Whittle Down Quotes & Sayings

Jupiter is so big and its gravitational pull so strong that man would find it difficult to move about on the surface. The answer is to whittle it down to proper size with terrajets and nuclear power, using the debris to increase the size of Jupiter's moons so they, too, can be colonized. — Fritz Zwicky

Once, I started listing off all the people that I truly cared about. When I got to number seven, Penelope told me I either needed to whittle down my list or stop making friends immediately. My mother says you should never have more people in your life than you could defend from a hungry rakshasa. — Rainbow Rowell

How beautifully is it ordered, that as many thousands work for one, so must every individual bring his labor to make the whole! The highest is not to despise the lowest, nor the lowest to envy the highest; each must live in all and by all. Who will not work neither shall he eat. So God has ordered that men, being in need of each other, should learn to love each other, and bear each other's burdens. — George Augustus Henry Sala

One must turn the tongue seven times in the mouth before speaking. — Roland Barthes

I really did feel like I was surrounded by family members. I didn't have a dad, and I remember there were all these guys - in the old days, there were no women, except a makeup artist or, occasionally, a script supervisor. So there were just guys who taught me how to, you know, whittle wood, or how to pull focus, and what the camera was doing. And if I was being bratty, they'd sit me down and tell me. There were lots of rules about not being late and making sure that you didn't spill anything. So it felt a little bit like I was in a family. — Jodie Foster

The novelist's
any writer's
object is to whittle down his meaning to the exactest and finest possible point. What, of course, isfatal is when he does not know what he does mean: he has no point to sharpen. — Elizabeth Bowen

Why, how much did you tip him?'
Ford named a figure again.
'I don't know how much it is,' said Arthur. 'What's it worth in pounds sterling? What could it buy you?'
'It would probably buy you, roughly... er...' Ford screwed his eyes up as he did some calculations in his head. 'Switzerland,' he said at last. — Douglas Adams

Yes, I have been forced to whittle down the facts, and to be a liar, but it is not one universe, there are millions, almost as many as the number of human eyes and brains in existence, that awake every morning. — Marcel Proust

I'm not comparing myself at all to him, but I like the idea that Ernest Hemingway always wrote about certain things he knew, he knew the ins and outs, back to fronts of what he was talking about. I love that as an inspiration for myself, to keep it true to what you know. — Imelda May

For the sake of your health and happiness, replace the loss that causes sadness with the thanks that yields gratitude. — Charles F. Glassman

I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want to do. You don't always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up. — Grace Paley

Stop and think about it: even just leveling the playing field with China for a decade would be the equivalent of one-fifth of our national debt (and would have been one-third of our debt had we not elected the community organizer). You add in several hundred billion a year from putting OPEC in line, hundreds of billions from negotiating properly with the many other countries that are ripping us off, root out the hundreds of billions of incredible fraud that occur every year (more on that later), and now we have a debt problem America can manage - one where we can attack waste and abuse and whittle down the remaining debt to get our fiscal house in order. So that's the first step: bringing home the hundreds of billions of dollars that the petro thugs at OPEC and our enemy China steal from us every single year - and then go after all of the others. — Donald J. Trump

Though it is the hardest thing, to work out one's weight and heft in the world, to whittle down all that I am and give it a value. — Anna Funder

No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious. — H.L. Mencken

Not that I was morbidly obese or anything. But I guess I was hanging on the hope that one day I might accidentally whittle down to my inner toothpick. — Adele Griffin

Because the truth is, the world will probably whittle your daughter down. But a mother never should. — Meg Wolitzer

Down in Louisiana where the alligators grow so mean, there lived a girl that I swear to the world made the alligators look tame. — Tony Joe White

Some actors count their lines as soon as they receive a script. I'm the opposite. I try to see how many lines I can whittle down. You can say just as much in 4 as you can in 14. — Glenn Ford

Too many people are living below their privileges. It's because their vision has been clouded by past mistakes, disappointments, or how they were raised. They don't feel like royalty. They don't think they could be successful and really accomplish what God has put in their hearts. But I believe today, as I'm speaking faith into you, something is happening on the inside. — Joel Osteen

We've gone from looking up at the moon to looking down at Instagram. — Bill Whittle

I can get a better role in TV and work more constantly than I can waiting around for my friends in Canada to call me every four years - which they do - and I go up there and play a leading role. — Sandra Oh

I had always realized it was desirable to gear down the jet. — Frank Whittle

I had so many other things I could fall back on as an entrepreneur (with multiple businesses). When I finally was true to myself and what I wanted to do - and acting was it - there was nothing else I could think of. I thought "If I fail, I'm falling hard (because) I don't have anything else to fall back on. Am I going to accept that?" ... I never looked back. I never (let myself) put it in my mind to fail. — Drew Waters

Oh, I suppose they're not exactly gone, those green boys. It's rather like a sapling turning into a tree. Can't scrape off the bark, and whittle it down until you find that sapling again, now can you? No, of course not. The sapling becomes an oak. Forever changed. The realities of that war will remain inside us through heaven or hell. Best try and face it, Ty. Running from it won't help. You'll never turn back into the innocent sapling you once were." Robert lifted his glass and grinned. "My friend, we've become a pair of gnarled old trees. — Kathleen Baldwin

I didn't really start performing until high school. My whole family is actually in the business, and started in the business in Chicago, so I was going to shows when I was a teeny-tiny kid, but I didn't really start performing until high school. — Jessie Mueller

Only secret to success is determination. — Harsh Malik

Think that everyone that knew Kesey knew him differently. Maybe that's true about all larger than life people, or it may be that no one really ever knows them at all - we just have exper - iences near them and claim them as our own. We say their names and wish that something intimate is coming out of our mouths. But intimacy isn't like in books or movies. — Lidia Yuknavitch

I have like 250 letters that I have to whittle it down to 150. Only then do you have the whole overview of a book. When it was finally edited, at least my take was, everybody's lying. You know? — Don Novello

Sammi watched him walk toward her.
He walked like a predator, a conqueror. A king who ruled and commanded all. He was sex and sin, decadence and sensuality.
He was, simply put, spectacular. — Donna Grant

We fight wars not to have peace, but to have a peace worth having. Slavery is peace. Tyranny is peace. For that matter, genocide is peace when you get right down to it. The historical consequences of a philosophy predicated on the notion of no war at any cost are families flying to the Super Bowl accompanied by three or four trusted slaves and a Europe devoid of a single living Jew. — Bill Whittle

I think part of the problem sometimes is that there's so much happening in my books, to whittle it down into a single script is hard. — Sarah Dessen