Dent Quotes

I've never believed that the only way to make a dent is to be a table thumper. ~ David Brudnoy

Sometimes the worst circumstances make the best people. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Evidently we look so much alike that your desire to make an incurable dent in my hat must be excused. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

One possible way of couching it is to choose to say that we will take apart your skull very gently and reconstruct a skull for you that will have a highly developed bump of clarity and a slight concave dent where the fear-instinct used to be. ~ David Foster Wallace

How else to make a dent in an object as immovable as patriarchy itself ... ? ~ Dalma Heyn

Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. "Miss Ingram is mine, of course," said he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had been fastening ~ Charlotte Bronte

One of my favorite Christian authors, Sheldon Vanauken, a friend of C. S. Lewis, said years ago that when you get a new car you should also get a hammer. Take that hammer and go out and put the first dent in the brand new car yourself. Then you're not afraid to use it anymore. That way you don't have to park at the end of the parking lot to protect from door dings, because you've already put the first dent in it yourself. Vanauken's point was this: things are not to be loved, they're to be used. The corollary to that is this: people are not to be used, they're to be loved. ~ Randy Harris

You are too important to the bigger picture to just fall off the canvas. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Stay up... 'till you come up... when you come up stay up! ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Adversity will always show up but it doesn't always have to come up. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Using no control and using humor will build a relationship and make a dent to where the client puts the counselor in their quality world and then begins to relate and seek out the counselor. Effective therapy begins with the acceptance of the therapist into the client's quality world. ~ William Glasser

Maybe its not necessarily a dead-end job; maybe more along the lines of a rear-end one. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

For his part, Jazz knew he was handsome. It had nothing to do with looking in the mirror, which he rarely did. It had everything to do with the way the girls at school looked at him, the way they became satellites when he walked by, their orbits contorted by his own mysterious gravity. If attention could be measured like the Doppler effect, girls would show a massive blue shift in his presence. In the last year or so, he had even remarked the scrutiny of older women - teachers, cashiers at stores, the woman who delivered UPS packages to his house. What had once been a maternal flavor in their glances had taken on a lingering, cool sort of appraisal. He could almost hear them thinking, Not yet. But soon.
Despite his upbringing, despite the infamy of his father, they still watched him. Or maybe because of it. Maybe Howie was right about bad boys. ~ Barry Lyga

And then she started picking up trash behind the dumpster. It was ankle deep back there, blown in from all over the city to a kind of wind eddy between buildings. We picked up newspaper pages and hamburger wrappers, straws, cigarette packs, plastic bags, as well as shop trash that had fallen out when the dumpster was overflowing. There was so much, we would've needed snow shovels to make a real dent in it, but I didn't think about what we were doing, more than to believe in easing a nervous breakdown with small bursts of insanity. ~ Wayne Harrison

If an atrocity isn't written about, it stops existing when the last witnesses die. That's what I can't stand. If a mass shooting, a bomb, a whatever, is written about, then at least it's made a tiny dent in the world's memory. Someone, somewhere, some time, has a chance of learning what happened. And, just maybe, acting on it. Or not. But at least it's there. ~ David Mitchell

She dropped the things she was holding and desperately grabbed onto the table for support, but not before she hit the dresser directly with her stomach. The collision was hard. She expected pain. She expected to scream out. She expected to curdle up on the floor and whimper in agony.

But she didn't.

She gasped when she saw that due to the impact, the dresser had a minuscule dent. She didn't even feel the hit. ~ Deepika Kumaaraguru

The minute Molly and Priss disappeared inside, Trace cursed. He actually wanted to hit something, but a tree would break his knuckles, he didn't want to put another dent in the truck, and Dare would hit back.
Chris Chapey, Dare's longtime best friend and personal assistant, approached with the enormous cat draped over one shoulder so that he could keep an eye on the trailing dogs. The bottom half of Liger filled his arms, and the long tail hung down to the hem of Chris's shorts.
Without even thinking about it, Trace started petting the cat. After a few hours in the truck together, he and Liger had an understanding of sorts.
Dare watched him, but said only, "That cat is a beast."
"He's an armful, that's for sure." Chris hefted him a little higher, and got a sweet meow in return.
Both dogs barked in excitement, but quited when Liger gave them a level stare.
Chris laughed at that. "You want me to head in to keep an eye on things"
"That's why I pay you the big bucks, right?" Dare stared toward the house. "You can tell Trace's lady - "
"She's not mine."
Both Chris and Dare gave him a certain male-inspired look, a look that said they understood his bullshit and would let it slide - for now. ~ Lori Foster

Race and class were a kind of destiny; very little could dent them. Morgan himself had been decanted back into the vessel that had made him. ~ Damon Galgut

Would you let me drive this?" I ask, surprised that I say the words out loud.
"Of course," Christian replies, smiling. "What's mine is yours. If you dent it, though, I will take you into the Red Room of Pain." He glances swiftly at me with a malicious grin.
"You're kidding. You'd punish me for denting your car? You love your car more than you love me?" I tease.
"It's close," he says and reaches across to squeeze my knee, "But she doesn't keep me warm at night."
"I'm sure it could be arranged. You could sleep in her," I snap.
Christian laughs. "We haven't been home one day and you're kicking me out already?" He seems delighted. ~ E.L. James

Jason Todd: Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me. But why? Why on God's Earth is HE still alive? Ignoring what he's done in the past. Blindly, stupidly, disregarding the entire graveyards he's filled, the thousands who have suffered, the friends he's crippled. You know, I thought... I thought I'd be the last person you'd ever let him hurt. If it had been you he beat to a bloody pulp, if he had taken you from this world, I would've done nothing but search the planet for this pathetic pile of evil death-worshiping garbage and sent him off to Hell.
Bruce: You don't understand. I don't think you've ever understood.
Jason: What? What, your moral code just won't allow for that? It's too hard to cross that line?
Bruce: No! God almighty, no. It'd be too damned easy. All I've ever wanted to do is kill him. But if I do that... if I allow myself to go down into that place... I'll never come back.
Jason: Why? I'm not talking about killing Penguin, or Scarecrow, or Dent. I'm talking about him. Just him. And doing it because... because he took me away from you. ~ Judd Winick

Dent recognized it; the intermezzo before the last movement of De Bruik's Human Biology. The finale of the symphony was a standard concert opener in the outer worlds. Soon the crackling of superamplified muscle contractions and the rush of adrenaline into the bloodstream announced the shift to the finale, and the crowd cheered wildly; Dent could feel his blood surging through him - ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day - very much such a sweetness as this - I struck my first whale - a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty - forty - forty years ago! - ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without - oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command! - when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before - and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare - fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul - when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts - away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow - wife? wife? - rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ah ~ Herman Melville

Your haters gather the most at the sidelines. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Denial exists when three beliefs
intersect:
1. It cannot happen.
2. It cannot happen to you.
3. It cannot happen to you now. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Keep your small shy away from the dent you make. ~ Farrah Field

For Hillary, gangsterism is not merely a matter of means; it is also her end. Hillary wants to be the crime boss of America. That is the only way to satisfy her unquenchable desire for money, power, and social control. As we will see in this book, Hillary is a criminal who found the criminal practices of Saul Alinsky to be too weak-kneed for her taste, and Alinsky was a gangster who found the criminal practices of the Al Capone gang to be a tad sentimental. In short, Hillary is the true Democrat, the gangster par excellence. I suspect this is why the Democratic establishment lined up so quickly behind her. While the Republicans had a real primary, hotly contested, the Democrats had a primary in which Bernie seemed to win again and again but never seemed to make a dent in Hillary's lead. That's because the Democratic super-delegates were uniformly in her camp, even though there was throughout the campaign the risk that she would be indicted. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

It's through diverse opinions and perspectives that a dynamic organisation can drive innovation and create its competitive advantage. ~ Craig Dent

Most poets' revisions are disastrous. They buckle and dent what was originally forged at a red-hot heat. ~ Michael Longley

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs Dent and Mrs Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Sometimes when I'm having a boring interview on the telephone, and I'm trying to think about something else because the questions are too boring, and I start looking around the room where I work, you know, full of books piled up to the sky, all different kinds of topics. I start calculating how many centuries would I have to live reading twenty-four hours a day every day of the week to make a dent in what I'd like to learn about things, it's pretty depressing.[ ... ] You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything ... and know that we don't, that's the important part. ~ Noam Chomsky

But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months. ~ Douglas Adams

I once read that more millionaires per capita were created during the Great Depression than at any other time in history. ~ Harry S. Dent

A dreamer must be discovered working or working on it or it is reduced to a wish. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning. " ... and then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left hand side ... "
"No?" said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. "Really?"
"Oh yes," said Marvin, "I mean I've asked for them to be replaced but no one ever listens."
"I can imagine. ~ Douglas Adams

It is a better to have your own plan to make it happen;
Since something is going to happen either way. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

It is impossible to make time but you can always make a commitment. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Milo looked into Sariel's expressionless face and sighed. "I'm not misleading
her," he objected. "When I said that I would never leave her side, I meant it."
"But you know that's not possible," Sariel contradicted gently. "You envy those
who are going to take your place. Envy leads to strife and strife leads to death, Warden.
It's not a good place to be. Perhaps you should learn to be truthful to yourself? ~ Megan Dent Nagle

There were two brothers and a sister. And they had heard from the sky, or from the winds, that Jesus Christ had been born and had grown to manhood. There were portents and dreams that told them about him. Finally the two brothers started for Jerusalem, leaving their sister at home in this place. And they arrived on the day of the crucifixion, so they only saw him dead. And these two brothers from this pass in the Georgian mountains were heartbroken, and they begged a piece of the body-cloth of Jesus, and they brought it home to their sister. She was grief-stricken by the crucifixion, and she clutched the cloth, and fell sick and died of sorrow, and her dead hand held the cloth against her heart. Then the brothers tried to release the cloth, but her hand held firm and they could not get it away from her. And so she was buried with the cloth still held in her hand. She was buried right in this place where the church now stands. And almost immediately a plant grew out of the grave and became a giant tree. After a number of years it was desired to build a church in this place to commemorate the event. And woodsmen came and tried to cut the tree, but their axes flew to pieces against its trunk. Everyone tried to cut the tree, and they couldn't make a dent in it. Finally two angels came and cut the tree, and the church was built over the spot. The dark woman pointed to a curious tent-like structure of clay
inside the church, and this is where the grave was, she said, and this ~ John Steinbeck

Let's make a dent in the universe ~ Steve Jobs

Today Ramon defended the garbage bin by Plumpy's back door, and I defended a shiny silver Mercedes because, according to Ramon, it represented the privileged white aristocracy of America trying to keep the Latino man down.

"Our duel," Ramon said, spinning his broom like a bo staff, "will represent the struggle our nation's currently engaged in."

"Please, we both know you're just going for home team advantage."

"You wound me, Sam. I can't help it if your crackerlike oppression gives me the better playing field." He did a quick hamstring stretch. "Suck it up."

"Fine," I said, "then I get the handicap."

"Sam, you're Texas. Texas always gets the handicap."

"I'm Team Texas again?"

He grinned, rolled his shoulders, and wiggled his arms, loosening them.

I gave up and nodded at the Mercedes. It looked old and expensive, especially in our parking lot. "Shiny."

Ramon snorted. "Classic. Check out the gullwing doors."

"Fine. Classic Shiny."

Ramon tossed an empty Plumpy's cup into the Dumpster. "Sometimes, Sammy, I question your manhood."

"A car is to get you from place to place. That's it."

Ramon shook his head at my ignorance.

"Whatever. Just try not to dent the car, Team Mexico."

"It's Team South America," he said.

"You do know that Mexico is in North America, right?"

"Yeah, but I have the whole contin ~ Lish McBride

To the night version of her (mother) I owe free-floating anxiety. I am no longer a child in an unsafe home, but anxiety became habit. My brain is conditioned. I worry. I recheck everything obsessively. Is the seat belt fastened, are the reservations correct, is my passport in my purse? Have I done something wrong? Have I said something wrong? I'm sorry - whatever happened must be my fault. Is everyone all right, and if they aren't, how can I step in? That brilliant serenity prayer: God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. To all the children of alcoholics I want to say, Good luck with that. If I don't do it myself, it won't get done (this belief is often rewarded in this increasingly incompetent world). Also, I panic easily. I am not the person you want sitting in the exit row of an airplane. And distrust. Just in general, distrust. Irony.
Irony, according to the dictionary, is the use of comedy to distance oneself from emotion. I developed it as a child lickety-split. Irony was armor, a way to stick it to Mom. You think you can get me? Come on, shoot me, aim that arrow straight at my heart. It can't make a dent because I'm wearing irony. ~ Delia Ephron

Freedom does not come without a price. We may sometimes take for granted the many liberties we enjoy in America, but they have all been earned through the ultimate sacrifice paid by so many of the members of our armed forces. ~ Charlie Dent

I don't see a groundswell of people willing to raise gas taxes right now. That leaves fuel economy standards as the only effective tool we have as a nation to make a dent in our dangerous and ever growing consumption of oil. ~ Sherwood Boehlert

We can throw all the money we want at the gates of hell, not going to make a dent. The solutions to all of our problems can be found through prayer. ~ Patrick Lai

At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside filtered through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of the jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccuping over the whiskey Ford had eventually bought him.
Arthur choked on his beer, leaped to his feet.
"What's that?" he yelped.
"Don't worry," said Ford, "they haven't started yet."
"Thank God for that," said Arthur, and relaxed.
"It's probably just your house being knocked down," said Ford, downing his last pint.
"What?" shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford's spell was broken. Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window.
"My God, they are! They're knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the pub, Ford?"
"It hardly makes any difference at this stage," said Ford, "let them have their fun. ~ Douglas Adams

It is only with the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 that we have been able to put a dent in violence against women, and women have had a place to go. ~ Gwen Moore

In these terrific Georgians we had met more than our match. They could out-eat us, out-drink us, out-dance us, out-sing us. They had the fierce gaiety of the Italians, and the physical energy of the Burgundians. Everything they did was done with flair. They were quite different from the Russians we had met, and it is easy to see why they are so admired by the citizens of the other Soviet republics. Their energy not only survives but fattens on a tropical climate. And nothing can break their individuality or their spirit. That has been tried for many centuries by invaders, by czarist armies, by despots, by the little local nobility. Everything has struck at their spirit and nothing has succeeded in making a dent in it. ~ John Steinbeck

The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind. ~ Douglas Adams

You wanna know if I'm religious? I sure haven't made a dent in the pew, but boy do I thank God. For ever morning I get to wake up and my coffee's hot and your mom's right there next to me at the breakfast table. I thank God I get to work this ranch for a living instead of having to put on a necktie and commute to some office. I get to smell sage and pinon instead of traffic exhaust. Somebody or something made a beautiful place in this ugly world, and saw fit to put me right in the middle of it. Now, whether there's some old fella with a beard floating on a cloud up there or just some...cosmic energy or whatnot, I got no idea. But whatever God is, wherever He lives, I thank Him because, I tell you what, I can look back on every minute of it, good and bad, and I can tell you that I've had one hell of a life. Pardon my French" -Walter ~ Meagan Brothers

At some point we all play by the rules, whether it's the rules of all mankind, the rules of Father who is time, or the rules of nature who is Mother ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Relationship math suggests that It is rare for two people to enter marriage and one person is to blame for everything that goes wrong ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

This place where she worked certainly didn't make it look as if she continued to believe her calling was to change the course of American history. The building's rusted fire escape would just come down, just come loose from its moorings and crash onto the street, if anyone stepped on it - a fire escape whose function was not to save lives in the event of a fire but to uselessly hang there testifying to the immense loneliness inherent to living. For him it was stripped of any other meaning - no meaning could make better use of that building. Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn't surprise us, as astonishing to experience it as it may be. You can try turning yourself inside out, but all you are then is inside out and lonely instead of inside in and lonely. My stupid, stupid Merry dear, stupider even than your stupid father, not even blowing up buildings helps. It's lonely if there are buildings and it's lonely if there are no buildings. There is no protest to be lodged against loneliness - not all the bombing campaigns in history have made a dent in it. The most lethat of manmade explosives can't touch it. Stand in awe not of Communism, my idiot child, but of ordinary, everyday loneliness. On May Day go out and march with your friends to its greater glory, the superpower of superpowers, the force that overwhelms all. Put your money on it, bet on it, ~ Philip Roth

In fact,' said Poirot, 'she stabbed him in the dark, not realising that he was dead already, but somehow deduced that he had a watch in his pyjama pocket, took it out, put back the hands blindly and gave it the requisite dent. ~ Agatha Christie

I don't want to have one hit, one song of the summer, and then have me disappear forever. I really want my things to last, and I want my songs and my bodies of work to resonate with people. I want to hit people - at least make a dent in them. I want to make a mark somehow. ~ Alessia Cara

The trying to change what they think, the attempt to explain, the hope they'll come to see your side of things, it was exhausting because it never made a dent and afterward you only ached unbearably. ~ Marisha Pessl

Remember when I gave you that speech about how everyone has different reactions to massage? Some people fall asleep, some people cry... there's probably a dent in my table from all the boners. ~ Sarina Bowen

Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting "out there" was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in. ~ Haruki Murakami

The hill is paved with wild wheat. If the conifers and sagebrush are soloists, the wheat field is a corps de ballet, each stem following all the rest in bursts of movement, a million ballerinas bending, one after the other, as great gales dent their golden heads. The shape of that dent lasts only a moment, and is as close as anyone gets to seeing wind. ~ Tara Westover

The power a wife is not to prove her husband but to improve him. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

It is sad to fill a grave with a person full of potential yet completely emptied of anymore possibility to try it once again. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

My office door slams open, leaving a dent in the drywall.
Here we go.
"You are driving me crazy!"
Her cheeks are flushed, her breathing's fast, and she's got murder in her eyes.
Beautiful.
I raise my brows hopefully. "Crazy? Like you want to rip my shirt open again?"
"No. Crazy like the itch of a yeast infection that just won't go away."
I flinch. Can't help it.
I mean - Christ. ~ Emma Chase

I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do or any place I wanted to be more than home. Where I can walk around the yard, sweeping leaves off the slate paths to my heart's content. Where I can spend all day in my pajamas puttering around the house, or curled up in my favorite chair in the family room next to the big stone fireplace. The walls are papered deep red, hung with Madison's paintings and lined with our favorite books. The furniture is comfortable and inviting. Our house is made to be lived in; we use every inch of it and don't mind the signs of wear and tear. There's a deep dent in the floor next to the hearth ... It's part of the story of this house, where a family has left its mark, and where it continues to grow and evolve. ~ Sissy Spacek

When I was sixteen, I had just two things on my mind - girls and cars. I wasn't very good with girls. So I thought about cars. I thought about girls, too, but I had more luck with cars.
Let's say that when I turned sixteen, a genie had appeared to me. And that genie said, 'Warren, I'm going to give you the car of your choice. It'll be here tomorrow morning with a big bow tied on it. Brand-new. And it's all yours.'
Having heard all the genie stories, I would say, 'What's the catch?' And the genie would answer, 'There's only one catch. This is the last car you're ever going to ge tin your life. So it's got to last a lifetime.'
If that had happened, I would have picked out that car. But, can you imagine, knowing it had to last a lifetime, what I would do with it?
I would read the manual about five times. I would always keep it garaged. If there was the least little dent or scratch, I'd have it fixed right away because I wouldn't want it rusting. I would baby that car, because it would have to last a lifetime.
That's exactly the position you are in concerning your mind and body. You only get one mind and one body. And it's got to last a lifetime. Now, it's very easy to let them ride for many years. But if you don't take care of that mind and that body, they'll be a wreck forty years later, just life the car would be.
It's what you do right now, today, that determines how your mind and body will operate ten, twenty, and thirty years from now. ~ Warren Buffett

Jazz hadn't given her many details of exactly what life in the Dent house had been like, but he'd told her enough that she knew it wasn't hearts and flowers. Well, except for the occasional heart cut from a chest. And the kind of flowers you send to funerals. ~ Barry Lyga

You cannot want more for people than they want for themselves. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Once upon a time there was a girl named Debbie Jacobs and a boy named Teddy Dennis. ~ Rick Remender

Success is personal ownership of the dream, and responsibility for its desired outcome. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Go ahead, kill me! But live with this: All those people die!

For the rest of your life, somewhere behind the feeds, that human part of you hiding down deep will always wonder how much pain you could have prevented if you hadn't been so weak! ~ Rick Remender

I listen, perhaps the way the wounded will listen to the continuing war ~ Tory Dent

Gossipy neighbors wondered why Captain Grant, as they called him, did not put Colonel Dent's slaves to work in his fields. Rather, when extra labor was needed, he hired free blacks and paid them more than the average wage. He could have benefited from selling the one slave that he owned (courtesy of Colonel Dent) but instead freed him. ~ Joan Waugh

God is the best makeup Artist I have ever seen however, you may get an honorable mention for sprucing. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

I'm frankly sick of all the books and movies trying to predict when Jesus will return and we'll get to start our eternal vacation at his all-inclusive resort called heaven. I'm also sick of the nerd parade of books and conferences that approach the Bible like scholars whose mission is to get their Masters rather than soldiers who are on mission with their Master. We've got work to do. There are lost people to reach, churches to plant, and nations to evangelize. Hell is hot, forever is a long time, and it's our turn to stop making a dent and start making a difference. ~ Mark Driscoll

Vimes stared. It was true about the dogs. There didn't seem to be quite so many mooching around these days, and that was a fact. But he'd visited a few dwarf bars with Carrot, and knew that dwarfs would indeed eat dog, but only of they couldn't get rat. And ten thousand dwarfs eating continuously with knife, fork, and shovel wouldn't make a dent in Ankh-Morpork's rat population. It was a major feature in dwarvish letters back home: come on, everyone, and bring the ketchup. ~ Terry Pratchett

In 1865, Scotsman Thomas Sutherland started the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Company (later HSBC). A senior Chinese government official had issued a warrant for future HSBC board member Thomas Dent in 1839, to close his opium warehouses. This helped spark the first Opium War. France's Le Monde Diplomatique said that "HSBC's first wealth came from opium from India, and later Yunan in China." Yunan is in the Golden Triangle area. The first Opium War forced China to cede Shanghai to Western powers, transforming it from a fishing village to China's largest, most modern city with a network of opium smoking dens. Prof. Alfred McCoy would eventually call Hong Kong "Asia's heroin laboratory," and HSBC would become the world's second largest bank. ~ John L. Potash

Always take failure as an opinion; never as an option. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

I know you come from big spenders, but I could put you on a private jet tonight, fly us to Paris for a shopping trip down Champs Elysées, then have the jet fly us to Hong Kong to finish off our day on Causeway Bay. We could return to the States and stop at the Porsche dealership and pick you out a new 911 and that day wouldn't put a dent in my finances. ~ Lindsay Delagair

Time is not currently one of my problems. - Arthur Dent ~ Douglas Adams

It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to ~ Douglas Adams

Baseball cannot avoid conflicts. Games are played on Good Friday, the most solemn day on the Christian calendar. On Oct. 2, 1978, they played on Rosh Hashana, and Bucky Dent hit one into the screen at Fenway Park. Supply your own moral. ~ George Vecsey

We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world may no longer be to write a letter to the editor or publish a book. It may be simply to stand up and say something ... because both the words and the passion with which they are delivered can now spread across the world at warp speed. ~ Chris Anderson

Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don't in don't shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people
are right more than half the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths,the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. ~ E.B. White

I stare outside the cave, at the stars slowly peeking out of the velvety black. I'm not sure why I always turn to them, all they give are tiny pricks of twinkling light, barely enough to make a dent in the darkness. But they're always there. Holding their own, guiding everyone until sunrise. And the sun always rises. ~ Shannon Messenger

You cannot become the greatest without at least a gr- and a test inside of you ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

An excuse will not wake up early ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

I love Twitter, and my little corner of it is heavily weighted in favour of women, many of them writers: Caitlin Moran, India Knight, Lauren Laverne, Grace Dent, Deborah Orr, Marina Hyde, Suzanne Moore. I look at that list of names and think, 'Here comes the fun - fun that knows its way around a dictionary.' ~ John Niven

No one whose steps are truly ordered by God will ever attempt to walk over another human being. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Don't wear those trousers with that shirt. What are you thinking?"
"I'm going to a bust, not a party."
"That's no reason not to look your best. Let's see, what's the well-dressed cop wearing these days to take down a major terrorist organization? You can't go wrong with basic black."
"Is this a joke?" she asked as he selected another shirt.
"Good fashion sense is never a joke." He handed her the shirt, slid a finger down the dent in her chin. "But it's good to see you smile again, Lieutenant. Oh, and wear the black boots, not the brown."
"I don't have any black boots."
He reached in, pulled out a pair of sturdy black leather. "You do now. ~ J.D. Robb

She leaned down until they were eye to eye. "His wife loved him. That's no bullshit. I love you."
"That's no bullshit."
"If I found out you were screwing around on me, could I off you?" He inclined his head. "I believe I've already been informed you'd be doing the rhumba - after appropriate lessons - on my cold, dead body."
"Yeah. Yeah." It cheered her up. "Just not sure pink Jolene has the stones for that."
"Jimmy Jay was in violation of the ... which commandment is it that deals with adultery?"
"How the hell would I know, especially since I wouldn't wait for you to face your eternal punishment, should you be in said violation, before I rhumba'd my ass off."
"Such is true love."
"Bet your excellent ass. I got the vibe he might've been screwing around, but maybe I'm just a cynical so-and-so."
Pleased with her, Roarke tapped a finger over the dent in her chin. "You are, but you're my cynical so-and-so. ~ J.D. Robb

The most difficult adversary I have ever faced happens to look just like me. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Author of The Automobile Girls at Newport, ~ Laura Dent Crane

Movie distribution may very well have migrated fully to digital form by then, making a huge dent in the need to print film and physically distribute content. ~ Vint Cerf

authoring a book is the sound of your voice around the world ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

This is a wilderness waiting to swallow me; I'd barely make a dent trying to fight it. There are no rules for me to learn, no points to be scored, no bluffs to be called. This is a hell I've never imagined. And I think I'm going to die here. ~ Amie Kaufman

You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen. ~ Douglas Adams

Just supposing," he said, "just supposing"
he didn't know what was coming next, so he thought he'd just sit back and listen
"that there was some extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you didn't know it, I was very important to you, but it all went for nothing because we only had five miles and I was a stupid idiot at knowing how to say something very important to someone I've only just met and not crash into lorries a the same time, what would you say ... " He paused, helplessly, and looked at her.
"I should do. ~ Douglas Adams

All the conservation efforts in the world won't be enough to make a dent in the oncoming sustainability crisis our planet faces. ~ Naveen Jain

We know the soul-spirit can be injured, even maimed, but it is very nearly impossible to kill. You can dent the soul and bend it. You can hurt it and scar it. You can leave the marks of illness upon it, and scorch marks of fear. But it does not die, for it protected by La Loba... ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

And at the end they traveled again. There was a time when Arthur Dent would not. He said that the Bistromathic Drive had revealed to him that time and distance were one, that mind and Universe were one, that perception and reality were one, and that the more one traveled the more one stayed in one place, and that what with one thing and another he would rather just stay put for a while and sort it all out in his mind, which was now at one with the Universe so it shouldn't take too long and he could get a good rest afterward, put in a little flying practice and learn to cook, which he had always meant to do. ~ Douglas Adams

To make a dent in the universe, love is the best hammer. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

If your faith doesn't remove the mountain ... Get to climbing. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.