, I'm going to be terrifically nasty to you. I'll definitely tell your wife. So beware. I don't approve."
"Of Bella, or of matrimony?"
Of married men who run about London with voluptuous women with hair the color of flax and morals that are just as lax."
She paused for a moment, but James just rolled his eyes. "It's not easy to rhyme extempore, you know," she told him. — Eloisa James

Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband's mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, though her stationary had stunk of baby powder and rose perfume. Sally was starch, cedar, her dead grandmother sandalwood, her uncle, swiss cheese. People told her she smelled like garlic, like chalk, like nothing at all. Lotto, clean as camphor at his neck and belly, like electrified pennies at the armpit, like chlorine at the groin. She swallowed. Such things, details noticed only on the edges of thought would not return.
'Land,' Mathilde said, 'odd name for a guy like you.'
'Short for Roland,' the boy said.
Where the August sun had been steaming over the river, a green cloud was forming. It was still terrifically hot, but the birds had stopped singing. A feral cat scooted up the road on swift paws. It would rain soon.
'Alright Roland,' Mathilde said, suppressing as sigh, 'sing your song. — Lauren Groff

A Complicated Kindness is just that: funny and strange, spellbinding and heartbreaking, this novel is a complicated kindness from a terrifically talented writer. — Gail Anderson-Dargatz

In all the mad incongruity, the turgid stultiloquy of life, I felt, at least, securely anchored to myself. Whatever the vacillations of other people, I thought myself terrifically constant. But now, here I am, dragging a frayed line, and my anchor gone. — John Steinbeck

It must take a lot of self-discipline,' she said.
'Oh, I don't know. I don't have much.' He felt himself about to say again, and unable to resist saying, that 'Dumas, I think it was Dumas, some terrifically prolific Frenchman, said that writing novels is a simple matter - if you write one page a day, you'll write one novel a year, two pages a day, two novels a year, three pages, three novels, and so on. And how long does it take to cover a page with writing? Twenty minutes? An hour? So you see. Very easy really.'
'I don't know,' she said, laughing. 'I can't even bring myself to write a letter.'
'Oh, now that's hard.'
("Novelty") — John Crowley

I practice selfless giving not because I'm remarkable but just because I find that its terrifically fun! — Frederick Lenz

Wearing a cloak is on Rose's list of the thousand things she hates most. The problem is that each of the thousand problems is ranked number one.
'But Dr. Rannigan says you must and anyway, it hardly weighs a thing, it's so full of holes.' I swung mine round my shoulders. Rose hates any bit of clothing that constricts, but I say Chin up and bear it. Life is just one great constriction.
'Ventilated,' I said, 'that's the word. Our cloaks are terrifically ventilated. — Franny Billingsley

I have seen some terrifically exciting changes with young players coming into the squad which is reinvigorated. The older players and the whole group has been refreshed by the youth and enthusiasm that has come into the team. I think that has been misunderstood and misrepresented in certain quarters to the detriment of Indian cricket. — Greg Chappell

The gratification of helping others is a very American tradition and a Judeo-Christian tradition. Now it is great to see young people creating funds and giving back in all sorts of productive ways. It's a terrifically satisfying thing. — Evelyn Lauder

I became a better listener than I ever had been as a result of playing Jean Luc Picard because it was one of the things that he does terrifically well. — Patrick Stewart

When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder. — Janet Fitch

Gorillas are in danger of being wiped out by the Ebola virus. I feel like we have limited time to get to know them and understand them and they're going to disappear - that's terrifically sad. Wouldn't it be great if we could stop that? — Sara Gruen

[the war in Iraq] could have terrifically good effects troughout the Middle East — William Kristol

My agent asked if I fancied Robin Hood and I thought: 'Yeah, why not?' I hadn't watched it, to be honest, but I'd seen bits and knew it was really popular Saturday family viewing with heaps of action. I thought it would be great fun. I was up for a good old play-fighting and the scripts were terrifically exciting. — Joanne Froggatt

Love's easy to learn. It's like taking a risk. You set your mind on it and refuse to be afraid, and in no time you feel terrifically exhilarated and all your inhibitions fly out of the window. — Dick Francis

Certain music is terrifically inspirational and it is possible, months or even years afterwards, to look at a painting and remember the music that was playing during its execution. — Robert Genn

When it comes down to it, at the end of the day, I need more out of my life and I need to push myself harder. And if at the end of the day I don't have it, then I don't have it, but at least I'm going to put myself out there. If I fail, I'm going to fail terrifically. — Ali Larter

Now see the nasturtiums. The leaves are like tiny green parasols blown inside-out and the flowers are terrifically garish. In every village we pass through, see how they are everywhere, how they fill every gap in every wall, every crack in every path.
The nasturtiums have it figured out, how survival's just a matter of filling in the gaps between sun up and sun down. Boiling kettles, peeling potatoes, laundering towels, buying milk, changing light-bulbs, rooting wet mats of pubic hair out of the shower's plughole. This is the way people survive, by filling one hole at a time for the flightiest of temporary gratifications, over and over and over, until the season's out and they die off anyway, wither back into the wall or path, into their dark crevasse. This is the way life's eaten away, expended by the onerous effort of living itself. — Sara Baume

Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men: when the forces of nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a sermon 'savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists.'
("The Wendigo") — Algernon Blackwood

May I say to mothers collectively, in the name of the Lord, you are magnificent. You are doing terrifically well. The very fact that you have been given such a responsibility is everlasting evidence of the trust your Father in Heaven has in you. — Jeffrey R. Holland

A dream to one day design terrifically odd-shaped swimming pools for a California clientele. — Samantha Hunt

Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely ... Obsessing over the slipperiness of focus, bemoaning the volume of those devil "distractions," and constantly reassessing which shiny new "system" might make your life suddenly seem more sensible - these are all terrifically useful warning flares that you may be suffering from a deeper, more fundamental problem ... Know in your heart that what you're making or doing matters ... First, care. Then, as you'll happily and unavoidably discover, all that "focus" business has a peculiar way of taking care of itself. — Merlin Mann

Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us. — Andrea Dworkin

Scientific monitoring is going to be terrifically important, because whatever steps we take ... we will have to monitor those steps in order to know if they're actually working. — Naomi Oreskes

Hemingway, damn his soul, makes everything he writes terrifically exciting (and incidentally makes all us second-raters seem positively adolescent) by the seemingly simple expedient of the iceberg principle - three-fourths of the substance under the surface. He comes closer that way to retaining the magic of the original, unexpressed idea or emotion, which is always more stirring than any words. But just try and do it! — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Dragons are notable for their lust for gold, not a bad quality taken in moderation. Dragons are immune to fire, obviously. All dragons are terrifically vain, indeed as to who is more vain, a dragon or an elf, I would not want to be the one to decide. Hint: an elf. A dragon should never be engaged in conversation as they are inveterate liars and tricksters, though if you're actually talking to a dragon, you're pretty much toast anyway. Never, ever call a dragon a worm, no matter how much they're asking for it. — John Stephens

The other good thing was that I had enough rank to strong-arm Marjit into confessing that she'd been the one who'd told everything to Pa about my first invisibility cap, which was how Pa knew to come steal it. Unfortunately, since my rank in the surface world hung off Pa's, I did NOT have enough rank to take him to task for stealing my cap. So I just put him to sleep during a fancy dinner, so that he went facedown into the sour soup. Just the once. It eased my ire terrifically. — Merrie Haskell

I don't mind the disapproving ones so much. It's the tolerant ones I can't stand, the ones who smile at Rose, who speak to her ever so slowly and gently. They don't realize how very intelligent Rose really is. They're just terrifically pleased with themselves. Look at me! they all but shout. See how broad-minded I am! How wonderfully progressive, how fantastically twentieth century! — Franny Billingsley

The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall. — E. O. Wilson

I discover what I mean as I write. That can be both terrifically exciting and very dangerous, because when you look at your words later, you wonder, 'Did I really mean that, or am I just making verbal patterns?' — Peter Shaffer

Jeremiah ends inconclusively. We want to know the end, but there is no end. The last scene of Jeremiah's life shows him, as he had spent so much of his life, preaching God's word to a contemptuous people (Jer 44). We want to know that he was finally successful so that, if we live well and courageously, we also will be successful. Or we want to know that he was finally unsuccessful so that, since a life of faith and integrity doesn't pay off, we can get on with finding another means by which to live. We get neither in Jeremiah. He doesn't get married and he doesn't get shot.[5] In Egypt, the place he doesn't want to be, with people who treat him badly, he continues determinedly faithful, magnificently courageous, heartlessly rejected - a towering life terrifically lived. — Eugene H. Peterson

Biology doesn't know in advance what the end product will be; there's no Stuffit Compressor to convert a human being into a genome. But the genome itself is very much akin to a compression scheme, a terrifically efficient description of how to build something of great complexity-perhaps more efficient than anything yet developed in the labs of computer scientists (never mind the complexities of the brain, there are trillions of cells in the rest of the body, and they are all supervised by the same 30,000-gene genome). And although there is no counterpart in nature to a program that compresses a picture into a compact description, there is a natural counterpart to the program that decompresses the compressed encoding, and that's the cell. Genome in, organism out. Through the logic of gene expression, cells are self-regulating factories that translate genomes into biological structure. — Gary F. Marcus