A Quote by Shirley Hazzard
Did you ever notice how easy it is to forgive a person any number of faults for one endearing characteristic, for a certain style, or some commitment to life - while someone with many good qualities is insupportable for a single defect if it happens to be a boring one?
Related Quotes
Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue; For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.
One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at life: a capacity for surprise. It’s easy to become so mired in our likes or dislikes that we can no longer recall that person who once responded to poems—and to people—without any preconceived notions of what we wanted them to be.
Did you ever notice how many survivors they have? Did you ever notice that? Everybody - every time you turn around, 15,000 survivors meet here, 400 survivors convention there. I mean, did you ever notice? Nazis sure were inefficient, weren't they? Boy, boy, boy! ...You almost have no survivors that ever say they saw a gas chamber or saw the workings of a gas chamber...they'll say these preposterous stories that anybody can check out to be a lie, an absolute lie.
I couldn't joke about the person who'd saved me from facing absolute heartbreak at home, who fed my family boxes of sweets, who ran to me worried that i was hurt if I asked for him. A month ago, I had looked at the TV and seen a stiff, distant, boring person-someone I couldn't imagine anyone loving. And while he wasn't anything close to the person I did love, he was worthy of having someone to love in his life.
Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.
Of course, man is also a weak creature with many bad qualities. And it depends on which of his qualities will in a certain social situation and in a certain climate prevail, which qualities will awaken. The totalitarian system was masterful in how it managed to mobilize all the bad qualities.
Of course I know my characters are unlikable sometimes or have prejudices. It's not as if I'm thinking they're so endearing all the time. I guess it's much more interesting to me to write someone who is a combination of good and bad qualities because that's what people are like in real life.
I am surprised at three things: 1. [A] man runs from death while death is inevitable. 2. One sees minor faults in others, yet overlooks his own major faults. 3. When there is any defect to one's cattle he tries to cure it, but does not cure his own defects.
Genius is by definition a style of consciousness characterized by the ability to access high energy attractor patterns. It is not a personality characteristic. It is not something that a person has, nor even something that someone is. Those in whom we recognize genius commonly disclaim it. A universal characteristic of genius is humility. The genius has always attributed his insights to some higher influence.
I have one life. I am a certain age. I'm married to one person. I have a certain number of children. I won't have another life other than that, but I do have many lives through the films.
No golfer ever gets so consistently good that he can't use some constructive advice. No matter how many trophies he may win, he can't analyze and remedy his own faults.
How do you go on knowing that you will never again - not ever, ever - see the person you have loved? How do you survive a single hour, a single minute, a single second of that knowledge? How do you hold yourself together?
I never was a person that wanted that life...I'm a leader not a follower. I don't care what they say, or what they're doing or what they're wearing. Go ahead, cos come Judgement Day, all of that won't matter. How many people did you help. How many people did you talk to. How many people did you try to encourage. How many people did you bring to God. That's what's gon' matter.
Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love?' These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will be many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.
Did you ever notice how difficult it is to argue with someone who is not obsessed with being right?
Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter - aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take 'no' with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules - are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist