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There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.
Henri Frederic Amielโ"Nothing binds you except your thoughts; nothing limits you except your fear; and nothing controls you except your beliefs.
Marianne WilliamsonThe actor has to have some degree of craft, along with the talent. No one tries to laugh except bad actors. No one tries to cry except bad actors. How a character hides his feelings tells us who he is. Most people don't know that, and most actors don't do that. Therefore, there are a lot of actors who put me to sleep, that are considered good actors, but they're predictable and boring. I know how the scene is going to end before it ends.
Martin LandauAll things are the same except for the differences, and different except for the similarities.
Thomas SowellWhen I came to Hollywood, I spoke no English - except nobody bullied me. Every day, I had nothing to do except training in English, to keep talking.
Jackie ChanThere is nothing permanent except change. Nothing is permanent except change. The only constant is change. Change is the only constant. Change alone is unchanging.
HeraclitusWhat 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.
Thomas SowellWhat 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 ClairvauxI can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don't know whether this world has meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.
Albert CamusBeing in unfamiliar places has no effect on my writing, except that it often means I'm caught up in the logistics of travel, the places and people on the spot, etc., etc., which can mean that I don't have the time to write. But I try, wherever I am, to take a couple of hours in the early evening to go off and write. Because I never write from personal experience, per se, where I am makes no difference except for this element of available time.
Cole SwensenTo the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them... He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.
Milton FriedmanPoverty has its advantages. When you're that poor what would you have that anyone would want? Except your peace of mind. Your dignity. Your heart. The important things.
Ana CastilloThe principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.
Walter LippmannI'm not particularly worried by any of the songs we've written in the past, except for some of the really early stuff which is total tripe.
Bernard FanningTRIAD: Three separate highways intersect at a place no reasonable person would ever want to go. Three lives that would have been cut short, if not for hasty interventions by loved ones. Or Fate. Three people, with nothing at all in common except age, proximity, and a wish to die. Three tapestries, tattered at the edges and come unwoven to reveal a single mutual thread.
Ellen HopkinsMost men call fretting a minor fault, a foible, and not a vice. There is no vice except drunkenness which can so utterly destroy the peace, the happiness of a hoe.
Helen Hunt JacksonThe other saxophones, except as solo instruments, really don't have much point in the orchestra
Gerry MulliganI think 'The Lost World' could've been a successful movie except for the fact that it pre-dated the good special effects and computer graphics.
John Rhys-DaviesEducation is a matter of the spirit. No wiser word has been said on the subject, and yet we persist in applying education from without. No one knoweth the things of the man except the spirit of man which is in him; therefore, there is no education but self-education, and as soon as a young child begins his education, he does so as a student. Our business is to give him mind stuff. Both quantity and quality are essential.
Charlotte MasonI don't know what our government does except put us into debt and blow up other countries.
Madonna CicconeA fish, which you can't see, deep down in the water, is a kind of symbol of peace on earth, good will to yourself. Fishing gives a man ... some time to collect his thoughts and reaarange them kind of neatly, in an orderly fashion. Once the bait is on the hook and the boat is anchored, there's nothing to interfere with thinking except an occasional bite
Robert RuarkIt's a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.
James ClavellLet 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 BurdettI 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 ChavezDear Willem: Iโve been trying to forget about you and our day in Paris for nine months now, but as you can see, itโs not going all that well. I guess more than anything, I want to know, did you just leave? If you did, itโs okay. I mean itโs not, but if I can know the truth, I can get over it. And if you didnโt leave, I donโt know what to say. Except Iโm sorry that I did. I donโt know what your response will be at getting this letter, like a ghost from your past. But no matter what happened, I hope youโre okay.
Gayle FormanAt the happy ending of the Tempest, Prospero brings the kind back togeter with his son, and finds Miranda's true love and punishes the bad duke and frees Ariel and becomes a duke himself again. Everyone - except Caliban - is happy, and everyone is forgiven, and everyone is fine, and they all sail away on calm seas. Happy endings. That's how it is in Shakespeare. But Shakespeare was wrong. Sometimes there isn't a Prospero to make everything fine again. And sometimes the quality of mercy is strained.
Gary D.There was, really, nothing you could use as a blueprint for your life, except your past. There was no starting over. There was only picking up the pieces someone had left behind.
Jodi PicoultRemind me again what's wrong with Dave Matthews?" "Basically everything, except technical proficiency," Walter said. "Right." "But maybe especially the banality of the lyrics. 'Gotta be free, so free, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't live without my freedom, yeah yeah.' That's pretty much every song.
Jonathan FranzenObviously, I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is giving, not getting.
Hubert Selby, Jr.I don't remember anything anybody said in any Jack Ford picture. Nothing happens except action.
Elia KazanIt goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!
Ralph EllisonI have thought about this issue of abortion time and again. It is not an easy issue for most people. I came to believe over the years that a woman should be able to make this agonizing decision with her doctor and her family and her conscience, and that we should be very careful that we don't make that decision a crime except in the most extreme circumstances.
Dick DurbinI have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.
Dick CavettWe have everything we need, in fact, except the most important thing of all โ time to think and the habit of thought.
Norman CousinsIgnorance may be bliss, but it certainly is not freedom, except in the minds of those who prefer darkness to light and chains to liberty. The more true information we can acquire, the better for our enfranchisement.
Robert Hugh BensonI know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush and it is the same river who before I can bring my friends to view his work erases it forever from human view. After that it exists only in my mind's eye.
Aldo LeopoldI never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.
Douglas SirkIf you look at the record books, Dale Earnhardt's done everything, except win the Daytona 500. Now they can't have that riding over him. Now they're just going to say, 'Dale Earnhardt, 1998 Daytona 500 winner,' and his shoulders are going to get lighter every time.
Ernie IrvanLifestyle. Not a word at all, really - rather a wordette. A genuine case of more is less. ... the word life and the word style are, except in rare cases (and chances are that you're not of them), mutually exclusive.
Fran LebowitzIt would be a huge mistake to abandon democracy promotion. Peaceful political change has been enormously successful in the past years in Eastern European countries as well as in countries like South Korea, South Africa, Chile and Indonesia. However, if possible, the use of force is something to avoid except in cases where genocide is threatened, like Bosnia or Libya or with regimes that threaten our security, like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.
Paul WolfowitzNow, I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being has to face if he lives with any creativity at all.
Rollo MaySometimes Joyce is hilarious. I read Finnegans Wake after graduate school and I had the great good fortune of reading it without any help. I don't know if I read it right, but it was hilarious! I laughed constantly! I didn't know what was going on for whole blocks but it didn't matter because I wasn't going to be graded on it. I think the reason why everyone still has so much fun with Shakespeare is because he didn't have any literary critic. He was just doing it; and there were no reviews except for people throwing stuff on stage. He could just do it.
Toni MorrisonHow dare the smooth talkers, the clever official blabbers, open their mouths and boast of progress. . . . Here they hold jubilant peace conferences in which they talk against war. . . . But the same righteous Governments, who are so nobly, industriously active to establish the eternal peace, are preparing, by their own confession, complete annihilation for six million people, and there is nobody, except the doomed themselves, to raise his voice in protest although this is a worse crime than any war . . .
Max Nordau