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From the perfection of Allah's ihsan is that He allows His slave to taste the bitterness of the break before the sweetness of the mend. So He does not break his believing slave, except to mend him. And He does not withhold from him, except to give him. And He does not test him (with hardship), except to cure him.
Ibn Qayyim Al-JawziyyaNo novelists any good except me. Sovietski -- yah! Nastikoff -- bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me.
P. G. WodehouseExcept ye become as little children, except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, "ye cannot enter the kingdom of God." One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again.
Dorothy L. SayersA corporation has no rights except those given it by law. It can exercise no power except that conferred upon it by the people through legislation, and the people should be as free to withhold as to give, public interest and not private advantage being the end in view.
William Jennings BryanNo man can be a politician, except he be first a historian or a traveller; for except he can see what must be, or what may be, he is no politician.
James HarringtonAll things are the same except for the differences, and different except for the similarities.
Thomas SowellThere is nothing permanent except change. Nothing is permanent except change. The only constant is change. Change is the only constant. Change alone is unchanging.
HeraclitusThe best time to leave a party is when the partyโs just beginning. Thereโs no drink that kills except the drink that you didnโt want to take, as the saying goes, and thereโs no hour that kills except the hour you stayed after you wanted to go home.
Diana VreelandWhat does God hate or punish except self-will? Let self-will cease, and there will be no hell. On what does that fire feed except on self-will?
Bernard of ClairvauxThere is no true liberty for the individual except as he finds it in the liberty of all. There is no true security for the individual except as he finds it in the security for all.
Edwin MarkhamAll people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.
RumiOne can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Oscar WildeThe Circle Theatre, black people had to sit in the balcony. Any theater with a balcony, black people had to sit up there. Black people couldn't check into any hotel except their own. And black people couldn't eat anywhere except in their own restaurants.
Kurt VonnegutNothing can work damage to me except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me and never am a real sufferer except by my own fault.
Ralph Waldo EmersonExcept for a few guitar chords, everything I've learned in my life that is of any value I've learned from women.
Glenn FreyPrinciples aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.
Mark TwainExcept for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.
Daniel KahnemanWhen I was young I never believed that Australia was anything else except blessed. I thought it was a little dull when I was young, but that was 'cause I was a snob.
Clive JamesThe place whereon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female fool.
Ambrose BierceBy conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.
William HazlittUnless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes.
William SaroyanVery few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable.
Bertrand RussellMen are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.
Thomas CarlyleCollege had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I'd have flunked out sooner.
Robert B. ParkerThere is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution.
Nathaniel HawthorneI never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish.
Nora RobertsFor poetry, more than any other art, except music, has a compelling hold upon the spiritual side of life.
Lizette Woodworth ReeseI don't know what our government does except put us into debt and blow up other countries.
Madonna CicconeLet us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.
Virginia WoolfThe great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that.
John BurdettAmong the lessons taught by the French revolution, there is none sadder or more striking than this--that you may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma.
James Russell LowellI think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.
James A. MichenerTom Walls' buddies remain an isolated minority, except during times of economic or social stress, when a mass following develops to blame cranky sociopaths for the problems besetting society. If it weren't for brown-nosing evil firebrands, he would have no friends. The ideas backing up his rejoinders are extremely superficial and sex-crazed.
Linda ChavezNothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience.
Neil GaimanNobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.
Franklin D. RooseveltMemory was such a worthless thing, really. Nothing it dealt with was attainable. It was concerned with phantom acts and feelings, with all that was uncapturable except in thought. It was without satisfaction.
Richard MathesonNo one can know truth except the one who obeys truth. You think you know truth. People memorize the Scriptures by the yard, but that is not a guarantee of knowing the truth. Truth is not a text. Truth is in the text, but it takes the text plus the Holy Spirit to bring truth to a human soul.
Aiden Wilson TozerI'd be surprised if non-fiction writers hate to be interviewed. We all hate them, because there's really nothing to say except "Read the book." Right? At least with non-fiction, you can kind of convey some information, and people can decide for themselves whether they want more of that kind of information. But with a novel, what am I going to do?
Jonathan FranzenEnvironmentalists hate sprawl - except when it comes to the size of their expansive pet legislation on Capitol Hill.
Michelle MalkinShe knew the intensity of adolescence, and knew no cure for it except growing up. And then one has age and experience, and mourns the loss of intensity. Maybe it's why musicians and mathmaticians are said to peak young-poetry needs the fire of an unbounded universe.
Sara ParetskyUnless the perfidious wolves have the temerity to disobey the High King's plans, we should meet Shalhassan's forces by the Latham in mid-wood with the wolves between us. If they aren't,' Diarmuid concluded, 'we blame anyone and everything except the plan.
Guy Gavriel KayI like every part [of the film process ] except the business and admin stuff. The initial idea. Writing. Re-writing. Casting. Directing, Editing. If I had to chose I'd say writing, followed by putting music on the picture. That is magical.
Ricky GervaisWe are all prisoners of our past. It is hard to think of things except in the way we have always thought of them. But that solves no problems and seldom changes anything.
Charles HandyA hypothesis or theory is clear, decisive, and positive, but it is believed by no one but the man who created it. Experimental findings, on the other hand, are messy, inexact things, which are believed by everyone except the man who did that work.
Harlow ShapleyBill Clinton gives the appearance of taking stands-for some sort of tax cut, some sort of welfare reform, some sort of balanced budget-but these are ploys, mirages: they exist only to undermine positions taken by the Republicans. He doesn't fight for anything substantive-except of course, re-election. ...He has fallen into the dangerous habit of lip synching the presidency: he gives the appearance of leadership, but not the substance.
Joe Klein