A Quote by James Thurber

A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

James Thurber

Quote Topics

Act Create Disaster False May Misunderstood Much Sudden Thoughtless Word

Quote Author

James Thurber
American - Author
December 8, 1894 - November 2, 1961

And it's like some tiny nothing that sets off a natural disaster halfway across the world, only this was the opposite of disaster, how by accident she saved me with that thoughtless act of grace, and she never knew, and how that, too, is the part of the history of love.

Nicole Krauss

As you look at your fears head-on, you'll begin to see how much of what you fear is just False Evidence Appearing Real. When you act on this false evidence, you create chaos in your life.

Gabrielle Bernstein

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

Winston Churchill

I try to do as much as I can within myself, with my friends, with my family. Talking to people who are motivated by freedom. I think that sometimes there's something called a negative learning curve where you begin to watch what's happened when the government takes more and more of your life and all of a sudden it's not working so well. I think people may get the idea that they may have bought into some false idols.

James Wasserman

You may well be right, and disaster may well come, I had told him. But for me it will always be a point of honour to go on working to prevent disaster, if only to make certain it is the right kind of disaster life needs when it does ultimately come.

Laurens van der Post

Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster.

Bertrand Russell

O Lord, may I never want to look good. O Jesus, may I always read it all: out loud and the very way it should be. May I never look at the other findings until I have come to my own true conclusions: May I care for the least of the young: and become aware of the one poem that each may have written; may I be aware of what each thing is, delighted with form, and wary of the false comparison; may I never use the word "brilliant."

Theodore Roethke

A false identity is any lie that contradicts our God-given identities through Scripture. These false identities can be created by ourselves because of sin in our lives, choices made, or wrong turns taken and the regret, guilt, and shame that follows. Other false identities are handed to us by outside sources, maybe a damaging word spoken to us by someone or a childhood of abuse. However, not all false identities are negative on the surface, such as successful, attractive, wealthy, athletic, or talented. But even those identities can become false when we place too much of our weight on them.

Matthew West

Remember that it is not enough to abstain from lying by word of mouth; for the worst lies are often conveyed by a false look, smile, or act.

Abraham Cahan

But although in theory physicists realize that their conclusions are ... not certainly true, this ... does not really sink into their consciousness. Nearly all the time ... they ... act as if Science were indisputably True, and what's more, as if only science were true.... Any information obtained otherwise than by the scientific method, although it may be true, the scientists will call "unscientific," using this word as a smear word, by bringing in the connotation from its original [Greek] meaning, to imply that the information is false, or at any rate slightly phony.

Anthony Standen

It is some disaster for any mind to hold any one thing for truth that is untrue, however insignificant it be, or however honestly it be held. It is a greater disaster when the false prejudice bars the way to some truth behind it, which, but for it, would find an entrance to the soul; and the greatness of the disaster will in this case be measured by the importance of the excluded truth.

Henry Parry Liddon

How to do meditation, many people ask. Don't do anything, just go into thoughtless awareness. Try to go to the thoughtless awareness. If you can get into that condition of thoughtless awareness, you've done your job because that's the point where you are with the truth, with the reality, with the joy, with everything that is so fundamental.

Nirmala Srivastava

I'm willing to be misunderstood. I've never had a problem being misunderstood by a portion of people on any particular issue if it makes for that much more of a special experience for those who understand.

RJD2

My poems always begin with a metaphor, but my way into the metaphor may be a word, an image, even a sound. And I rarely know the nature of the metaphor when I begin to write, but there is an attentiveness that a writer develops, a sudden alertness that is much like the feel of a fish brushing against a hook.