Quotes & Sayings About Things In Twos

There they stood, in twos and threes and fours, in their Cub Scout uniforms and with their Cub Scout faces, totally unprepared, as is the way with American he-men, for anything that could not be settled with a club or a fist or a gun. — James Baldwin

America, land of coupling, land of sanctioned marriage and two-person twined knots, land of tireless good-citizen living, land of the happy family, land of the free and the brave and the locked imagination, land of ignorant homeowner masses lined up in twos. — Lidia Yuknavitch

There is a parallel between the twos and the tens. Tens are trying to test their abilities again, sizing up and experimenting to discover how to fit in. They don't mean everything they do and say. They are just testing ... Take a good deal of your daughter's behavior with a grain of salt. Try to handle the really outrageous as matter-of-factly as you would a mistake in grammar or spelling. — Stella Chess

A mini-cab later and he arrived in Stockwell, where the pit bulls travelled in twos. Ludlow Road is near the tube station, a short mugging away. — Ken Bruen

I've been writing a lot of songs in twos, songs that are like twins in my mind. — Angel Olsen

Sounds like someone's hit the terrible twos."
"Threes actually," Quil corrected. "You missed the party. Princess theme. She made me wear a crown, and then Emily suggested they all try out her new play makeup on me."
"Wow, I'm REALLY sorry I wasn't around to see that."
Don't worry, Emily has pictures. Actually, I look pretty hot. — Stephenie Meyer

He calculated the number of bricks in the wall, first in twos and then in tens and finally in sixteens. The numbers formed up and marched past his brain in terrified obedience. Division and multiplication were discovered. Algebra was invented and provided an interesting diversion for a minute or two. And then he felt the fog of numbers drift away, and looked up and saw the sparkling, distant mountains of calculus. — Terry Pratchett

purposefully in twos and threes into the streets: — Anthony Doerr

The best parenting advice I ever got was from a labor nurse who told me the following:
1. After your baby gets here, the dog will just be a dog.
2. The terrible twos last through age three.
3. Never ask your child an open-ended question, such as "Do you want to go to bed now?" You won't want to hear the answer, believe me. "Do you want me to carry you upstairs, or do you want to walk upstairs to go to bed?" That way, you get the outcome you want and they feel empowered. — Jodi Picoult

Things that matter come in sets of twos. Two eyes, two ears. Two kisses on the cheeks, one on each. Two lungs. Two arms. Two legs. I would not be completely blind if I lost one eye... But because we have one heart, there is no second one that can serve as a reserve when the first is stricken by sorrow. — Lan Cao

Families survive the Terrible Twos because toddlers aren't strong enough to kill with their hands and aren't capable of using lethal weapons. A 2-year-old with the physical capacities of an adult would be terrifying. — Paul Bloom

Of all the deprivations which afflict humankind, none is more dreadful than loneliness. A corrosive, it eats the heart out. People were meant to live by twos, with someone close with whom to share good and bad, to hear breathing in the dark room at night. Being alone is the one unnatural act. — Zelda Popkin

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Is everyone with one face called a Milo?"
"Oh no," Milo replied; "some are called Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things."
"How terribly confusing," he cried. "Everything here is called exactly what it is. The triangles are called triangles, the circles are called circles, and even the same numbers have the same name. Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless."
"I never thought of it that way," Milo admitted.
"Then I suggest you begin at once," admonished the Dodecahedron from his admonishing face, "for here in Digitopolis everything is quite precise. — Norton Juster

Well," Paul said. "Hit a stiff hand against the dealer's seven through ace. Hit soft eighteen against the dealer's nine or ten. Stand on soft nineteen or above. Double on eleven and on ten against the dealer's two through nine. Split pairs of aces and eights, never split tens, fives, or fours. Split twos through sevens against the dealer's two through seven. Split pairs of nines against the dealer's — Perri O'Shaughnessy

I suppose there has been nothing like the airports since the age of the stage-stops - nothing quite as lonely, as sombre-silent. The red-brick depots were built right into the towns they marked - people didn't get off at those isolated stations unless they lived there. But airports lead you way back in history like oases, like the stops on the great trade routes. The sight of air travellers strolling in ones and twos into midnight airports will draw a small crowd any night up or two. The young people look at the planes, the older ones look at the passengers with a watchful incredulity. — F Scott Fitzgerald

twelve plus three. Steve also reminded me that fifteen-month tours brought to bear the "law of twos" - soldiers would now potentially miss two Christmases, two anniversaries, two birthdays. Still, — Robert M. Gates

Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?" ...
"Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223" ...
"And pray, why would this number interest us?"
"It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, 'One zero, two ones, three twos, two threes'. — Abraham Verghese

Anything you try to quantify can be divided into any number of "anythings," or become the thing - the unit - itself. And what is any number, itself, but just another unit of measurement? What is a 'six' but two 'threes', or three 'twos' ... half a 'twelve', or just six 'ones' - which are what?
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

It's funny. Friendships are Catch twenty-twos when you're single and in your thirties. Friends are your life rafts. You try to help each other meet people, you confide in each other, you spend Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, all those emotional land-mine holidays together. But sooner or later one of you is going to meet someone and be gone into the world of couples. — Will McIntosh

If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it. — George Orwell

Outside, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees. The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters. — Aldous Huxley

Travelling the dusty highways in the early evenings, just as the light began to fade, I would look out along the perpendicular dirt tracks that joined the road at intervals. They undulated away gently into the distance; slow streams of people in twos and threes and fours walked them, through the haze, talking easily, making their way back from wherever lay beyond. I longed to take every one of these turnings, to step out along every track in the morning, to return at dusk, to see what lay over each of these horizons and to share in the stories of those that returned from them. My trajectory, and that of each one of us, was that of a meteor, shedding millions of tiny sparks of possibility with every passing second, each with the capacity to ignite a flash of experience, but nearly all of which quickly burned up and vanished as it was left behind. The fire that moved forward was the flame of our lives. — Luke F.D. Marsden

The filth hissed at us when we venture out
always in twos or threes, never alone
seems less a language spoken than one spat
in savage plosives, primitive, obscene:
a cavemob nya-nya, limited in frame
of reference and novelty, the same
suggestions of what we or they could do
or should, ad infinitum. — Marilyn Nelson

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world. — Kate Douglas Wiggin

Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless. — Norton Juster

The chairs - turned towards one another in groups of twos and threes - seemed like the seats of ghosts in close conversation with one another. There were sets of two chairs - very close to one another - in the far corners of the room, which spoke of recent whispered flirtations, over cold game pie and iced champagne; there were sets of three and four chairs, that recalled pleasant animated discussions over the latest scandals; there were chairs straight up in a row that still looked starchy, critical, acid, like antiquated dowagers; there were a few isolated, single chairs, close to the table, that spoke of gourmands intent on the most recherche dishes, and others overturned on the floor, that spoke volumes on the subject of my Lord Grenville's cellars. — Emmuska Orczy

...Emily hit the Terrible Twos and I bought a book called Toddler Taming. It was a revelation. The advice on how to deal with small angry immature people who have no idea of limits and were constantly testing their mother applied perfectly to my boss. Instead of treating him as a superior, I began handling him as though he were a tricky small boy. Whenever he was about to do something naughty, I would do my best to distract him; if I wanted him to do something, I always made it look like it was his idea. — Allison Pearson

Around two years of age, your child starts to develop a fascination with saying the word "no." Early childhood experts call this the threshold between the sensorimotor stage and the preoperational stage of cognitive development. The rest of us call it "the terrible twos. — Anonymous

Here's how adaptation works - almost everything in the movie is in the book in some form. But it's as though the deck has been completely reshuffled and some of the cards have been assigned different values, some of the fours have been made into jacks, and some of the jacks have been made into twos. — Walter Kirn

So-called reality TV, which dominates British channels, is destroying what made it cherishable to me and lots of others in the first place. I loved Alan Clarke, Ken Loach and Alan Bleasdale's work. In fact the first TV dramas I ever saw were 'Screen Twos' produced by David Thompson, who also produced a lot of Alan Clarke. — Aidan Gillen

She held out her hand and we sat there together like grade-school kids on a field trip. "Line up in twos and no talking." Life itself is a peculiar outing. Sometimes I still feel like I need a note from my mother. — Sue Grafton

There are so many different fifteens. And eighteens. And forty-twos, for that matter. Mature fifteens and young fifteens and wise fifteens and lost fifteens. And angry fifteens. — Deb Caletti

THE OWLS
by: Charles Baudelaire
UNDER the overhanging yews,
The dark owls sit in solemn state,
Like stranger gods; by twos and twos
Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.
Motionless thus they sit and dream
Until that melancholy hour
When, with the sun's last fading gleam,
The nightly shades assume their power.
From their still attitude the wise
Will learn with terror to despise
All tumult, movement, and unrest;
For he who follows every shade,
Carries the memory in his breast,
Of each unhappy journey made.
'The Owls' is reprinted from The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919. — Charles Baudelaire

I mean, everything beats me, even twos and threes. — Frank Portman

At my first tournament, about four years ago, I got four twos. Now I have a poker problem. I do win every so often, so that's what keeps me going. — Cheryl Hines