Define Quotes

Nobody can tell you about that sword all that there is to be told of it; for those that know of those paths of Space on which its metals once floated, till Earth caught them one by one as she sailed past on her orbit, have little time to waste on such things as magic and so cannot tell you how the sword was made, and those who know whence poetry is, and the need that man has for song, or know any one of the fifty branches of magic, have little time to waste on such things as science, and so cannot tell you whence its ingredients came. Enough that it was once beyond our Earth and was now here amongst our mundane stones; that it was once but as those stones, and now had something in it such as soft music has; let those that can define it. ~ Lord Dunsany

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

I don't write or think too much about the word "salvation." I might; I probably should. We are such needy creatures, needing to be saved, to feel we are saved or might be, however we define ourselves, however we define that word. ~ Pattiann Rogers

... we can define concept as a logical, mental construction of one or more relationships. [...] It is purely mental, is logical, and can be described; it has been reasoned through sufficiently and presented with clarity. As such, a concept is inherently abstract (takes some things as given or assumed) ~ Don E. Ethridge

And the touch of her own mask, at first cool and clammy leather, but quickly like a second skin, and the play it gives her, herself a stage, her every breath a performance, and yet (herein lies the magic) also and entirely true. Every game, every lie flirting and cruel - and the house is full of them, games and lies - is real as knives, for the masquerade has come to define the night. The false face of everyday, that hides reality beneath flesh and skin, is itself hidden beneath the fantasy that, because it is a product and reflection of the mind, is an honest facade. Sadie has lived a wary, defensive life, always urged by that self-preserving instinct to stay small, hidden, safe. She did not know she had an imp inside her until she wore it on her face.

("One Of The Hungry Ones") ~ Holly Phillips

Instead, she found her argument in the "doctrine of necessity," an idea established in common law that in certain limited circumstances, which no parliament would ever care to define, it was permissible to break the criminal law to prevent a greater evil. ~ Ian McEwan

Lao-tzu didn't actually say very much more about the meaning of Tao. The Way of Nature, the Way of happening self-so, or, if you like, the very process of life, was something which he was much too wise to define. For to try to say anything definite about the Tao is like trying to eat your mouth: you can't get outside it to chew it. To put it the other way round: anything you can chew is not your mouth. ~ Alan W. Watts

None of the dictionaries can accurately define stupidity than practically stupid itself; it authenticates an actual definition. ~ Ehsan Sehgal

The intelligent woman adapts herself to fashion, but never to fad. She knows what is best for her, and her way of life, and sticks to it. She raises and lowers her hemline - with discretion - but she goes on with her timeless dresses made with the basic lines and fabrics that flatter HER, define HER life style. She's secure, and so she can be an elegant individual. ~ Joan Crawford

It seems to be in our nature to focus on how we were wrong over the fact that we're now smarter (as if we can't be works in progress), and we often attach our egos to what we believe. A view is just how you see something. It doesn't have to define you, and trying to detach from it to gain understanding can be a very good thing. ~ Kal Turnbull

Oversimplifying somewhat, honoring your word as we define it means you either keep your word (do what you said you would do and by the time you said you would do it), or as soon as you know that you will not, you say that you will not to those who were counting on your word and clean up any mess caused by not keeping your word. ~ Werner Erhard

After all, your company doesn't define customer experience. Customers do. Customer experience is based on how your customers perceive your organization and how well you meet their needs when they interact with, hear about, and do business with your company. ~ Michael Hinshaw

Socrates refused to neatly define the self he had in mind, just as Buddha refused to use a word like "God." Their reasons were the same: it defeats the truth to use words, since words imply that you know what you are looking for. Instead, truth is an experience. It cannot be anticipated, any more than one can anticipate, at age five, what it will be like to go to college, get married, have children. Experience is fresh and new (or should be); thus truth is fresh and new. From there, it's a small step to demanding that God be fresh and new. ~ Deepak Chopra

It is just because civilization is ever evolving, changing, and becoming more complicated, that experts find it so difficult to define it in explicit terms. ~ Arthur Keith

Define excellence vividly, quantitatively. Paint a picture for your most talented employees of what excellence looks like. Keep everyone pushing and pushing toward the right-hand edge of the bell curve. ~ Marcus Buckingham

Our minds are a lot like our rear-ends. Sometimes they are constipated, other times stricken with mental diarrhea, and occasionally a little bubbly. However, none of these and all of these conditions define our rear-ends or our personalities. Could contentment come from accepting all of our rocks, rumbles and runs? ~ Maximus Freeman

Caring for but never trying to own may be a further way to define friendship. ~ William Glasser

Voltaire rejects all systems, and suspects that "every chief of a sect in philosophy has been a little of a quack."

"The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women."

"It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will."

"Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one. ~ Will Durant

Becoming is the action that births our womanhood, rather than passive act of being born (an act none of us has a choice in). This short, powerful statement assured me that I have the freedom, in spite of and because of my birth, body, race, gender expectations, and economic resources, to define myself for myself and for others. ~ Janet Mock

I'm usually very attracted to things that I can't define. If something's too clear, it's very often not inspiring to me anymore. ~ Raf Simons

Henry, this isn't about us. I mean it is, but they don't define you by the button you wear. They define you by what you do, by what your actions say about you. And coming here, despite your parents, says a lot to them- and me. And they're Americans first. They don't see you as the enemy. They see you as a person. ~ Jamie Ford

It is so simple: the choices we make in our everyday lives, the things we do (or not) for others, define the world we live in. ~ Bernard Jan

Your career doesn't define you ~ Lili Wilkinson

Don't project his mistakes from the past onto him now. Don't let past choices define present actions. ~ Nicole Williams

Your moral values & ability to rationalize; not your religious beliefs or political affiliations define what you should stand for in society. ~ Mamur Mustapha

Your ribcage never meant to hurt you.
Your windpipe doesn't know how to be pretty,
but she knows how to howl -
and here, I'd like to take a moment
to submit a formal apology to my soft parts
because they kept me warm
when I was trying to freeze to death,
and I hated them for it. An apology
for a starvation that went deeper than my skin.
One for the strongest skeleton I will ever own
and how I kept using the word girl against it.
Or how I turned words like beautiful into shapes
I could contort myself into. I didn't mean
to compare myself to faces I can't have.
Or spend years trying to carve myself,
like Michelangelo's angels, from the marble -
forgetting what it is to be skin instead of stone.
I let myself be afraid. I was taught to be.
When you learn you are only as good
as your beauty routine, you forget
how to define yourself by anything else. ~ Ashe Vernon

These endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are a joke in this country, and they are the reason why it is so expensive, or one of the reasons, it's so expensive to run here and why so many people decide not to run. ~ Michael Bloomberg

When I was a child, the lessons my father taught me had been about perseverance, never to accept limitations that stood in my way. As an adult, watching him in his final years, I also saw how to come to terms with limits that couldn't simply be wished away. When to shift from pushing against limits to making the best of them is not often readily apparent. But it is clear that are times when the cost of pushing exceeds its value. Helping my father through the struggle to define that moment was simultaneously among the most painful and most privileged experiences of my life. Part of the way my father handled the limits he faced was by looking at them without illusion. Though his circumstances sometimes got him down, he never pretended they were better than they were. He always understood that life is short and one's place in the world is small. But he also saw himself as a link in a chain of history. ~ Atul Gawande

I thought, 'Okay, what's going to be my edge, and how am I going to define what I'm doing differently?' Once I had that key idea of the software developer as an artist, once I had that idea, a whole bunch of other ideas flowed from that, because I realized that I need to go study the music industry, I need to study the book publishing and Hollywood and figure out how they do things, why they do them that way, and then I need to borrow, and rearrange, the things that they're doing to fit my industry so that I can invent and create this new industry. ~ Trip Hawkins

I couldn't define my style; that's impossible. I like comfort and elegance with a bit of glamour thrown in. If I like something, I'll wear it for years. ~ Jemima Khan

If I had to define my philosophy, it would be about exploration, a journey, a story-telling. ~ Hussein Chalayan

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.' ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Classics is a subject that exists in that gap between us and the word of the Greeks and Romans. The questions raised by Classics are the questions raised by our distance from 'their' world, and at the same time by our closeness to it, and its familiarity to us. In our museums, in our literature, languages, culture, and ways of thinking. The aim of Classics is not only to discover or uncover the ancient world (though that is part of it, as the rediscovery of Bassae, or the excavation of the furthest outposts of the Roman empire on the Scottish borders, shows). Its aim is to also define and debate our relationship to that world. ~ Mary Beard

I am a confused animal who fears the idea of progress, not because I do not wish to progress, but because I fear how those in control define progress. ~ William Pauley III

Nets are generally defined as devices for capturing something. In a more narrow but more important sense, we might define a net as anything that entices or prevents us from following the call of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

Those of us raised in the Christian tradition need to choose to either see God in Jesus or to continue to let the Bible define God. Our tradition says that Jesus is God. Maybe we should act as if we think he is instead of worshipping a book. Maybe we should be brave enough to admit that we are compelled to either become blinded ideologues or we need to forthrightly pick and choose what we follow in the Bible. Most Christians do that anyway, many just don't admit it. ~ Frank Schaeffer

Studying the world's oldest writing for the first time compels you to wonder about what writing is and how it came about more than five thousand years ago and what the world might have looked like without it.

Writing as I would define it serves to record language by means of an agreed set of symbols that enable a message to be played back like a wax cylinder recording.

The reader's eye runs over the signs and tells the brain how each is pronounced and the inner message springs into life. ~ Irving Finkel

For a flexible person, it is impossible not to reach his destination, because by using his ability to be flexible, he can easily define a nearer new destination! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Only fools argue whether to eat meat or not. They don't understand truth, nor do they meditate on it. Who can define what is meat and what is plant? Who knows where the sin lies, being a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian? ~ Guru Nanak

Maya (deceit) means that one cannot see the nature of things as they are but sees them in a different form. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Hard times prepares the willing soul for define destiny. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

What are the two or three things that you and only you are responsible for? What, specifically, have you been hired to do? What is "success" for the person in your position? Now let's slice it even thinner. Of the two or three things that define success for you, which of those are in line with your giftedness? Of the tasks you have been assigned to do, which of them are you specifically gifted to do? ~ Andy Stanley

How dare the world define beauty. God defined beauty when he made you! You are beautiful, you are a true beauty just the way you are! ~ Rachel Hamilton

Maybe the reason nothing seems to be "fixing you" is because you're not broken. Let today be the day you stop living within the confines of how others define or judge you. You have a unique beauty and purpose; live accordingly. ~ Steve Maraboli

Every one of my novels could be entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being or The Joke or Laughable Loves; the titles are interchangeable, they reflect the small number of themes that obsess me, define me, and unfortunately, restrict me. Beyond these themes, I have nothing else to say or write. ~ Milan Kundera

By the term cult I mean nothing derogatory to any group so classified. A cult, as I define it, is any religious group which differs significantly in one or more respects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expressions of religion in our total culture. ~ Walter Ralston Martin

Labels confine as much as they define. Remember that when you discuss people and preferences. Likes and dislikes speak of who you aren't, too. ~ Nick Shamhart

Until we define happiness for ourselves, clearly seeing the difference between excitement and joy, for example, our habits will likely not change. We will keep returning to the fruits of our desires. ~ Judson Brewer

The process is really what you have to do day in and day out to be successful, we try to define the standard that we want everybody to sort of work toward, adhere to, and do it on a consistent basis. And the things that I talked about before, being responsible for your own self-determination, having a positive attitude, having great work ethic, having discipline to be able to execute on a consistent basis, whatever it is you're trying to do, those are the things that we try to focus on, and we don't try to focus as much on the outcomes as we do on being all that you can be. ~ Nick Saban

I do not define my job in any rigid terms but in terms of having the flexibility to what seems to me to be in the best interests of the company at any times. ~ Henry Earl Singleton

As it turns out, that persistence is a requirement. Thus, he would tell me, you need the dark to show the light, so you shouldn't curse darkness. You needed death to define life. ~ Terry Goodkind

You couldn't define the '80s when the '80s were happening. We kept changing. We had shoulder pads, then we didn't. It was revealing, and then it was decoration. It was a lot of things at once. It was defined when it was over. ~ Donatella Versace

We're nothing but human.
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery we need humanity.
More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
Don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
You are not machines.
You are not cattle.
You have the love of humanity in your hearts.
In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery.
We don't want to hate and despise one another.
We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
You the people have the power.. the power to create machines.. the power to create happiness.
You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful..
To make this life a wonderful adventure.
We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices.
Some are on a grand scale.. Most of these choices are on lesser points.
But we define ourselves by the choices we have made.
We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices.
Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly.
Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design ~ Anonymous

I've never had anyone define purity. You probably can't define purity. Purity is to live according to original design. ~ Josh McDowell

The most common definition of [the word information] is: the action of informing; formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching; communication of instructive knowledge.
This definition remained fairly constant until the years immediately following World War II, when it came in vogue to use 'information' as a technological term to define anything that was sent over an electric or mechanical channel. 'Information' became part of the vocabulary of the science of messages. And, suddenly, the appellation could be applied to something that didn't necessarily have to inform. This definition was extrapolated to general usage as something told or communicated, whether or not it made sense to the receiver. Now, the freedom engendered by such an amorphous definition has, as you might expect, encouraged its liberal deployment. It has become the single most important word of our decade, the suspense of our lives and our work. ~ Richard Saul Wurman

What preoccupies us is the way we define success. If you see your life purely in terms of money and power, then everything in your life becomes about 'Am I getting ahead?' and that is truly a barbaric way to live, because it eliminates huge chunks of our humanity. ~ Arianna Huffington

Never allow your desires to lead you away from God; allow nothing else to control you other than God and His Word. No matter what you see or pass through, don't allow them to define you. ~ Jaachynma N.E. Agu

Plan the Path, Define the Purpose! ~ Anuranjita Kumar

Sisterhood is a funny thing. It's easy to recognize, but hard to define. ~ Pearl Cleage

I work in the field of art, and you know how during a period of Marxist ideology, fewer people are inclined to believe in the power of the culture as a whole: they believe in the revolutionary potential of economics, class struggle theory ... Therefore it's time to show that art means the power of creativity, and it's time to define art in a larger way, to include science and religion too..(1973 ~ Joseph Beuys

They say: it's a cruel world but I say: it's just a world, we define it with our actions and reactions.. ~ Mariam Harmoush

Theater is about language, so characters have to define themselves through language for an audience. ~ Jason Moore

A job should not define who or what you are. You should be able to leave today and it not change the overall purpose or direction of your life. Your calling is a much larger concept than what you do daily to create income. Work opportunities can come and go - the direction of your life should remain constant. ~ Dan Miller

Define your destiny and drive with abandon! ~ Gary Westfal

We all have to live with our past, but it doesn't have to define us. ~ Nalini Singh

My job doesn't define me. The people I love define me. And if Nan's aneurysm taught me one thing, it's that those people are getting older, and their lives are getting shorter. I don't want to be a full day's journey away from them. I want to make the most of our time together and enjoy the absolute crap out of them while I have the chance. ~ Whitney Dineen

Many people define beauty as skin deep, but I've found the beauty in physical and superficial changes that continue throughout the life of a woman. ~ Alyscia Cunningham

That's the tricky thing about being bonded to someone for life. Blake and his dad are bonded like I'm bonded with Erin. We're irrevocably tied together by history, a history that can never be erased. Even if you want to deny it, even it you want to pretend it never existed, it will always be a part of you. It will always, in some way, define who you are. ~ Susane Colasanti

It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only 6 miles long and 2 miles wide. ~ Barack Obama

Once you've read too many trashy best-sellers, you begin to look for something with substance, something that attempts to define the universe. ~ Jessica Zafra

It is not possible to define. Nothing has ever been finally found out. Because there is nothing final to find out. ~ Charles Fort

Judging a person does not define who they are. It defines who you are ~ Kristen Stewart

Love does not care to define and is never in a hurry to do so. ~ Charles Du Bos

You've got to have someone who loves your body. Who doesn't define you, but sees you. Who loves what he sees. Who you don't have to struggle to be good enough for. ~ Deb Caletti

The way I define happiness is being the creator of your experience, choosing to take pleasure in what you have, right now, regardless of the circumstances, while being the best you that you can be. ~ Leo Babauta

Time and task were both disorienting, for if you were to remove everything from our lives that depends on electricity to function, homes and offices would become no more than the chambers and passages of limestone caves- simple shelter from wind and rain, far less useful than the first homes at Plymouth Plantation or a wigwam. No way to keep out cold, or heat, for long. No way to preserve food, or to cook it. The things that define us, quiet as rock outcrops - the dumb screens and dials, the senseless clicks of on/off switches- without their purpose, they lose the measure of their beauty and we are left alone in the dark with countless useless things. ~ Jane Brox

Our past doesn't define us, rather, it's the courses we take after that tells us who we really are. ~ Jocelyn Sanchez

We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!' ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

If you haven't already done this, get to know yourself. Discover your strengths and weaknesses. Work on your insecurities and fears. Reach out and serve others, develop new friendships, and volunteer some of your time. Get involved with your Church. All of these things have helped me define myself. I wish you the best! ~ Arik Hoover

When we do it, it is for art. When they [animals] do it, it is for competition. Both may be true. What is disturbing and irrational is the decision to explain human behavior in spiritual terms of a sense of beauty, and animal behavior in mechanistic terms of demonstrating fitness. The object, yet again, seems to be to define humans as higher and unique. ~ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Percentages! Those are for economists, polls, and politicians. Percentages can't define your identity. ~ Mary E. Pearson

Advantage! What is advantage? And will you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the advantage of man consists? And what if it so happens that a man's advantage, SOMETIMES, not only may, but even must, consist in his desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not advantageous. And if so, if there can be such a case, the whole principle falls into dust. What do you think
are there such cases? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The power to define the situation is the ultimate power. ~ Jerry Rubin

Time plays a role in almost every decision. And some decisions define your attitude about time. ~ John Cale

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can't define it beyond that. ~ Count Basie

How do I define success? Let me tell you, money's pretty nice. But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful, because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life. ~ Oprah Winfrey

This disaster did not force us to abandon our ideal; on the contrary, from the very first months of the conflict, it led us to define precisely the conditions for its realization. ~ Leon Jouhaux

Your opinion should always be based on what you have seen with your own eyes, what you have heard with your own ears and what you have felt with your own heart. ~ Tanya Masse

Its important for women not to find their confidence in a man. I think you really have to know who you are before you can truly fall in love and give your all, and I don't think a man can define you. You have to own that. ~ Jessica Simpson

You take this world and make it what it should be. And don't let the beliefs of a backward system define you. You are the one who has to live with the future, baby girl. So you live it. You understand? ~ Mary Weber

Art is fueled by rebellion: the need, in some amounting to obsessions, to resist what is, to defy one's elders, even to the point of ostracism; to define oneself, and by extension one's generation, as new, novel, ungovernable. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

But you don't have to let this define you anymore. Leave it here -" he indicated the stage "- where it can fuel rather than fell you. ~ Lesa Howard

The standard of beauty is not definite. We define it. ~ Shamcey Supsup

There are tenses that define us now: past tense, back then; future tense, not yet. We live in the small window between them, the space we've only recently come to think as still, and really it's no smaller than anyone else's window. ~ Margaret Atwood

Miracles define common sense. ~ Toba Beta

We close the distance between us again and kiss, a deep and greedy one. Ali pulls away after the long hard snog. "Liam, will you show me Ireland sometime?" "Yes." It'll be strange but I've finally realised that coming from the country doesn't define me. It's left its mark but I am my own person. Home is where I choose to make it. In Ali's arms, I've come home. ~ A. Zukowski

Yoga is a spectacularly multifaceted phenomenon and as such it is very difficult to define. ~ Georg Feuerstein

Then they'd be wrong. It's only our deeds that make us evil, Tanner; they're what define us, nothing else, not our intentions or feelings. But what are a few bad deeds compared to a life, especially the kinds of lives we can live now? ~ Alastair Reynolds

Last night Grey and I were caught together and now he insists we marry."
Eve's eyes were huge blue saucers. "Define 'caught.'"
Rose stroked Heathcliff's silky ears. "Naked and in bed-that sort of caught."
Her friend looked positively scandalized-and gleeful. "No! Who caught you?"
"His brother Archer and a servant." She purposefully did not mention anything about Bronte's situation. As much as she trusted Eve, she could not be certain that none of the grooms wouldn't overhear. And since most of the household probably knew about her and Grey by dawn, it didn't seem so important to keep her own council in that regard.
"I have no doubt that your maid is getting every sordid detail-and possibly embellishment-belowstairs as we speak."
Eve frowned. "Do you think Ryeton's servants would be so cruel as to discuss you openly?"
She rolled her eyes. "They would never in a million years do anything to intentionally hurt me or Grey, but there's bound to be talk. It's that affection for both of us that makes their lips loose. I swear one of the footmen grinned at me this morning as I took breakfast."
Her friend chuckled sweetly, laughing even harder as one of the pups came up on its hind legs to lick her chin. "At least you will have dedicated servants, if not indiscreet ones."
Rose had to smile-it was that or burst into sobs. "At least. ~ Kathryn Smith

The former conviction that these two kingdoms were wholly different in structure, in function, and in kind of life, was not seriously disturbed by the difficulties which the naturalist encountered when he undertook to define them. ~ Asa Gray