Clarifying Quotes

I went back every evening, after work, for nearly a year. I learned the meaning of the cud of a leaf and the glisten of wet pebbles, and the special significance of curves and angles. A great deal of the writing was unwritten. Plot three dots on a graph and join them; you now have a curve with certain characteristics. Extend that curve while maintaining the characteristics, and it has meaning, up where no dots were plotted.

In just this way I learned to extend the curve of a grass-blade and of a protruding root, of the bent edges of wetness on a drying headstone. I quit smoking so I could sharpen my sense of smell, because the scent of earth after a rain has a clarifying effect on graveyard reading, as if the page were made whiter and the ink darker. I began to listen to the wind, and to the voices of birds and small animals, insects and people; because to the educated ear, every sound is filtered through the story written on graves, and becomes a part of it.

("The Graveyard Reader") ~ Theodore Sturgeon

Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Since Moses was in Egypt land, Gods people have been struggling for justice while singing freedom songs. Theology can be clarifying. A good sermon has its place. But nothing is more essential for the life of faith in a community than liturgy that invites us to sing the freedom songs that are sung around the throne of God. Brother Ken Sehested is a song leader in that great cloud of witnesses. Receive his words as gift-and keep singing. ~ Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.
The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. "I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.'
'I don't know it.'
'It's a poem.'
'I gathered.'
'I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'
Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.
'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'
I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?
'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'
"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.'
I learned the poem in college and it stuck. ~ Steven Rowley

Clarifying things on the front end, when they first appear on the radar, rather than on the back end, after trouble has developed, allows people to reap the benefits of managing action. Getting ~ David Allen

Story, as I understood it by reading Faulkner, Hardy, Cather, and Hemingway, was a powerful and clarifying human invention. The language alone, as I discovered it in Gerard Manley Hopkins and Faulkner, was exquisitely beautiful, also weirdly and mysteriously evocative. ~ Barry Lopez

When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

Nothing will serve you better than a strong work ethic. Nothing. And it's something that you can't teach. You have to be thrown into it, where you're going to sink or swim. It's amazing how self-correcting and how clarifying a good, hard, shitty job can be. Because at the end of the day, any profession I've seen anybody in, when you peer behind the curtains of Oh, wouldn't that be a great job? Wow, what an amazing thing, a philanthropic endeavor! it really just comes down to It's a f**king grind. ~ Robert Downey, Jr.

We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright - to elucidate the nature of our affection when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Before my encounter with Thomist philosophy through Maritain, I had almost reached the same conclusions through the logical development of my work, intuition and thought, but what a great sense of joy I felt upon discovering, in Maritain, the confirmation of certain thought patterns, certain ways of clarifying these to myself and to others ~ Gino Severini

People say that what we're seeking is a meaning for life," he began before clarifying, "I don't think that's what we're really seeking. What we seek is an experience of being alive. ~ Chris Guillebeau

All decision-making is a values-clarifying exercise. ~ Tony Robbins

Being overwhelmed means that your life or work is overpowering you. Regain control by clarifying your intentions, setting realistic expectations and focusing on your next step. ~ Daphne Michaels

It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would you
care to try it?"
"No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution has not got
over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra
strain upon it."
He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," he
said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find
it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the
mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Family systems theory offers therapists an invaluable way of understanding their clients' strengths and problems - clarifying the familial rules, roles, myths, communication patterns, and boundary issues that defined their clients' development. ~ Edward Teyber

Theres nothing more efficient than honesty and nothing more powerful than vulnerability because, vulnerability reveals everyone in your life who will abuse power immediately and almost irrevocably.

Theres nothing weaker than hiding your vulnerability because, it means a refusal to stare at those who abuse power and see them for who they are which means they still have power and control over you. Nothing is stronger than vulnerability. Nothing more clarifying. Nothing is clearer than vulnerability, and if you hide who you are you are just making a tombstone of your everyday actions because you dont exist in hiding and you're letting the past rob you.

Exercise the power of vulnerability. When you are vulnerable you are signaling to your system that the past is over and done! That you're no longer a victim! That you're no longer trapped in a destructive and abusive environment! vulnerability means it's over, it's done. The war is over but, if you continue to use the same defenses that you had in the past all you're telling your whole body is that the past is not over.

Be vulnerable. Be honest. Be open and show your heart. That's the best way of telling your heart that the tigers are no longer in the grass. I'm telling you, just take it for a spin. Vulnerability and openness will get you what you want in your life and hiding will only get you the feeling of being prey from here until the end of your life. ~ Stefan Molyneux

I revise and revise and revise. Any editor of mine will tell you how crappy my early drafts are. Revisions are about clarifying and evoking feelings in the reader in the same way they were once evoked in me. ~ Mary Karr

By clarifying your purpose or motivation...you're more likely to build productive habits - and stick to them. ~ Melissa Steginus

I was begging you not to get married and if you do manage to talk some poor woman into marrying you, please pull out," Paul said in a slow, condescending manner, raising his eyebrows in hopes of clarifying. "Sterilization should be a legal requirement for pricks like you. ~ Kele Moon

Ani told them all ... telling more than needed telling, the stories clarifying and unifying themselves in her mind as she let them spill out of her mouth. ~ Shannon Hale

Logic issues in tautologies, mathematics in identities, philosophy in definitions; all trivial, but all part of the vital work of clarifying and organising our thought. ~ Frank Plumpton Ramsey

Universities are very clarifying places of power, because everyone is focused on trying to figure out exactly what to do with their lives. ~ Frederick Lenz

What you feel when you're writing is the relief of thinking: if you write the sentence correctly, you're clarifying. If you write the right sentence, nothing feels as good. ~ Vivian Gornick

I am so sick of theory Teddy," says Sasha as his movement and ideals collapse. "I am ready to give up half of what I believe in exchange for one clarifying vision. To see one great rational truth glowing on the horizon, to go to it regardless of the cost, regardless of what must be left behind, is what I dream of beyond all things. Will tomorrow change me? Nothing changes me. It is only the world that changes. ~ John Le Carre

What Joe Hamilton lacked more than anything else in the world was some one to kick him. Many a man who might have lived decently and become a fairly respectable citizen has gone to the dogs for the want of some one to administer a good resounding kick at the right time. It is corrective and clarifying. ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar

During periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight. ~ Fritjof Capra

In some ways clarifying a vision is easy. A more difficult challenge comes in facing current reality. ~ Peter Senge

It is important to measure ourselves at least once in life, undertake a personal odyssey that constructs a clarifying prism of our being. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

If you do not share the universities' values, it could be a big mistake to send your children to college before they are intellectually and morally prepared for the indoctrination-rather-than-education they will receive there. Therefore, prepare them morally and intellectually and, if possible, do not send them to college right after high school. Let them work for a year, or perhaps travel (for example, given the antipathy to Israel on campuses, a trip to Israel would be both morally clarifying and maturing). The younger the student, the less life experience and maturity they have, the more they are likely to embrace the rejection of your values. ~ Dennis Prager

If there were a reason for preferring the Christian religion to natural religion, it would be because the former offers us, on the nature of God and man, enlightenment that the latter lacks. Now, this is not at all the case; for Christianity, instead of clarifying, gives rise to an infinite multitude of obscurities and difficulties. ~ Denis Diderot

Culture includes the social-historical context. We have depicted culture within the social-historical context only for purposes of clarifying the concepts presented here. In the model, the elements of culture are depicted as a rim surrounding the flow of propaganda, with canals leading to and from the process and the cultural rim. The cultural rim is the infrastructure
that provides the material context in which messages are sent and received. How propaganda is developed, used, and received is culture-specific. The elements of a culture - its ideologies, societal myths, government, economy, social practices, and specific events that take place - influence propaganda. ~ Garth S. Jowett

I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self, as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head. ~ Hakuin Ekaku

May we be the kind of good faith Christians who shape the future by asking the right questions and then confronting what is wrong, clarifying what is confused, celebrating what is good, and creating what the world is missing. ~ David Kinnaman

And with each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me. And then I would remember I had a wife at home who loved me, or later that my wife had left me and I was terrirfied, or again later that I had a beautiful alcoholic girlfriend who would make me happy forever. But every time I entered the place there were veiled faces promising everything and then clarifying quickly into the dull, the usual, looking up at me and making the same mistake. ~ Denis Johnson

This is the greatest mystery of the human mind
the inductive leap. Everything falls into place, irrelevancies relate, dissonance becomes harmony, and nonsense wears a crown of meaning. But the clarifying leap springs from the rich soil of confusion, and the leaper is not unfamiliar with pain. ~ John Steinbeck

Life is short. Clarifying your purpose may be the biggest time-saver in your life's work. ~ Jon Mertz

Not all negativity is bad. In politics, it's a necessary clarifying tool. ~ Jacob Weisberg

It's not that people like sad movies that make us feel like, "Oh, my god, what a bummer." We like emotionally moving experiences, where you feel like a slightly different person and you see the world a little different, after you finish. It lets you see your own life, in a different way, and it actually makes you feel really good. And even though there might be sad content making this happen, the feeling that you're left with is one that is quite good, quite hopeful, clarifying and uplifting. ~ Gayle Forman

But with Freddy I seemed to have the best sort of conversations, where our talk became exploratory and would lead on to new ideas, like thinking aloud, and in the process of clarifying improvisatory theories I always made useful discoveries about what I thought and felt. ~ Victoria Clayton

I have always been spurred on by my not finding expressed anywhere the kinds of perspectives that I thought these issues most perspicuously needed and deserved; but that is just another way of saying that Americans have overwhelmingly expunged from their public understanding the strongest and most clarifying resources out of ancient and traditional European cultures. By far we prefer our familiar and user-friendly parochialisms, and there is no percentage in trying to pry these pachydermal plates apart. ~ Kenny Smith

In 'Se7en' and 'Fight Club,' Fincher proved his suave mastery of film violence; in Zodiac, his way of clarifying the many clues in a murder thriller. As he showed in 'The Social Network,' the director also knows that no wound is more toxic than a friend's betrayal. ~ Richard Corliss

Usually it`s like this: I sit down and drink with the idea of clarifying just where I am going with my life, and then, after a while, I am unable even to stand on my feet ~ Plamen Chetelyazov

I use my hands like a sculptor, to mold and shape the sound I want, to clarify. ~ Leonard Slatkin

If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the party of no? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform. Let the debate begin. ~ Charles Krauthammer

Only after making intelligent and thorough use of his human powers had he trusted himself to the divine will, thereby clarifying for us the meaning of at-tawakkul ala Allah (reliance on God, trusting oneself to God): responsibly exercising all the qualities (intellectual, spiritual, psychological, sentimental, etc.) each one of us has been granted and humbly remembering that beyond what is humanly possible, God alone makes things happen. Indeed, this teaching is the exact opposite of the temptation of fatalism: God will act only after humans have, at their own level, sought out and exhausted all the potentialities of action. That is the profound meaning of this Quranic verse: "Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves."1 ~ Tariq Ramadan

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. ~ Peter Senge

Contrary to the idea that anger clouds thinking, properly understood, it is an astoundingly clarifying emotion. ~ Soraya Chemaly

In a museum in El Paso, Texas, there's a map that shows all the places the border between the U.S. and Mexico has been (because it shifted) - I find it very clarifying (not confusing) to be reminded that everything we feel like we've really pinned down is transient, arbitrary, and marks the site of a painful if not violent negotiation, one that may not have ended. ~ Laura Mullen

And so I would like to thank you. You taught me, again and again again and again and again, not to dream of you. And I listened. I am silent. These words are not words of love, but of the silence that will remain when I walk away when this letter is done. I have listened and I do not continue to imagine our love, for it was not love. You were too busy walking a flowered path, and it was my misstep that I thought we had something more than an hour's fun for you.

Thank you, for clarifying for me what love is not.

Love is no thing, and nothing is a gift, space is a playground, and time and distance are merely peaks and valleys in the topography of real love.

And I would remind you: I am not one of your fans. For I know what I deserve, and it is one who is not afraid of fear. Love does not require this map: it makes its way across the miles. Love does not heed the time; it is not rooted in the months of one or two moons. Love is not bothered by obstacles - they form the high sides to the left and right of this rocky path. This path does not depend upon external signs: love will find its own way. ~ Waylon H. Lewis

The desire, let alone the gesture,to meet her needs was good enough to loft her spirits to the place where she could take the next step: ask for some clarifying word; some advice about how to keep on with a brain greedy for news nobody could live with in a world happy to provide it. ~ Toni Morrison

You're the kind of man who might leave scars,' she said a moment later, her voice deliberate as though clarifying her position not just to him but to herself.
'But you're also the kind of man who might end up leaving a tattoo on my sex life that I'll enjoy looking at later. ~ C.C. Gibbs

It's better for me to go up against someone's passion with my passion and then clarifying something that he wrote. Then I know how to work around certain things. ~ Penny Marshall

Reducing every issue to an argument can become stale but it's often a very good way of clarifying issues. ~ Evan Davis

We embark unhesitatingly on the path, in a direction that is absolutely right and urgent, supported by everyone, in the knowledge that this path is but a learning process ... We have to keep on learning, creating, applying, by-passing, touching upon, refining and clarifying a number of notions and details that need to be improvised and applied and which, thank God, we cannot foresee. The only rigidity lies in our will, our conviction that we are on the right road and that our initiatives are most pressing. ~ Yehudi Menuhin

Some of the city legislators, whose concern for appropriate names and the maintenance of the city's landmarks was the principal part of their political life, saw to it that "Doctor Street" was never used in any official capacity. And since they knew that only Southside residents kept it up, they had notices posted in the stores, barbershops, and restaurants in that part of the city saying that the avenue running northerly and southerly from Shore Road fronting the lake to the junction of routes 6 and 2 leading to Pennsylvania, and also running parallel to and between Rutherford Avenue and Broadway, had always been and would always be known as Mains Avenue and not Doctor Street.

It was a genuinely clarifying public notice because it gave Southside residents a way to keep their memories alive and please the city legislators as well. They called it Not Doctor Street, and were inclined to call the charity hospital at its northern end No Mercy Hospital since it was 1931, on the day following Mr. Smith's leap from its cupola, before the first colored expectant mother was allowed to give birth inside its wards and not on its steps. ~ Toni Morrison

Not the least of the problems in clarifying one's consciousness is developing the stoic determination to criticize one's own softness or sentimentality toward oneself. Ego, self-solicitous about its own tenderness, is the ultimate policeman over its own false consciousness, dementedly uprooting every healthy seedling of insight into the truth. As Kierkegaard remarked, most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, but the real trick and task of life is to learn to be just the very opposite. ~ Kenny Smith

Somebody said the prospect of eminent death has a wonderful clarifying effect on the mind. And I don't know if that's true, but I do think it probably causes some changes, some evolution in the way a person works. But on a day-by-day basis, I just still enjoy doing what I'm doing. ~ Stephen King

Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt. ~ Pablo Picasso

When I was overweight and unhappy, I thought about being smaller, I thought about fitting into different clothes and feeling comfortable in any environment or social situation. But I didn't do anything about it. I was letting myself fall victim to not planning, not clarifying steps to reach my goals. Don't go on just wanting something. Start consciously planning where you want to be. ~ Ali Vincent

Haven't we put off problems without clarifying Japan's will to protect the lives and assets of its people and territory with its own hands, and merely accepted the benefits of economic prosperity? ~ Shinzo Abe

Having firstrate people on the team is more important than designing hierarchies and clarifying who reports to whom ~ Warren Buffett

Pretend to be a delinquent?" I asked clarifying.
"You can do it," Dave advised me. "Just don't smile, and try to look like you're considering stealing something. ~ Sarah Dessen

What the hell," I said, pushing off the wall, ready to take off the head of whatever stupid salesperson had decided to get cozy with me. My elbow was still buzzing, and I could feel a hot flush creeping up my neck: bad signs. I knew my temper.
I turned my head and saw it wasn't a salesman at all. It was a guy with black curly hair, around my age, wearing a bright orange T-shirt. And for some reason he was smiling.
"Hey there," he said cheerfully. "How's it going?"
"What is your problem?" I snapped, rubbing my elbow.
"Problem?"
"You just slammed me into the wall, asshole."
He blinked. "Goodness," he said finally. "Such language."
I just looked at him. Wrong day, buddy, I thought. You caught me on the wrong day.
"The thing is," he said, as if we'd been discussing the weather or world politics, "I saw you out in the showroom. I was over by the tire display?"
I was sure I was glaring at him. But he kept talking.
"I just thought to myself, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together."
"You got all this," I said, clarifying, "at the tire display?"
"You didn't feel it?" he asked.
"No. I did, however, feel you slamming me into the wall," I said evenly.
"That," he said, lowering his voice and leaning closer to me, "was an accident. An oversight. Just an unfor ~ Sarah Dessen

Similarly, if we ask "What have philosophers ever done for us?" we get involved in the following dialogue:
"Well, their examples help us to decide what we think about issues we haven't thought about before."
"Oh, yeah, well, that goes without saying, doesn't it?"
"And their examples help us discover whether we really believe what we say we believe, or not."
" Yeah, all right. I'll grant you that their examples help us to work out what we think, and to think better. But apart from helping us to work out what we think, clarifying our views, and helping us to solve hard problems, what do philosophers ever do for us?"
"Well, their examples are amusing."
James Taylor, "Why is a Philosopher Like a Python? ~ Gary L. Hardcastle