Quotes About Alter

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

It is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.

What I do is between me and the Lord, to examine and possibly alter the state of grace in which I live, and thereby the state of grace of anybody who listens.

Humor can alter any situation and help us cope at the very instant we are laughing.

We despair of changing the habits of men, still we would alter institutions, the habits of millions of men.

People who relieve others of their money with guns are called robbers. It does not alter the immorality of the act when the income transfer is carried out by government.

I think it is just a matter of time before we have literal ghosts in the machine so you can create an alter ego of yourself that learns from your social experiences and extends a life even if you're no longer in the game or you are no longer alive.

I don't think anybody should be celibate - and that goes for priests as well as nuns. I don't even like to alter a cat. We should all live life to the fullest, and sex is a part of life.

The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.

A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker is willing to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition.

When friends asked me, Can we help? I'd say, Not unless you can alter time, speed up the harvest or teleport me off this rock. I used that line from Star Wars.

Sex is front-page copy everywhere. [But] nothing can alter the fact that God calls perversion sin.

When true self-remembering comes, one does not want to alter oneself, or others; one somehow rises above their weaknesses and one's own. There can be no blame anywhere. One swallows what is, and becomes free.

Commitment is that turning point in your life when you seize the moment to alter your destiny.

After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction; a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine; a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine; a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate; a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.

Hey, you created me! I didn't create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility!

Additional federal studies are under way to see if any contamination reaches taps or ground water used for drinking, but the program under which they are conducted, the toxic substances hydrology program of the geological survey, is slated to be eliminated under budget cuts proposed by the Bush administration, government officials said... estrogens and similar compounds are increasingly the focus of research by the Environmental Protection Agency and many scientists because of hints that they alter sexual characteristics in fish and other aquatic species.

We have to remove the CO2 that the industrial economy has already emitted, which otherwise will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and alter the Earth's climate irreversibly. It is possible to do this.

The study of how substances alter gene expression is part of the field of epigenetics. Some chemical exposures appear to turn on and turn off genes in ways that disregulate cell growth and predispose for cancer. From this perspective, our genes are less the command-and-control masters of our cells and more like the keys of piano, with the environment as the hands of the pianist.

Time draweth wrinkles in a fair face, but addeth fresh colors to a fast friend, which neither heat, nor cold, nor misery, nor place, nor destiny, can alter or diminish

Instead of criticizing Masonry, let us than God for one alter where no man is asked to surrender his liberty of thought and become an indistinguishable atom on a mass of sectarian agglomeration.

Hope and fear cannot alter the seasons

Everything we did was done in form and with propriety, and the result of our proceedings is the document [the Quebec Resolutions] that has been submitted to the imperial government as well as to this house and which we speak of here as a treaty. And that there may be no doubt about our position in regard to that document we say, question it you may, reject it you may, or accept it you may, but alter it you may not.

To design things means to interfere with things: to think of how they might be and to alter how they are. Design is to making as writing is to speech: it is an ordinary physical activity pushed to a conscious edge. That interference with the given world can still be founded on admiration. Where it is not, what is the point of designing at all?

As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.

An artist who wants to transpose a composition onto a larger canvas must conceive it over again in order to preserve its expression; he must alter its character and not just fill in the squares into which he has divided his canvas.

The images which the [press] photographer has filtered from reality, whether particular events or the anguish of human reactions to them, already bear a stamp of authenticity which the photographer is powerless to alter by one jot or tittle; the meaning of the objects, by a process of purification, itself becomes the theme of the work.

The weaknesses and biases of the international mechanisms of accountability make it seem desirable to extend the domain of accountability by empowering domestic courts to act as agents of the world legal system. Even if there is no consistent application of Universal Jurisdiction, it still leads those who might be prosecuted to alter their travel plans to avoid even the complication of waiting for a complaint to be dismissed.

I've always found drugs and alcohol somewhat pedestrian. It's like, I don't need an external agent to open my mind. I'm here, conscious, alert, present. Why would I alter that?

Dreams can change histories and songs can alter destinies.

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.

I do not know how Vladimir Putin will be esteemed by the future history, but I have no doubt that among his successes and advantages for Russia historians shall absolutely note the fact of his not altering the constitution, for he created a precedent. And afterwards, no matter who might become president, it shall be extremely difficult to alter the constitution exactly on that point. Extremely difficult.

Circumstances should never alter principles!

We're all animals, that we all respond to the same stimuli. If you want to motivate somebody not to have premarital sex, or motivate black bears not to go diving into dumpsters, first you have to think about why they do it. Telling them to stop isn't going to help. There has to be some incentive for them to alter their behavior.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

There are few treasures of more lasting worth than the experiences of a way of life that is in itself wholly satisfying. Such, after all, are the only possessions of which no fate, no cosmic catastrophe can deprive us; nothing can alter the fact if for one moment in eternity we have really lived.

I used to come from the village with all that dirt and coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and the simpering pictures in the drawing-room seemed to me like a wicked attempt to find delight in what is false, while we don't mind how hard the truth is for the neighbors outside our walls. I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.

The imagination conjures gifts; what the ungrateful, unsentimental part of the mind has to do is to unwrap them, find fault with them, see them for what they are and then alter them.

At the core of your Heart, you are perfect and pure. No one and nothing can alter that.

An hour of anxiety cannot change my circumstances, but a minute of prayer can alter everything.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.

We're all affected by music. It has the power to inspire, uplift us, change our moods, and even alter consciousness.

The human condition is better improved by altering detrimental circumstances and personal perspectives than by trying to alter personal outlooks, while ignoring the very circumstances that serve to nourish them

At best, the relationship between drama critic and playwright is a pretty twiggy affair. When I'm asked whom I write for, after the obligatory, I write only for myself, I realize that I have an imaginary circle of peers - writers and respected or savvy theatre folk, some dramatic writers and some not, some living, some long gone. . . . Often a writer is aware as he works that a certain critic is going to hate this one. . . . You don't let what a critic might say worry you or alter your work; it might even add a spark to the gleeful process of creation.