Real Quotes - Page 584

What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

Where my heart lies is in the real-life, but at the same time part of it lies in this creative realm where I need to go in and put out that fire, scratch that itch, in order to be all rounded.

When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times.

The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche.

Once human beings realize something can be done, they're not satisfied until they've done it.

Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities.

You see, for me a painting is a dramatic action in the course of which the reality finds itself split apart. For me, that dramatic action takes precedence over all other considerations. The pure plastic act is only secondary as far as I'm concerned. What counts is the drama of that plastic art, the moment at which the universe comes out of itself and meets its own destruction.

Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open sea of thought.

The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

Nothing is rarer than real goodness.

As a piece of travel literature alone, 'The Ends of the Earth' succeeds in providing a tangible sense of the sweaty, smelly reality of many exotic points on the map, with glimpses of their cruelty but also, occasionally, of beauty and human kindness. As a piece of analysis, it is deeply thought-provoking.

The key to lasting happiness and real pleasure in this world is not found in seeking gratification, but in pleasing God. And while the Lord desires that we enjoy His gifts and the people to whom we are joined, He wants us to know that we were created first for His pleasure.

Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful.

I would by all means have men beware, lest Æsop's pretty fable of the fly that sate [sic] on the pole of a chariot at the Olympic races and said, 'What a dust do I raise,' be verified in them. For so it is that some small observation, and that disturbed sometimes by the instrument, sometimes by the eye, sometimes by the calculation, and which may be owing to some real change in the heaven, raises new heavens and new spheres and circles.

Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.

Everything in Japan is hidden. Real life has an unlisted phone number.

People are constantly telling me, whether they are friends who feel sorry for me, because I can't find a place to live, or real estate agents, "You can't afford an apartment the size you need with this many books. Why don't you just put some of your books in storage?" And I always say the same thing: "What if I told you I had four children? Would you say, 'You just can't afford to house four children. Why don't you just put two of them in storage?'" That's how I feel.

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health, or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.

Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.

A gift of any kind is a considerable responsibility. It is a mystery in itself, something gratuitous and wholly undeserved, something whose real uses will probably always be hidden from us.

There were times when I was frustrated, and cried and felt helpless, but the reality in Ethiopia is that you don't have much of an option. You either keep quiet or you get added to the list of people being jailed or killed.

The fans are probably the only thing I can really see that's real.

There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street.

When you come across real talent, it is sometimes worth allowing them to create the structure in which they choose to labor. In nine cases out of ten, by inviting them to take responsibility and control for a new venture, you will motivate them to do great things.