Whittled Away Quotes & Sayings

It is time to remind ourselves that today's thoughts and actions become our legacy. When we forget this or lie to ourselves thinking our actions do not matter, we have permission to act as momentary buffoons. We let ourselves break, just this once, from our values. We cheat, just this once. We lie, just this once. We put off the hard task, just this once. We skip the workout, just this week. We take the drink, just one more. And soon we find that each of these little breaks in our will leads to another, and then to a lifetime of compromise and regret. Without vigilance, what is right and strong about the human spirit can be whittled away and broken forever. — Brendon Burchard

Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property. — Tim LaHaye

All things are transient. Buddha says it is so, and Hock Seng, who didn't believe in or care about karma or the truths of the dharma when he was young, has come in his old age to understand his grandmother's religion and its painful truths. Suffering is his lot. Attachment is the source of his suffering. And yet he cannot stop himself from saving and preparing and striving to preserve himself in this life which has turned out so poorly.
How is it that I sinned to earn this bitter fate? Saw my clan whittled by red machetes? Saw my businesses burned and my clipper ships sunk? He closes his eyes, forcing memories away. Regret is suffering. — Paolo Bacigalupi

That's what time does: We stand stubbornly like rocks while it flows all around us, believing that we are immutable - and all the time we're being carved, and shaped, and whittled away. — Lauren Oliver

I feel fragile, like if somebody looked at me the wrong way I might shatter into a million pieces and never be whole again. — Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Petition me no petitions, sir, to-day; Let other hours be set apart for business. To-day it is our pleasure to be drunk; And this our queen shall be as drunk as we. — Henry Fielding

She figured if people were dumb enough to believe that crap, they didn't deserve the truth. They probably wouldn't believe it anyway — Maya Banks

And his thoughts were like entangled black threads. He could never find the end to them. — Boris Artzybasheff

At the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact. — George Plimpton

When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the Rostovs' box - her whole bosom completely exposed - beckoned the old count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had entered her box, began talking to him with an amiable smile. — Leo Tolstoy

...I won't ever again allow doubt to come in and dissolve my ability to live life as fully as I can. — Ann Linnea

I've whittled my fascination with the cosmos down to this mantra: we can imagine the Universe as a giant void racing away from us at a frightening speed, or it could occur to us that, in fact, it is wrapped around us in all directions. Then, no matter where we are, we are at the centre of something wonderful. And that's how I've always thought about it. — Sean J Halford

There was a chemical solution to all of America's food needs, which had been whittled away for years and years and honed down with precision to train the public that everything they needed to put on the table for their family came in a box, bottle or can. — Kenneth Eade

Men who neglect philosophy while busying themselves with ordinary affairs are like the Suitors [in the Odyssey] who desired Penelope but went to bed with her maids. — Gorgias

For far too long the American public and business sector have kept their silence as civil liberties have been whittled away by statutory and regulatory measures. — Bob Barr

These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen
a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man's life at will.
[Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 343 (1966) (dissenting)] — William O. Douglas

Cause hearts are amazing things. They get lots bigger to make room for new people to love alongside the old people you love. -Simi — Sherrilyn Kenyon

There might have been prettier women in the room but, when she turned those babies on, fluttered her eyelashes, I was hers. It had taken me nearly fifteen years to extinguish their light. Now, when she looks at me, it's a vacuum. I had drained so much from her over the course of our marriage that every glance rips a little bit of my soul away to fill the void I had whittled within her. — Thomm Quackenbush

I've been blessed to be one of those guys who's looked at as a fashion-forward type of guy. — Dwyane Wade

Human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars. — Gustave Flaubert

Let no man under value the price of a virtuous woman's counsel. — George Chapman

(Cabbages were a Kel idiosyncrasy. They were adamant about their spiced cabbage pickles.) Appearance-wise — Yoon Ha Lee

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner. — H.L. Mencken

Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product. — Russell Baker