Adopted Quotes

1. "Typically, images or paintings are designated as anamorphic when, in order for the image to appear, a particular line of sight must be adopted. The image only shows up when approached from the angle dictated to the viewer by the image's own set of conditions. In this sense, the viewer must 're-form' their perspective to match the perspective demanded by the image. We are not free to approach the image as we wish; the image is free to assign us a perspective proper to itself... Anamorphosis, then, describes the freedom of the phenomenon to give itself as it wishes and it measures the extent to which this freedom turns the tables on the one to whom it appears. To receive a phenomenon as it wishes to give itself is to yield control and suspend our own timetables and preconditions in order to be faithful to the conditions set by what gives itself."
Author: Adam Miller

2. "My heart, still full of her,traveled over her face, and found her there no more...I had thought to myself that a woman unknownhad adopted by chance that voice and those eyesand I let the chilly statue passlooking athe skies"
Author: Alfred De Musset

3. "Don't start. I saw Marcie climb inside your Jeep.""She needed a ride."I adopted a hands-on-hips pose. "What kind of ride?""Not that kind of ride," he said slowly."
Author: Becca Fitzpatrick

4. "Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains, that bind his body, do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affections of his heart… To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty… and to procure for their children an education calculated for their future situation in life; these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted.[For the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1789]"
Author: Benjamin Franklin

5. "A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried."
Author: Billy Collins

6. "The word Renaissance helps to impose a factitious unity on all the untidy and heterogeneous events which are going on in those centuries as in any others. Thus the "imaginary entity" creeps in. Renaissance becomes the name for some character or quality supposed to be immanent in all events, and collects very serious emotional overtones in the process. Then as every attempt to define this mysterious character or quality turns out to uncover all sorts of things that were there before the chosen period, a curious procedure is adopted. Instead of admitting that our definition has broken down, we adopt the desperate expedient that "the Renaissance" must have begun earlier than we had thought. (55)"
Author: C.S. Lewis

7. "Science has marched forward. But civilization's values remain rooted in philosophies, religious traditions, and ethical frameworks devised many centuries ago. Even our economic system, capitalism, is half a millennium old. The first stock exchange opened in 1602 in Amsterdam. By 1637, tulip mania had caused the first speculation bubble and crash. And not a lot has changed. Virtually every business stills uses the double-entry bookkeeping and accounting adopted in thirteenth –century Venice. So our daily dealings are still heavily influenced by ideas that were firmly set before anyone knew the world was round. In many ways, they reflect how we understood the world when we didn't understand the world at all."
Author: Carl Safina

8. "During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and 'experience' to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration?"
Author: Christopher Hitchens

9. "Bella Swan: Jasper? Are you sure there's nothing I can do to help? Jasper Hale: Well just your presence alone, your scent, will distract the newborns. Their hunting instinct will take over, and drive 'em crazy. Bella Swan: Good, I'm glad. [Jasper nods and begins to walk away] Bella Swan: . Bella Swan: Hey, [Jasper turns around] Bella Swan: how do you know so much about this? Jasper Hale: I didn't have quite the same upbringing as my adopted siblings. [Rolls up sleeves and shows Bella his arms, which have bite marks on them] Jasper Hale: . Bella Swan: [Hops off Jeep] Those bites are like mine. Jasper Hale: Battle scars [smiles] Jasper Hale: . All the training the Confederate Army gave me was useless against the newborns, but still, I never lost a fight. Bella Swan: Hey, this - this happened during the Civil War? Jasper Hale: I was the youngest major in the Texas Calvary, all without having seen any real battle. Bella Swan: Until...? Jasper Hale: Till I met a certain immortal... Maria"
Author: David Slade

10. "Because I used to go and watch him rehearsing for pantomime, and I have adopted some of those priciples, like try to be on time, learn your script, how he approach it, etc."
Author: Dennis Brown

11. "The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred."
Author: George Bancroft

12. "Let us leave political questions to be decided by the powers concerned," Sir Ralph would say, "as we have adopted a form of government which forbids us to discuss our interests ourselves. If a nation is responsible for the faults of its legislature, what one can you find that is guiltier than yours?"
Author: George Sand

13. "I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this ... I still love scribbling the word - WRITER - any time on a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don't write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer ... ('Adopted-orphan smile', I mean, that's not bad, come on.)"
Author: Gillian Flynn

14. "They (the French) have taken genius instead of reason for their guide, adopted experiment instead of experience, and wander in the dark because they prefer lightning to light."
Author: Gouverneur Morris

15. "The maintenance of secrecy in the matter, the confining all knowledge of it for a time to the place where the homicide occurred, the quarter-deck cabin; in these particulars lurked some resemblance to the policy adopted in those tragedies of the palace which have occurred more than once in the capital founded by Peter the Barbarian."
Author: Herman Melville

16. "When he adopted Western methods, it was in a purely utilitarian spirit. He gave no thought to the principles on which our civilisation is based. It was the finished product he was after and not the process."
Author: Homer B. Hulbert

17. "China has adopted and is implementing its national climate change program. This includes mandatory national targets for reducing energy intensity and discharge of major pollutants and increasing forest coverage and the share of renewable energy for the period of 2005 through 2010."
Author: Hu Jintao

18. "Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience."
Author: Hyman Rickover

19. "Voshak's hair, a pale blond braid, which he bleached, was his trademark. It made him memorable. That's how the slavers operated. They adopted costumes and personas, trying to make themselves larger-than-life and hoping to inspire fear. They counted on that fear. One could fight a man, but nobody could fight a nightmare."
Author: Ilona Andrews

20. "Seldon, Hari—It is customary to think of Hari Seldon only in connection with psychohistory, to see him only as Mathematics and as social change personified. There is no doubt that he himselfEncouraged this for at no time in his formal writings did he give any hint as to how he came to solve the various problems ofPsychohistory. His leaps of thought might have all been plucked FromAir, for all he tells us. Nor does he tell us of the blind alleysInto which he crept or the wrong turnings he may have made.…As for his private life, it is a blank. Concerning his parent and Siblings,We know a handful of factors, nor more. His only son,Raych Seldon, is known to have been adopted, but how thatCame about is not known. Concerning his wife, we onlyKnow that she existed. Clearly, Seldon wanted to a cipherExcept where psychohistory was concerned. It is as though he felt--Or wanted it to be felt—that he did not live, he merely psychohistorified."
Author: Isaac Asimov

21. "The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land."
Author: James Baldwin

22. "As specimens go, they always get excited about me. I'm a good one. A show-stopper. I'm the kind of kid they'll still enquire about ten years later. Fifty-one placements, drug problems, violence, dead adopted mum, no biological links, constant offending. Tick, tick, tick. I lure them in to being with. Cultivate my specimen face. They like that. Do-gooders are vomit-worthy. Damaged goods are dangerous. The ones that are in it cos the thought it would be a step up from an office job are tedious. The ones who've been in too long lose it. The ones who think they've got the Jesus touch are fucking insane. The I can save you brigade are particularly radioactive. They think if you just inhale some of their middle-classism, then you'll be saved."
Author: Jenni Fagan

23. "A son or daughter in any human family is either born to or adopted by the parents. By definition, a child can't be both. But with God we're both born of Him and adopted by Him."
Author: Jerry Bridges

24. "The wise and the good never form the majority of any large society and it seldom happens that their measures are uniformly adopted.... [All that wise and good men can do is] to persevere in doing their duty to their country and leave the consequences to him who made men only; neither elated by success, however great, nor discouraged by disappointments however frequent or mortifying."
Author: John Jay

25. "Adopted pets are the best pets you can have. Most adoptable pets come from loving homes that simply cannot care for them anymore. Or, they are strays who've been on their own without the loving care they deserve."
Author: Josh Duhamel

26. "I grew up on a farm in Oregon, an adopted child, with one sibling, and parents the age of all my peers' grandparents. We lived in isolation from the people around us, and it was always a struggle to cope with as a child. The heart can really expire under those conditions. I always felt like I was looking at the world from the outside."
Author: Larry Harvey

27. "My firm conviction is that if wide-spread Eugenic reforms are not adopted during the next hundred years or so, our Western Civilization is inevitably destined to such a slow and gradual decay as that which has been experienced in the past by every great ancient civilization. The size and the importance of the United States throws on you a special responsibility in your endeavours to safeguard the future of our race. Those who are attending your Congress will be aiding in this endeavour, and though you will gain no thanks from your own generation, posterity will, I believe, learn to realize the great dept it owes to all the workers in this field."
Author: Leonard Darwin

28. "That's it," Mabel said, getting up. She tossed her napkin on the table. "No. That is not right. I don't know what you just said, but whatever it was, I'm pretty certain it was pure hokum. I don't want to dance. I don't want to hear about your plans for a summer house. I am not your sister. And if I were your sister, I'd have to tell people you'd been adopted as an act of charity. Please, don't get up."
Author: Libba Bray

29. "People in business generally have a responsibility to the community. They have to put back into the community from which they take. I think I've adopted that all through my life. Caring and sharing are two major fundamentals of life."
Author: Lindsay Fox

30. "But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part."
Author: Lionel Shriver

31. "Common man does not speculate about the great problems. With regard to them he relies upon other people's authority, he behaves as "every decent fellow must behave,'' he is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses to adopt traditional patterns or patterns adopted by other people because he is convinced that this procedure is best fitted to achieve his own welfare. And he is ready to change his ideology and consequently his mode of action whenever he becomes convinced that this would better serve his own interests."
Author: Ludwig Von Mises

32. "Their arrogance protected them against any liking for their fellow-man, against the slightest interest in the strangers sitting all about them, amidst whom M. de Stermaria adopted the manner one has in the buffet-car of a train, grim, hurried, stand-offish, brusque, fastidious and spiteful, surrounded by other passengers whom one has never seen before, whom one will never see again and towards whom the only conceivable way of behaving is to make sure that they keep away from one's cold chicken and stay out of one's chosen corner-seat."
Author: Marcel Proust

33. "The rest of dinner was an ordeal. When Adam looked at Signora Docci, he saw Professor Leonard; when he looked at Antonella, he saw himself kissing her in the garden; and when he looked at Harry, he found himself wondering if one of them had been adopted."
Author: Mark Mills

34. "I am an ambassador," Akretenesh warned me, anger bringing his confidence back. "You cannot shoot.""I don't mean to," I reassured him, still smiling. I adopted his soothing tones. "Indeed, you are the only man I won't shoot. But if I aimed at anyone else, it might give others a dangerously mistaken sense of their own safety." I raised my voice a trifle, though it wasn't really necessary. "We will have another vote, Xorcheus."They elected me Sounis. It was unanimous."
Author: Megan Whalen Turner

35. "In order to slip from beneath the crushing weight of future thoughts, I adopted a technique of focusing solely on the moment I was living. In itself, removed from the time line that stretched forward and backward from the present, no single moment was that bad."
Author: Michael Benanav

36. "The Democrats in the Senate adopted a resolution, an amendment, saying that there should be no Guantanamo detainees brought into this country. So, more and more, we're finding the American people on one side, the ACLU and the troglodytes from the New York Times on the other, where they belong."
Author: Peter King

37. "All I wanted to do was please my adopted family."
Author: Reese Hoffa

38. "Al Gore adopted three utterly different personas in three national presidential debates."
Author: Rich Lowry

39. "…the Genesis story is just one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants."
Author: Richard Dawkins

40. "Now I see some family resemblance. I was starting to wonder if Jill was adopted, but you two kind of look like each other.""So does our mailman back in North Dakota," said Adrian."
Author: Richelle Mead

41. "Micah showed up shortly thereafter and was happy to meet our other "brother." He shook Adrian's hand and smiled. "Now I see some family resemblance. I was starting to wonder if Jill was adopted, but you two kind of look like each other.""So does our mailman back in North Dakota," said Adrian."South," I corrected. Fortunately, Micah didn't seem to think there was anything weird about the slip."Right," said Adrian. He studied Micah thoughtfully. "There's something familiar about you. Have we met?"Micah shook his head. "I've never been to South Dakota."I was pretty sure I heard Adrian murmur, "That makes two of us."
Author: Richelle Mead

42. "When you're adopted, no matter what, you've got issues with unconditional love. And you find out you're the product of the worst situation for a young girl to be in and start her life, and I'm so grateful that my birth mom made the decision she made. She came from a rough situation."
Author: Rodney Atkins

43. "They will grow up knowing that they should be only proud about being adopted. I will consider it a parental failure if our daughters ever try to use it as some kind of excuse."
Author: Scott Simon

44. "It is a celebration of the fact that we were adopted for a purpose and that adoption is an experience that has the potential of teaching us some of life's richest and deepest lessons."
Author: Sherrie Eldridge

45. "A 'woman on the loose' is a woman who leaves the woods where she has been growing strong all these years. She swoops out of trees, ringing her bell. She is saying, I am here now. And I am not going away. The motto that the women on the loose adopted is: 'To improvise, surprise, and come uninvited."
Author: Sue Monk Kidd

46. "Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. ~Tom Wolfe"
Author: Tom Wolfe

47. "In editing a volume of Washington's private letters for the Long Island Historical Society, I have been much impressed by indications that this great historic personality represented the Liberal religious tendency of his time. That tendency was to respect religious organizations as part of the social order, which required some minister to visit the sick, bury the dead, and perform marriages. It was considered in nowise inconsistent with disbelief of the clergyman's doctrines to contribute to his support, or even to be a vestryman in his church.In his many letters to his adopted nephew and younger relatives, he admonishes them about their manners and morals, but in no case have I been able to discover any suggestion that they should read the Bible, keep the Sabbath, go to church, or any warning against Infidelity.Washington had in his library the writings of Paine, Priestley, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and other heretical works.[The Religion of Washington]"
Author: Washington

48. "I'm a farm boy from Connecticut, and I adopted urban life."
Author: William Atherton

49. "Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted."
Author: William Cobbett

50. "In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted."
Author: William Ralph Inge

Adopted Quotes Pictures