Insufficient Quotes

1. "He had a thwarting day. The heath and moor were crisscrossed with little tracks, dusty and twisting between the heather and bracken and the little juniper trees with their clinging roots. There was not one way but many, all athwart each other like the cracks on a crazy jug, and he followed first one and then the other, choosing the straightest and stoniest and finding himself always under the hot-sun at another crossing just like the one he had just left. After a time he decided to got with the sun behind him always -- at least this led to consistency of proceeding -- though it must be told that when he decided this he had only the haziest idea, dear readers, of where the sun had been at the beginning of the venture. So it often is in this life. We become consistent and orderly too late, on insufficient grounds, and perhaps in the wrong direction. -- Possession"
Author: A.S. Byatt

2. "Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on the basis of insufficient knowledge, because the knowledge supplied seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible.("The Wendigo")"
Author: Algernon Blackwood

3. "It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex."
Author: Alison Bechdel

4. "The mind, the heart, the womb. Those three are all threaded in a sacred dance. A woman's pelvis is like an hourglass with the capacity to tell time. It both creates and shelters life. When a mother's diet in insufficient, nutrients are pulled from her own teeth and bone. Women are built to be selfless."
Author: Alyson Richman

5. "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Author: Barry Gehm

6. "Starvation, literal starvation, was doing its deadly work. So depleted and poisoned was the blood of many of Lee's men from insufficient and unsound food that a slight wound which would probably not have been reported at the beginning of the war would often cause blood poison, gangrene, and death," one Confederate general will later write."
Author: Bill O'Reilly

7. "This shame has nothing to do with He or She. It's the being mortal - how shall I say it? ... insufficient."
Author: C.S. Lewis

8. "All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based – or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug – it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault."
Author: Carl Sagan

9. "The Master said, "I have not seen a person who loved virtue, or onewho hated what was not virtuous. He who loved virtue, would esteemnothing above it. He who hated what is not virtuous, would practicevirtue in such a way that he would not allow anything that is notvirtuous to approach his person."Is any one able for one day to apply his strength to virtue? I havenot seen the case in which his strength would be insufficient."Should there possibly be any such case, I have not seen it."
Author: Confucius

10. "...I should always find, the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on one hand, or by hard labor, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life..."
Author: Daniel Defoe

11. "Some argued that the youth of today were poorly educated and insufficiently industrious, but one of them had sought to validate his generation by spending considerable time and effort chiseling an obscene word in the concrete picnic table, and he had spelled it correctly."
Author: Dean Koontz

12. "Grades are a problem. On the most general level, they're an explicit acknowledgment that what you're doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. Nobody ever gave you a grade for learning how to play, how to ride a bicycle, or how to kiss. One of the best ways to destroy love for any of these activities would be through the use of grades, and the coercion and judgment they represent. Grades are a cudgel to bludgeon the unwilling into doing what they don't want to do, an important instrument in inculcating children into a lifelong subservience to whatever authority happens to be thrust over them."
Author: Derrick Jensen

13. "Well, you might not think it to look at me," Dortmunder told him, "but I got a family crest." "Have you?" "Yeah. And it's got a motto on it." "I am anxious to hear this motto." "Quid lucrum istic mihi est." Mr. Hemlow squinted; the red-headed hawk in flight. "I'm afraid my Latin is insufficient for that." "What's in it for me," Dortmunder translated."
Author: Donald E. Westlake

14. "In Acts 14:1, we are told, "At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed." This is what should be sought in Christian schools, not just teaching, but effective teaching. Christian content alone is insufficient. It must be presented in a certain way, and that way cannot be reduced to technique. Nevertheless, God has graciously made it possible to bring people the truth by how the truth is presented."
Author: Douglas Wilson

15. "I, being born a woman and distressedBy all the needs and notions of my kind,Am urged by your propinquity to findYour person fair, and feel a certain zestTo bear your body's weight upon my breast;So subtly is the fume of life designed,To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,And leave me once again undone, possessed.Think not for this, however, the poor treasonOf my stout blood against my staggering brain,I shall remember you with love, or seasonMy scorn with pity, - let me make it plain:I find this frenzy insufficient reasonFor conversation when we meet again."
Author: Edna St. Vincent Millay

16. "With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right the music of my nature."
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

17. "When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable."
Author: Émile Durkheim

18. "They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor. (Eric Hoffer 1902-1983)"
Author: Eric Hoffer

19. "Furthermore, the study of the present surroundings is insufficient: the history of the people, the influence of the regions through which it has passed on its migrations, and the people with whom it came into contact, must be considered."
Author: Franz Boas

20. "Avoidance of lunacy is an insufficient agenda."-George Will on Ronald Reagan, 3-6-1987"
Author: George F. Will

21. "There's an exclamation mark on this keyboard which shares tab-space with the number one. Shift+1=! It's insufficient. Radically inadequate as the denotation of my surprise. Even in bold. Even in underlined bold italic. I need something else, some punctuation mark not yet invented."
Author: Glen Duncan

22. "As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie. The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If a am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself."
Author: Henry Miller

23. "I have found God, but he is insufficient."
Author: Henry Miller

24. "In Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don't need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days' time it will be the very thing he needs. Sometimes he stops, half-glances over his shoulder. He feels someone has come into the room behind him; but when he allows himself to look, there is nothing to see. It is my destiny, he feels, forming in the shadows of the room. It is the guardian angel I had, long ago when I was a child. It is Camille Desmoulins, looking over my shoulder, laughing at my grammar. He pauses for a moment. He thinks, there are no living ghosts. He takes hold of himself. Bends his head over his task. His pen scratches. His strange letterforms incise the paper. His handwriting is minute. He gets a lot of words to the page."
Author: Hilary Mantel

25. "By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased."
Author: Jane Austen

26. "Words were insufficient for the elevation of his [Mr Collins'] feelings; and he was obliged to walk about the room, while Elizabeth tried to unite civility and truth in a few short sentences."
Author: Jane Austen

27. "The Platform for Action gives due emphasis to the fact that women globally have continued to have insufficient access to the resources necessary to achieve economic independence."
Author: Jenny Shipley

28. "So there are established sayings: Guidance to enlightenment seems nonsensical. Guidance to progress seems backwards. Guidance to equality seems to classify. Higher efficacy seems at a loss. Great purity seems like shame. Broad effectiveness seems insufficient. Constructive effectiveness seems casual. Basic reality seems changeable. A great expanse has no shores. A large container takes a long time to make. Important news is rarely heard."
Author: Lao Tzu

29. "The overall intent is to make everyone sufficiently happy (or in some cases, insufficiently unhappy)."
Author: Larry Wall

30. "You have heard of the new chemical nomenclature endeavored to be introduced by Lavoisier, Fourcroy, &c. Other chemists of this country, of equal note, reject it, and prove in my opinion that it is premature, insufficient and false. These latter are joined by the British chemists; and upon the whole, I think the new nomenclature will be rejected, after doing more harm than good. There are some good publications in it, which must be translated into the ordinary chemical language before they will be useful."
Author: Lavoisier

31. "But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?"
Author: Lois McMaster Bujold

32. "In so many things I loved I was sadly insufficiently gifted and driven. But writing I could plod along with -- and no one discouraged me. People were much kinder. I headed toward the kindness."
Author: Lorrie Moore

33. "The crash did not cause the Depression: that was part of a far broader malaise. What it did was expose the weaknesses that underpinned the confidence and optimism of the 1920s - poor distribution of income, a weak banking structure and insufficient regulations, the economy's dependence on new consumer goods, the over-extension of industry and the Government's blind belief that promoting business interests would make America uniformly prosperous."
Author: Lucy Moore

34. "Words are never insufficient to describe any situation. It is the talent to use the words which is the insufficient one!"
Author: Mehmet Murat Ildan

35. "…Boredom [is] a moral failing, the mark of a mind insufficiently stocked to occupy itself."
Author: Nancy Kress

36. "If there is a god maybe it rewards those who don't believe on the basis of insufficient evidence--and punishes those who do."
Author: Peter Boghossian

37. "Peter Blood judged her- as we are all prone to do- upon insufficient knowledge."
Author: Rafael Sabatini

38. "Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds."
Author: Rene Daumal

39. "The value for which P=0.05, or 1 in 20, is 1.96 or nearly 2; it is convenient to take this point as a limit in judging whether a deviation ought to be considered significant or not. Deviations exceeding twice the standard deviation are thus formally regarded as significant. Using this criterion we should be led to follow up a false indication only once in 22 trials, even if the statistics were the only guide available. Small effects will still escape notice if the data are insufficiently numerous to bring them out, but no lowering of the standard of significance would meet this difficulty."
Author: Ronald A. Fisher

40. "What in the blue star-blazes did you see in Jason?" he asked, still forcefully but with his frustration and jealousy under better control."For one thing, Djetth, he wasn't trying to kill me!"("Marsh", heroine of Insufficient Mating Material)"
Author: Rowena Cherry

41. "A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human happiness. And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it."
Author: Sam Harris

42. "What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives."
Author: Sam Harris

43. "Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You're always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out."
Author: Seth Godin

44. "There is insufficient support for the police and safety and law enforcement, in general, in the city council."
Author: Steve Chabot

45. "The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen."
Author: Steven Pinker

46. "What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that a life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny...the time of reading, the time defined by the author's language resonating in the self, is not the world's time, but the soul's. The energies that otherwise tend to stream outward through a thousand channels of distraction are marshaled by the cadences of the prose; they are brought into focus by the fact that it is an ulterior, and entirely new, world that the reader has entered. The free-floating self--the self we diffusely commune with while driving or walking or puttering in the kitchen--is enlisted in the work of bringing the narrative to life. In the process, we are able to shake off the habitual burden of insufficient meaning and flex our deeper natures."
Author: Sven Birkerts

47. "You can't judge a woman by her clothes, insufficient evidences!"
Author: Vikrant Parsai

48. "...Van tortured himself with thoughts of insufficient filial affection—a long story of unconcern, amused scorn, physical repulsion, and habitual dismissal. He looked around, making wild amends, willing her spirit to give him an unequivocal, and indeed all-deciding sign, of continued being behind the veil of time, beyond the flesh of space. But no response came, not a petal fell on his bench, not a gnat touched his hand."
Author: Vladimir Nabokov

49. "Love, is always insufficient, always a lie. Love, you are the clean shit of my soul. Stupid love, silly love."
Author: William Kennedy

50. "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
Author: William Kingdon Clifford

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