Whittles Quotes & Sayings

The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility. — Susan Orlean

Even the greatest poets can't express tragedy in a way that is larger than their immediate circumstances. — Andrei Codrescu

Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident ... Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold. — William Zinsser

If you are silent, if I never learn one fraction more of your soul's equation/I know you. — Jeanie Thompson

No swamp dragon could ever terrorise a kingdom, except by accident. Vimes wondered how many had been killed by enterprising heroes. It was terribly cruel to do something like that to creatures whose only crime was to blow themselves absent-mindedly to pieces in mid-air, which was not something any individual dragon made a habit of. A race of, of whittles, that's what dragons were. Born to lose. Live fast, die wide. — Terry Pratchett

Strictly speaking, nothing that's said is true. (Though one can be the truth, one can't ever say it.) — Susan Sontag

If laws were real they wouldn't need to be enforced, because if they were real they couldn't be broken. Try breaking the law of gravity. Now that's a law. Laws made by man are rules reflecting the current status of his moral codes. As he alters and whittles away his morality, casting bits and pieces aside, his codes change to reflect it. — Boyd Rice

Pay heed: the artichoke is a shy vegetable. She covers herself in spine-tipped leaves that must be carefully peeled away, and underneath shields her treasure with a barricade o' soft needles. They must be tenderly, but firmly, scraped aside. Ye must be bold, for if yer not, she'll never reveal her soft heart. — Elizabeth Hoyt

If a pleasure lasts forever, it isn't a pleasure anymore. — Debasish Mridha

The man [Donald Trump] seems to out-trump himself - no pun intended - every time he speaks in his bid to win the Republican nomination. — Corri Wilson

The essence of all religion is to be willing to risk your life for a belief - not for survival. — Helen Foster Snow

Most disagreements are the result of faulty assumptions. — Geoff Tate

As the fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts. — Gautama Buddha

I passed so many vacant acres and looked past them to so many more vacant acres and looked ahead and behind at the empty road and up at the empty sky; the sheer bigness of the world made me feel lonely to the bone. The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility. If I had been an orchid hunter I wouldn't have seen this space as sad-making and vacant - I think I would have seen it as acres of opportunity where the things I loved were waiting to be found. — Susan Orlean

The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history. A writer who writes straight is the architect of history. — John Dos Passos

A writer ... whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. — John Dos Passos

Many-have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth. — Thomas Browne

When the life is wavy, keep your mind smooth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Clearing away the excess whittles life down to its bare essence, revealing purity of heart, integrity of character and inspiration of purpose, — Kathleen Ann Harper

Who's more interesting: A famous scientist, or the famous who plays the cello and whittles marionettes in a lighthouse at the edge of the world where he sometimes writes poetry by the light of passing ships? Exactly. Follow your weird impulses and do all sorts of things. Getting sidetracked can lead you to exactly where you belong. — Jessica Hagy

There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. — Charlie Kaufman