Popular quotes about Almost! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 3
There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.
Charles BukowskiI'm a great supporter of transcendental meditation. I've been using it for almost 40 years now - and I think it's a great tool for anyone to have, to be able to utilize as a tool for stress. Stress, of course, comes with almost every business. I think there are enough studies out there that show that TM is something that could benefit anybody. It's a great system to use. Otherwise, why would I've been doing it for all these years, for almost half of my life?
Clint EastwoodI had brief glimpses of emotional catharsis while writing. I remember reading something Philip Roth wrote about how he writes every single day, but it's almost as if he has amnesia every morning - he has almost zero confidence that anything will come but he just sits down and plugs away. And at the end of the day it feels like a miracle: "How did I do that?" I had a similar experience where it was just about putting in the hours and being present.
Annie E. ClarkEvery one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.
John DeweyNow, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.
Philip LarkinIf you can stare hard at your problems, they almost always shrink or disappear, because you almost always find a better way of dealing with them than if you don't face them head on. The more difficult the problem, the more important it is that you stare at it and deal with it.
Ray DalioHuman beings have the capacity to learn to want almost any conceivable material object. Given, then, the emergence of a modern industrial culture capable of producing almost anything, the time is ripe for opening the storehouse of infinite need!... It is the modern Pandora's box, and its plagues are loose upon the world.
Jules HenryYou could almost say that throughout human history there are people who can either foresee consequences or who are capable of looking for information and predicting the consequences will happen, but the vast majority of people won't respond to climate change until their city is underwater, food supply is disrupted or everyone around them is dying of zoonotic disease. It's almost like someone dealing with an addiction, like you hope that the person can overcome the addiction before the addiction kills them.
MobyHatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could.
Paulo CoelhoI try to make that tension almost stupidly overt in my projects, almost ridiculously so. I keep coming back to the same obvious points again and again.
Aleksandra MirI've been making films with almost no dialogue (laughs), so sound and music become a very powerful character to tell the story. It's almost like with sound and music and images, it's your tool to tell the story, especially when I decide to structure the film in a way that usually goes against the conventions of the three-act structure which most films are made out of.
Nicolas Winding RefnWhat you think is fake in your head comes off as not enough on camera, a lot of times. You almost have to overdo it, in this overly, sort of Broadway, large-gestures kind of way to come off as being realistic on camera. It's strange. You almost have to act really fake to come off looking real.
Jack WhiteEvil is easily discovered; there is an infinite variety; good is almost unique. But some kinds of evil are almost as difficult to discover as that which we call good; and often particular evil of this class passes for good. It needs even a certain greatness of soul to attain to this, as to that which is good.
Blaise PascalYes, this is what I thought adulthood would be, a kind of long indian summer, a state of tranquility, of calm incuriousness, with nothing left of the barely bearable raw immediacy of childhood, all the things solved that had puzzled me when I was small, all mysteries settled, all questions answered, and the moments dripping away, unnoticed almost, drip by golden drip, toward the final, almost unnoticed, quietus.
John BanvilleSometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.
Anna QuindlenThis generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.
Lyndon B. JohnsonI think of myself as a journeyman actress. I will attempt almost anything that I think that I can bring off. It could be almost anything.
Angela LansburyIf standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.
Zig ZiglarIf you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it.
Mike Mills..why is it that in problematic situations almost everyone resorts to axioms and societal remedies that in actuality almost nobody believes in?...ask yourself, have you ever known anyone whose marriage was saved by a marriage counselor, whose drinking was cured by a psychiatrist, whose son was kept out of reform school by a social worker?
James Lee BurkeOur culture is almost entirely prepared to not just help you create your false self, but to get very identified with it and attached to it. So, without some form of God experience, which teaches you who you are apart from that - we would say in the religious world, who you are "in" God, in the mind and heart of God - there's almost no way to get out of it.
Richard RohrIf we start with chimpanzees, they differ from us with the composition of the DNA by only just over one percent. So, as far as genetics go, we're almost identical. The composition of the blood, the immune system, the structure of the brain - almost identical.
Jane GoodallIt's a fine balance between design and the thing making itself happen. The stroke has to have complete precision to work. Sometimes I lose it on the exit. You can't fudge it. It ruins the whole thing.โ The resulting figures are almost always contained within the rectangle. โIt's less of a window if I keep it within the confines of the canvas, but there's almost always a drip that's an umbilical cord.
James NaresFor a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.
Gertrude SteinWith songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.
PJ HarveyPressure to me now has become almost part of my life. It doesn't really affect me anymore. People talk about me being under pressure or having pressure of having to come in and be this great player that everyone expects me to be right away. It doesn't really faze me. It's become second nature now. It's almost like it would be weird not to have it.
Reggie BushYou can be an artist without visual images, a reader without eyes, a mass of erudition with a bad elementary memory. In almost any subject your passion for the subject will save you. If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if you wish to be learned, you will be learned; if you wish to be good, you will be good. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.
William JamesI'm somebody who finds adversity is almost as good as encouragement. It's almost like, you close the door, and I'll find ten ways to kick it in and go around it or dig under it or something.
Diane WarrenWhen I write this in bed, I can almost hear the echo of the wind over the sand, or the groans of wooden panels around me. I can almost smell the dustiness of the camel, taste the bitterness of saltbush. And when I dream, your warm hands cover my shoulders. Your whispers carry stories and sound like the rustle of spinifex. I still wear that ring, you know... at night, when no one is watching.
Lucy ChristopherEach instrument has something to say to you. It's got its own character. Each horn has its own character and will say to you certain things. If you violate that, it's almost a sacrilege!
Jerome RichardsonI'm writing what I want to write. But it's almost an act of rebellion on my part. Because as a person, I've always wanted to be very likeable, and I think that's a horrible thing, particularly for women. You're always like, "Oh, I hope I didn't hurt anyone's feelings. I hope they like me!" And that's just so stupid.
Tama JanowitzYou see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope you never have to long for a child as I did, but oh, what a splendid thing it has been that you came finally, and what a blessing to enjoy you now for almost seven years.
Marilynne RobinsonBusinesses that run well are almost like marriages. Everything has to be up for discussion, or there will be real problems.
Nobu MatsuhisaJohn Kerry had surgery on his right shoulder this week to repair some damage. It was pretty bad, he had no feeling. It was almost like he was a Republican.
David LettermanSeeing my face on a poster is surreal. You look at it and it's not quite like you, if you know what I mean... it's almost a third person kind of thing. I still find it strange.
Aimee TeegardenAlmost all the fathers of socialism were members of the upper middle class or of the professions.
Ludwig von MisesWhen the federal government announces indictments, weather it's a terrorism indictment or something else, it's almost like it's taken like gospel. My message to anyone who wants to do any of this kind of work is we desperately need a new generation of journalists who do not regard these indictments as gospel. Not to say they shouldn't be fairly reported on, but we need to start asking, "Is this really true?" I hope this can happen more in the future.
Ethan BrownI know that women in the music industry get treated a lot differently than men. I've seen it firsthand with somebody in particular, where it's almost that men like to treat women in the music industry like they can't make their own decisions.
Patrick CarneyHe was, she reflected, almost rudely like a tortoise; and she was glad her friend kept none as pets or they might have suspected mockery.
Stella GibbonsAs I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.
Georg C. LichtenbergAbout midnight the fog shut down again denser than before. One could almost "stand on it." It continued so for a number of days, the wind increasing to a gale. The waves rose high, but I had a good ship. Still, in the dismal fog I felt myself drifting into loneliness, an insect on the straw in the midst of the elements.
Joshua SlocumFunctions of technical information, historic record, analytic argument, which are integral and obvious to Dante's use of verse are now almost completely a part of the 'prosaic'.
George SteinerIt is an almost infallible rule that the more permissive a person is on social and moral issues the more in favour they are of strict gun control.
Michael Coren