Accustomed Quotes

Alexis was now accustomed to his uncle's fatal disease as we are to all things that last around us; and because he had once made his nephew cry as the dead make us cry, the boy, even though his uncle was still alive, treated him like a dead man: he had begun to forget him. ~ Marcel Proust

In 1938, after Austria, our universe had become accustomed to inhumanity, to lawlessness, and brutality as never in centuries before. In a former day the occurrences in unhappy Vienna alone would have been sufficient to cause international proscription, but in 1938 the world conscience was silent or merely muttered surlily before it forgot and forgave. ~ Stefan Zweig

My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, for all the science and sport involved in it. ~ Vasily Smyslov

We are accustomed to repeating the cliché, and to believing, that 'our most precious resource is our children.' But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. The true scarcity we face is practicing adults, of people who know how marginal, how fragile, how finite their lives and their stories and their ambitions really are but who find value in this knowledge, even a sense of strange comfort, because they know their condition is universal, is shared. ~ Michael Chabon

It is somewhat difficult for the mind, which is accustomed to weighing the odds, to make a decision where probability is not, as it is in a coin toss, fifty-fifty, but where it is irrelevant. ~ Jake Yaniak

It is a difficult thing to, to lose, when one is so accustomed to winning. ~ Alexandra Bracken

We must also remember that in every little village-god and every little superstitious custom is that which we are accustomed to call our religious faith. But local customs are infinite and contradictory. Which are we to obey, and which not to obey? The Brāhmin of Southern India, for instance, would shrink in horror at the sight of another Brahmin eating meat; a Brahmin in the North thinks it a most glorious and holy thing to do - he kills goats by the hundred in sacrifice. If you put forward your custom, they are equally ready with theirs. Various are the customs all over India, but they are local. The greatest mistake made is that ignorant people always think that this local custom is the essence of our religion. ~ Swami Vivekananda

The things you're accustomed to are dangerous. In applications intended for use within an organization, a design based on API calls works well and is easy to develop. The API call metaphor assumes away the network boundary and lets a client invoke a method on a remote computer just like it would call the API of a local code library. ~ Leonard Richardson

Part of our problem is this: we are accustomed only to doing things for God that are not impossible. ~ Bill Johnson

This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought - our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography - breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a 'certain Chinese encyclopaedia' in which it is written that 'animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies'. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. ~ Michel Foucault

One cannot always know what children are thinking. Children are hard to understand, especially when careful training has accustomed them to obedience, and experience has made them cautious in their conversation with their teachers. Will you not draw from this the fine maxim that one should not scold children too much, but should make them trustful, so that they will not conceal their stupidities from us? ~ Catherine The Great

Accustomed to the calm aspects of things, she turned, instead, toward the more tumultuous. She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it grew up here and there among ruins. She needed to derive from things a sort of personal gain; and she rejected as useless everything that did not contribute to the immediate gratification of her heart, - being by temperament more sentimental than artistic, in search of emotions and not landscapes. ~ Gustave Flaubert

In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. That is a rather startling thing to say, but it is our conclusion ... And we believe that we are entering a technological age in which we will be able to interact with the richness of living information
not merely in the passive way that we have become accustomed to using books and libraries, but as active participants in an ongoing process, bringing something to it through our interaction with it, and not simply receiving something from it by our connection to it. ~ J. C. R. Licklider

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are accustomed to the idea that the truth of things may be neither pleasant nor comforting; we are less accustomed to the idea that the truth may be unfruitful. ~ Raymond Tallis

You ask a question, I said, to which a reply can only be given in a parable. Yes, Socrates; and that is a way of speaking to which you are not at all accustomed, I suppose. ~ Plato

Be the first to seek to bring good, do not grow accustomed to evil, but defeat it. ~ Pope Francis

Through our entire history we have become accustomed to pushing [animals] around in ways dictated by our own wants and needs without much regard for theirs. ~ Stanley Schmidt

Custom is second nature. Be accustomed to a bald head, sufficiently accustomed, and hair on it would seem monstrous. ~ Isaac Asimov

Fatigued by her journey, the Countess soon after supper proposed retiring to rest; a proposal extremely agreeable to Madeline, whose spirits still felt agitated. The Countess conducted her to her chamber, which was near her own, and at the end of a long gallery that overlooked the hall; here they parted; but a servant remained, who offered to assist Madeline in undressing; an offer which she, never accustomed to such attendance, refused; and, feeling a restraint in her presence, dismissed her; yet scarcely had she done so, ere she felt an uneasy sensation, something like fear, stealing over her mind as she looked round her spacious and gloomy apartment; nor could she prevent herself from starting as the tapestry, which represented a number of grotesque and frightful figures, agitated by the wind that whistled through the crevices, every now and then swelled from the walls. She sat down near the door, wishing herself again in her own little chamber, and attentively listening for a passing step that she might desire the servant she had dismissed to be recalled; but all was profoundly still, and continued so; and at length she recollected herself, blushed for the weakness she had betrayed; and, recommending herself to the protection of heaven, retired to bed, where she soon forgot her cares and fears. She awoke in the morning with renovated spirits; and, impatient to gratify her curiosity by examining the contents of the chamber, instantly rose: the furniture was rich but old-fa ~ Regina Maria Roche

But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to that he decided to go. ~ Leo Tolstoy

When You're Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression ~ Unknown

We often forget what an honor it is that God would offer relationship. We can get so accustomed to people begging us to follow God that we forget what a miracle it is that we are invited. ~ Francis Chan

People are so accustomed now to social networking. Now everybody has custom-made news for him or her. So everybody is a content maker and a content reactor. ~ Lucien Bourjeily

We are first worshipers. We should be able to go into any atmosphere where there is worship, and throw off whatever sound or style we are accustomed to and worship the Creator of all things. We deny ourselves-- we are not the center... He is. Is He not worthy? ~ James Vincent

It was still quite motionless and he felt it with his fingers; it was dead. Accustomed, no doubt, to an uneventful existence, to a humble life spent beneath its poor carapace, it had not been able to bear the dazzling splendor thrust upon it, the glittering cope in which it had been garbed, the gems with which its back had been encrusted, like a ciborium. ~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

You are the witness of the three bodies: the gross, the subtle, and the causal, and of the three times: past, present and future, and also this void. In the story of the tenth man, when each of them counted and thought they were only nine, each one forgetting to count himself, there is a stage when they think one is missing and do not know who it is; and that corresponds to the void. We are so accustomed to the notion that all that we see around us is permanent and that we are this body, that when all this ceases to exist we imagine and fear that we also have ceased to exist. ~ Ramana Maharshi

Burke had little notion of the conditions in which the monarchy he mourned had left us to face our new masters.
The administration of the Ancien Régime had deprived the French in advance of both the ability and the desire to help one another. When the Revolution came, one would have searched in vain in most of France for ten men accustomed to acting together in a disciplined way and defending themselves. The central government alone was supposed to
take charge of defending them all, so that when the royal administration lost control of that central government to a sovereign and unaccountable assembly, and this once complacent body turned terrifying, nothing could stop it or even slow it for a moment. The same cause that had brought the monarchy down so easily made everything possible after its fall. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Though everyone had been uniformly gracious with me throughout our visit, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being vetted in some way and that I'd already come up short. Peter was the one they wanted; I was merely the collateral - the boyfriend, the grad-school widow. I was accustomed to monopolizing Peter's affection, but for the first time in our relationship, I felt like I'd arrived at a meeting only to find all the seats at the table filled. ~ Dan Lopez

I'm the girl that waits for the director to say, 'I like that,' or 'Can you boost it up?,' or 'Can you pull it down?' I'm that kind of actor. I started in theater, so that's the feedback that I'm accustomed to. It's the feedback that I really thrive off of. ~ Jill Scott

It's a very difficult thing for people to accept, seeing women act out anger on the screen. We're more accustomed to seeing men expressing rage and women crying. ~ Rebecca De Mornay

Gradually, however, i grew accustomed to this too. I grew accustomed to everything, that is, i didn't actually grow accustomed but somehow agreed of my own free will to grin and bear it. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page - rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and "guesses" at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words - just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us to simply improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we will still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its "inventors." All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are - accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

For some, healing is too much to bear, and they hand it back, exchanging it for the fear they are accustomed to. ~ Deepak Chopra

People with victim mentality get accustomed to life with an assistance of someone's mind, waiting for someone to make decisions for him ~ Sunday Adelaja

The hardiest sons of the war, the men who lead the storm-troop, and manipulate the tank, the aeroplane, and the submarine, are preeminent in technical accomplishment; and it is these picked examples of dare-devil courage that represent the modern state i battle. These men of first-rate qualities with real blood in their veins, courageous, intelligent, accustomed to serve the machine, and yet its superior at the same time, are the men, too, who show up best in the trench and among the shell-holes. ~ Ernst Junger

If my tone is mocking, the tone of someone accustomed to helplessness, this is natural: the poet is a condemned man for whom the State will not even buy breakfast and as someone said, If you're going to hang me, you mustn't expect to be able to intimidate me into sparing your feelings during the execution. ~ Randall Jarrell

She had grown so accustomed to this exterior that she didn't always remember what truly lay underneath. Nor did she particularly want to. Why fester in disillusion, bewilderment, and anger when she could float above and pretend to be this sunny, charming girl instead? ~ Sherry Thomas

In a world where we are accustomed to rivalries over possession, authority, and borders, and people clashing over the issue, "Ours," or "Mine, not yours," it is rather strange to find two people debating whose the kingdom is not, and asserting: "Yours, not mine. ~ R.K. Narayan

The soul, when accustomed to superfluous things, acquires a strong habit of desiring things which are neither necessary for the preservation of the individual nor for that of the species. This desire is without limit, whilst those which are necessary are few in number and restricted within certain limits; but what is superfluous is without end ... ~ Maimonides

Ewan was maladroit when it came to anything practical or mechanical. Still, he learned how to crank the car to start it, then hustle back to the driver's seat very quickly to keep the motor from dying. His family grew accustomed to lurches when he tried to get the car moving forward without killing the motor. Like many other drivers at that time, he had trouble remembering that the car was not a horse, and if he needed to stop quickly, his first impulse was always to yank backwards on the steering wheel, as if he were holding the horse's reins, and yell "Whoa! Whoa!" Some found this endearing, others found it funny, but his young sons found it very embarrassing. ~ Mary Henley Rubio

She poured the water, arranged some bread near enough the embers to scorch but not catch fire, and looked up at Little John. She was so accustomed to his step, to his bulk, that it took a moment to notice his face; and when she did ... It was, she thought, rather like the moment it took to realize one had cut one's finger as one stared dumbly at the first drop of blood on the knife-blade. You know it is going to hurt quite a lot in a minute. ~ Robin McKinley

Poverty is a mindset: It creates that sense of scarcity. You then become accustomed to it such that your life is hinged on protecting the scarce resources that you have. However, you can only create a mindset of abundance by investing what you have and not savings. Savings only becomes significant if it's done with a motive to invest. ~ Oscar Bimpong

In the moment all is dear to me, dear that in this logic there is no redemption, the city itself being the highest form of madness and each and every part, organic or inorganic, an expression of this same madness. I feel absurdly and humbly great, not as megalomaniac, but as human spore, as the dead sponge of life swollen to saturation. I no longer look into the eyes of the woman I hold in my arms but I swim through, head and arms and legs, and I see that behind the sockets of the eyes there is a region unexplored, the world of futurity, and here there is no logic whatever, just the still germination of events unbroken by night and day, by yesterday and tomorrow. The eye, accustomed to concentration on points in space, now concentrates on points in time; the eye sees forward and backward at will. The eye which was the I of the self no longer exists; this selfless eye neither reveals nor illuminates. It travels along the line of the horizon, a ceaseless, uninformed voyager. Trying to retain the lost body I grew in logic as the city, a point digit in the anatomy of perfection. I grew beyond my own death, spiritually bright and hard. I was divided into endless yesterdays, endless tomorrows, resting only on the cusp of the event, a wall with many windows, but the house gone. I must shatter the walls and windows, the last shell of the lost body, if I am to rejoin the present. That is why I no longer look into the eyes or through the eyes, but by the legerdemain of will swim throug ~ Henry Miller

To those that are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner. ~ Wassily Kandinsky

It seems to me, that if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or were accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Marius set out at his accustomed hour for the Luxembourg. He met Courfeyrac on the way and pretended not to see him. Courfeyrac said later to his friends: 'I've just seen Marius's new hat and suit with Marius inside them. I suppose he was going to sit for an examination. He looked thoroughly silly. ~ Victor Hugo

For a decade, I was a stay-at-home mom. I sent my husband to his law office, sat on PTA boards and baked cookies - great cookies. All of a sudden, I had no husband, no job, few prospects, and two small children who had grown accustomed to eating. ~ Gayle Lynds

Moreover, people have become accustomed to reading to escape as opposed to reading to think. ~ Leigh M. Lane

Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: "The older one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe." Sorel ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

From his youth on , he had been accustomed to people's passing him and taking no notice of him whatever , not out contempt -as hehad once believed - But because they were quite unaware of his existence. There was no space surrounding him, no waves broke from him into the atmosphere, as with other people; he had no shadow, so to speak, to cast across another's face. Only if he ran right into someone in a crowd or in a street-corner collision would there be a brief moment of discernment; and th person en countered would bounce off and stare at him for a few seconds as if gazing at a creature that ought not even exist, a creature that, although undeniably there, in some way or other was not present- and would take to his heels and have forgotten him, Grenouille, a moment later ....... ~ Patrick Suskind

The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief. ~ Aristotle.

She set a tankard of grog before him, the moment before he became aware of his own thirst. Gray reached for it, shaking his head. A long swallow of watered-down rum added fuel to his resentment. He'd allowed himself to become so transparent to her, while she remained an enigma to him. Her talents fit no logical pattern-sketching, painting, deceit, seduction, thievery...now the ability to pound biscuit and salted meat into a fair-tasting chowder? It was enough to make him abandon all hope of ever comprehending her.
Perhaps he never would. But it was another thought that had him hurrying through his food, desperate to put some distance between them. He might never understand her, Gray realized, but he could get dangerously accustomed to this other feeling.
Being understood. ~ Tessa Dare

As it was a time of war between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and as he saw the Catholics exterminate the Huguenots and the Huguenots exterminate the Catholics--all in the name of religion--he adopted a mixed belief which permitted him to be sometimes Catholic, sometimes a Huguenot. Now, he was accustomed to walk with his fowling piece on his shoulder, behind the hedges which border the roads, and when he saw a Catholic coming alone, the Protestant religion immediately prevailed in his mind. He lowered his gun in the direction of the traveler; then, when he was within ten paces of him, he commenced a conversation which almost always ended by the traveler's abandoning his purse to save his life. It goes without saying that when he saw a Huguenot coming, he felt himself filled with such ardent Catholic zeal that he could not understand how, a quarter of an hour before, he had been able to have any doubts upon the superiority of our holy religion. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Some who support [more] coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled - those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control. ~ Alfie Kohn

When you have a country that's been accustomed to government spending at a certain level, it is really hard to ratchet it back. ~ Mike Lee

Water sluices away soap and grime, even some of the shame comes with it. If she were to scrub for a thousand years she would not be clean, but she is too tired to care and she has grown accustomed to scars she cannot scour away. The sweat, the alcohol, the humid salt of semen and degradation, these she can cleanse. It is enough. She is too tired to scrub harder. Too hot and too tired, always.
At the end of her rinsing, she is happy to find a little water left in the bucket. She dips one ladleful and drinks it, gulping. And then in a wasteful, unrestrained gesture, she upends the bucket over her head in one glorious cathartic rush. In that moment, between the touch of the water, and the splash as it pools around her toes, she is clean. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

No player can become accustomed to New York's climate in August in a few days. The playing conditions, the courts in New York and France are very different. ~ Helen Wills Moody

It is much more difficult to recede from a scale of expenditure once adopted than it is to extend the accustomed scale in response to an accession of wealth. ~ Thorstein Veblen

We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste, - sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar…. ~ Henry David Thoreau

We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us. ~ Graham Greene

We wear a lot of labels in our lives, and it's so very easy to be defined by them. We have grown somehow accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a size eight or a size fourteen, as a capricorn or a taurus, as single or in love. ~ Ally Carter

Become accustomed to seeing life as something we can pause in order to document it, get another thread running in it, or hook it up to another feed. We've seen that in all of this activity, we no longer experience interruptions as disruptions. We experience them as connection. We seek them out, and when they're not there, we create them. Interruptions enable us to avoid difficult feelings and awkward moments. They become a convenience. And over time we have trained our brains to crave them. Of course, all of this makes it hard to settle down into conversation. ~ Sherry Turkle

We become so accustomed to you,
we no longer look up
when your shadow falls over the book we are reading
and makes it glow. For all things
sing you: at times
we just hear them more clearly.

Often when I imagine you
your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer
and I am dark, I am forest. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I frowned, staring into the eerie blackness along Route 33 truckers always complained about. It is odd how we rarely encounter true darkness. Somewhere, there is always light; a house, a town, headlights. Not here. Just total and complete darkness. I had been on the night run for months, long enough to get accustomed to total darkness if not entirely comfortable with it. What concerned me was the silence. I'd often had to pull over and take a pee along that godforsaken beltway. There were crickets rubbing their legs together in the cotton and wheat, grasshoppers jumping through the corn stalks, and June bugs flittering above the fields. Occasionally while relieving myself I'd even hear a lone armadillo burrowing. Tonight, however, I heard nothing. Less than nothing. Always there existed a strangeness here the truckers talked about, but tonight something had inexplicably hushed the sounds of night and made it stranger. The silence itself was dead; the kind of silence you get high up in the mountains when it snows, hushing the entire world beneath a white blanket. The blanket along Damnation Road was black, and it felt…unnatural." - NIGHT RUN - Bobby Underwood ~ Bobby Underwood

A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. ~ Leo Tolstoy

They had always been accustomed to eat a great deal of smoked sausage, and how could they know that what they bought in America was not the same - that its color was made by chemicals, and its smoky flavor by more chemicals, and that it was full of "potato flour" besides? Potato flour is the waste of potato after the starch and alcohol have been extracted; it has no more food value than so much wood, and as its use as a food adulterant is a penal offense in Europe, thousands of tons of it are shipped to America every year. It was amazing what quantities of food such as this were needed every day, by eleven hungry persons. A ~ Upton Sinclair

She liked Christian names, she liked those who used them as a sign of easy inclusion and intimacy, but to her the use of a name remained a proclamation, an action, an event. She was not accustomed to names. ~ Margaret Drabble

Another thing the Democrats have grown accustomed to is their candidate is untouchable. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Most of our so-called thinking processes are devoted to finding excuses for going on believing as we already do. ~ Herbert M. Shelton

I'm accustomed to thinking of literature as a search for knowledge; in order to move onto existential terrain I need to consider it in relation to anthropology, ethnology, and mythology. ~ Italo Calvino

When someone is cruel, harsh, mean, to not take their words personally is one thing, but to hear the silent cry within those words is another. This sort of perspective can not only liberate us from crippling self-doubt in the face of criticism, it can also liberate us from automatically becoming blind participants in the interaction patterns that the cruel person has become accustomed to - a favour we do for the other person as much as for ourselves. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a 'body of knowledge,' but rather as a system of hypotheses; that is to say, as a system of guesses or anticipations which in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are 'true' or 'more or less certain' or even 'probable.' ~ Karl Popper

Today's enterprise IT architecture is about integrating systems to meet business needs. Consequently, IT architects can't - and don't - live in a vacuum. To address that reality, Catalyst Conference 2006 will delve into strategic infrastructure technologies with the depth to which our clients have grown accustomed. With the larger number of Cross-Cutting Concerns sessions, we'll also clearly illustrate how these technologies relate to each other, and how roles, geographies, and business processes intersect within an enterprise. ~ Jamie Lewis

I was accustomed to walking alone. I'd find other people who agreed with me, but they also said, "I wouldn't dare mention it." I was the only one who would say, "We've got to stand." And they said, "Well, yes. And after you make it safe, then I'll stand, too. But you have to make it safe." ~ Harry Hay

So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. And whatever you may do or provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately rally to them, ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

[The myth of the absolutizing of ignorance] implies the existence of someone who decrees the ignorance of someone else. The one who is doing the decreeing defines himself and the class to which he belongs as those who know or were born to know; he thereby defines others as alien entities. The words of his own class come to be the "true" words, which he imposes or attempts to impose on the others: the oppressed, whose words have been stolen from them. Those who steal the words of others develop a deep doubt in the abilities of the others and consider them incompetent. Each time they say their word without hearing the word of those whom they have forbidden to speak, they grow more accustomed to power and acquire a taste for guiding, ordering, and commanding. They can no longer live without having someone to give orders to. Under these circumstances, dialogue is impossible. ~ Paulo Freire

she'd grown accustomed to the idea that she was sleeping with a galactic version of Indiana Jones. All he's missing is a cool hat and perhaps a few more brain cells than his onboard medical scanner realizes. ~ Eve Langlais

Conservatism is a hard choice for a society that has become accustomed to big government and big entitlements promoted by liberals. ~ Jesse Helms

I can think of no more dangerous a position than to learn to tolerate evil in order to become accustomed to reality. ~ Sarah Mally

When I say it's hard to believe in Jesus, I mean it's hard to believe in Jesus's ideas - in his way of saving the world. For Christians it's not hard to believe in Jesus as the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity - all the Christological stuff the church hammered out in the first five centuries. That's not hard for us. What's hard is to believe in Jesus as a political theologian. It's hard because his ideas for running the world are so radically different from anything we are accustomed to. ~ Brian Zahnd

Stop it," came Eustace's voice, squeaky with fright and bad temper. "It's some silly trick you two are playing. Stop it. I'll tell Alberta--Ow!"
The other two were much more accustomed to adventures, but, just exactly as Eustace Clarence said "Ow," they both said "Ow" too. The reason was that a great cold, salt splash had broken right out of the frame and they were breathless from the smack of it, besides being wet through.
"I'll smash the rotten thing," cried Eustace; and then several things happened at the same time. Eustace rushed toward the picture. Edmund, who knew something about magic, sprang after him, warning him to look out and not to be a fool. Lucy grabbed at him from the other side and was dragged forward. And by this time either they had grown much smaller or the picture had grown bigger. Eustace jumped to try to pull it off the wall and found himself standing on the frame; in front of him was not glass but real sea, and wind and waves rushing up to the frame as they might to a rock. He lost his head and clutched at the other two who had jumped up beside him. There was a second of struggling and shouting, and just as they thought they had got their balance a great blue roller surged up round them, swept them off their feet, and drew them down into the sea. Eustace's despairing cry suddenly ended as the water got into his mouth.
Lucy thanked her stars that she had worked hard at her swimming last summer term. It is true that she would have got on m ~ C.S. Lewis

The citizens of Athens, like those of other cities in other ages and continents, showed a certain hostility to those who attempted to introduce a higher level of culture than that to which they were accustomed. ~ Bertrand Russell

We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there - there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were - No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion ~ Joseph Conrad

Optimism, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with disproof - an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious. ~ Ambrose Bierce

It seems that Russia today - dominated by, and accustomed to, autocracy and empire, and lacking strong civic institutions especially after the shattering of its society by the Bolshevik Terror - is destined to be ruled by self-promoting cliques for some time yet. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

I passed people shopping or walking their dogs, and young people, university students maybe, busy about their lives, so that the streets I walked seems vibrant to me, more vibrant than my own. But then almost everywhere I went I imagined a place more accommodating of the life I wanted, as if happiness were a matter of streets or parks, as maybe to a point it is; and with R. away for so long I was accustomed to thinking of my real life existing in some distant place or future time, projecting forward in a way that I was afraid might keep me from living fully where I was. ~ Garth Greenwell

Books for the general reader are always ill-smelling books, the odour of paltry people clings to them. Where the populace eat and drink, and even where they reverence, it is accustomed to stink. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Why are habits so hard to break? Because the cells on our insides get accustomed to what we are doing on the outside. ~ Charles F. Glassman

The wise man who has become accustomed to necessities knows better how to share with others than how to take from them, so great a treasure of self-sufficiency has he found. ~ Epicurus

While many people like the idea of exercising unconditional love, most eventually find it too draining and impossible to sustain, often because the attempt to practice it is misunderstood, discouraged, brought under attack, or made a target of willful abuse. As sad as it may be to admit, in our modern world people are far more accustomed to hearing news of war, genocide, murder, disasters, famine, and disease than they are to hearing anything about acts of love or grace. ~ Aberjhani

We need changes from the duties and the cares of our accustomed everyday life. They are necessary for healthy, normal living. We need occasionally to be away from our friends, our relatives, from the members of our immediate households. Such changes are good for us; they are good for them. We appreciate them better, they us, when we are away from them for a period, or they us. ~ Ralph Waldo Trine

When Graciela was finally ready for bed, Jenny waited while the kid knelt and basically offered up the same prayer as she did every night. Jenny made a face during the blessing of the cousins, and she spoke the last words in unison with Graciela. "And strike Jenny dead, amen." We don't need to suggest ways and means, all right? We can leave the details of my demise to God. Now, go to sleep."
She sighed when Graciela lifted her cheek for a kiss. She didn't think she would ever get accustomed to death wishes being followed by a good-night kiss. ~ Maggie Osborne

As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder. ~ Leonard Cohen

The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Everything in life is unusual until you get accustomed to it -The Scarecrow - The Marvellous Land Of Oz by L. Frank Baum pg 103 chapter 13 ~ L. Frank Baum

It is important in building up Zion and preparing for Paradise to keep an eye on Babylon, because the saints have always had a habit of subsiding into the ways of Babylon... Brigham Young said exactly the same thing in language just as strong when the Saints got to the Valley: "Have we not brought Babylon with us? Are we not promoting Babylon here in our midst? Are we not fostering the spirit of Babylon that is now abroad on the face of the whole earth? I ask myself this question, and I answer, Yes, yes... we have too much of Babylon in our midst." It is hard for us to envisage the concept of Zion, let alone Paradise, when we have been so long accustomed to living in Babylon. We are disquieted by vague images of people wandering around in gardens apparently with nothing to do. Far more appealing to us are the vigor and give-and-take and drama of the marketplace... The world today is about as different from Zion as any world possibly can be. In face, it has reached the point, the Lord has told us in emphatic terms, where he is about to remove the whole thing-- sweep the slate clean, that Zion may be established. ~ Nibley, Hugh

Megan had accustomed herself to receiving the third degree about her dates.
His name is Dillon Carver.He's the same age as me, and also a senior. He has no family history of insanity or premature baldness. He doesn't smoke, drink or do drugs, but he does have a vicious Dr Pepper habit. I'll let you know how big his penis is after the dance. ~ Sara Bell

And since no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, they never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed to jeer without anger, each at the other's incorrigible aberrations. ~ Leo Tolstoy

It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received. ~ David Hume