Mean Less Quotes

The way I figured it, keeping quiet was safe. Words could betray you if you choose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many. ~ Robyn Schneider

If we [the USA] don't innovate in education, it's literally going to mean less people get to go have that education at a time when more people are going to want it. We've got to put courses out on the Web, we've got to put interactive learning out on the Web. ~ Bill Gates

To All My Mariners in One

Forget the many who talk much, say little, mean less and matter least
Forget we live in times when broadcasts of Tchaikovsky's 5th
precede announcements of the death of tyrants.
Forget that life for governments is priced war cheap but kidnap high
Our seamanship is not with such.
From port to port we learn that "depths last longer than heights",
that years are meant to disappear like wakes,
that nothing but the sun stands still.
We share the sweeter alphabets of laughter and the slower languages of pain.
Common as coal, we find in one another's eyes
the quiet diamonds that are worth the world.
Drawn by the song of our keel, who are we but horizons coming true?
Let others wear their memories like jewelry
We're of the few who work apart so well,
together when we must.
We speak cathedrals when we speak and
trust no promise but the pure supremacy of tears.
What more can we expect?
The sea's blue mischief may be waiting for its time and place,
but still we have the stars to guide us,
we have the winds for company.
We have ourselves.
We have the sailor's faith that not even dying can divide us. ~ Samuel Hazo

I refuse to be misled by any kind of a mirage about any alleged success of what I write. Those things are too easily exaggerated, and even when they are true, they always mean less than they seem to. ~ Thomas Merton

Take Washington, D.C., which spends over $10,000 per student for education whose student achievement would be dead last if Mississippi chose to secede from the Union. Suppose Washington gave each parent even a $5,000 voucher - that wouldn't mean less money available per student. To the contrary, holding total education expenditures constant, it'd mean more money per student remaining in public schools. ~ Walter E. Williams

Reading was my way of not thinking about maths. More than that (or do I mean less?), it was my way of not thinking. ~ Ian McEwan

In this day ... community has come to mean less a geographic neighborhood than a broader, sketchier network of colleagues and kindred spirits. ~ Leah Hager Cohen

old doesn't always mean less advanced." I ~ Nnedi Okorafor

I'd felt it – that moment when a person you need more than air or water or sustenance steps into your orbit and everything subtly shifts, like a camera finally sliding into focus. That person, who used to mean less than nothing, enters your life and rearranges your entire atmosphere around them, as if every atom and cell that makes you you isn't your property anymore. Suddenly, every part of you becomes theirs – your particles dissembled and rearranged to align perfectly with someone who you don't even know or understand yet. You cease to exist as you once were, and that person who meant nothing is suddenly, overwhelmingly, everything. ~ Julie Johnson

Good government has to mean less government. ~ John Stossel No They Can T

Mimesis has longevity on its side. But Oasis wrote two of the greatest pop songs of all time, each with lyrics that mean less and less the more you think about them. So I'm going to have to go with the Gallagher brothers. ~ Matthew Zapruder

I took two or three months and I came up with a reason that I thought was enough and I went with it: if there is a God he's definitely not benevolent. We should mean less to him than ants. And if there is a God or there are gods they would value, more than anything, free will. ~ Tarsem Singh

Quick work doesn't mean less serious work, it depends on one's self-confidence and experience. In the same way Jules Guérard, the lion hunter, says in his book that in the beginning young lions have a lot of trouble killing a horse or an ox, but that the old lions kill with a single blow of the paw or a well-placed bite, and that they are amazingly sure at the job... I must warn you that everyone will think that I work too fast. Don't you believe a word of it. Is it not emotion, the sincerity of one's feeling for nature, that draws us, and if the emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without knowing one works, when sometimes the strokes come with a continuity and coherence like words in a speech or a letter, then one must remember that it has not always been so, and that in time to come there will again be hard days, empty of inspiration. So one must strike while the iron is hot, and put the forged bars on one side. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

It's easy to dismiss religion as bloody, cruel, and tribal. I've done it myself. But it isn't religion that's wired that way – it's man himself. At bottom every faith is a form of instruction in common decency. Different textbooks in the same class. Don't they all teach that to do for others feels better than to do for yourself? That someone else's happiness need not mean less happiness for you? ~ Joe Hill

Are the things in your imagination less real than the things in front of you? Is this rose more real than you? Do the books you've read mean less to you because they haven't really happened to you? Do daydreams at midday or nightdreams at midnight mean nothing? ~ Anna James

I think that the older you get, the more you become your true, essential self. You find the things that make you happy. You whittle away the parts of yourself that mean less to you. ~ Tom Ford

You can get bogged down in a recipe that's got a lot of steps and a million ingredients, and it takes all day to make. And then you realize, you've just got one dish. For Thanksgiving, you want an abundance of choices, and so you want dishes that you can put together really quickly, but that doesn't mean less flavor. ~ Ina Garten

Without patience, we will learn less in life. We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less. Ironically, rush and more usually mean less. ~ Mother Teresa

I draw from my family and my friends and I feel like that small-town person. The achievements, the materialistic possessions have really become to mean less. They mean nothing. ~ Sheryl Crow

You mean less to me than the dog s__t I scraped off the bottom of my shoe! ~ Emma Paul

When someone shows you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself. You are not made up of compartments! You are one whole person! What gets said to you gets said to all of you, ditto what gets done. Being treated like shit is not an amusing game or a transgressive intellectual experiment. It's something you accept, condone, and learn to believe you deserve. This is so simple. But I tried so hard to make it complicated. ~ Lena Dunham

New affairs were exciting but they
were also hard work. The first kiss, the first fuck had some drama. People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me. ~ Charles Bukowski

A fearsome reputation will someday mean less of this bullshit. People and things will get so they won't dare mess with me. Crazy violent sociopaths get left alone. Or locked up. I nodded. Yeah, that's the down side. ~ Morgan Blayde

In Japan if you say "the war," people know you mean World War II, because that was the last one that Japan fought in. In America it's different. America is constantly fighting wars all over the place, so you have to be more specific. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Just because nothing shakes loose from the web, doesn't mean the spider went hungry. ~ D.M. Timney

Someone else has to be disseminating it. (Mark)
Dis-a what? (Nick)
Disseminating. It means distributing it. (Mark)
Then why didn't you say that? (Nick)
Remind me to get him a word-of-the-day calendar. (Mark) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said, "Me? No, I'm not creative". I would be gazillionaire. The thing is, that's not really them talking, it's their jerkface inner critic. Okay, so maybe you haven't made anything in a very long time, but that doesn't mean you're not creative. What it means is that, somewhere along the way, you became really good at saying "Me? No, I'm not creative". ~ Danielle Krysa

What do you think? Does everything look right? "
" You really expect me to look at anything but you? "
She laughed even as her pulse jittered. " Boy, I must be in bad shape when a shopworn line like that hits the mark. "
" I mean it, " he said and watched her smile fade. " I adore looking at you. " Laying a hand on her knees with a long, slow, thorough kiss. " Beautiful Margo. mine. "
" Well, you're certainly taking my mind off my ... kiss me again. "
" Glad to. ~ Nora Roberts

Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university. ~ William James

I'm not going to let anyone Wendy me."
"Wendy you? What the hell does that mean?"Talbot asked.
"Wendy, from Peter Pan! Peter and the lost boys set to go off fighting pirates while Wendy has to stay back and clean their stupid tree house. We'll, I'm not doing it. I'm fighting for my baby brother and that's final. ~ Bree Despain

What does dating mean? ~ Lalu Prasad Yadav

See, when you mess something up, you learn for the next time. It's when people compliment you that you're in trouble. That means they expect you to keep it up. ~ Ned Vizzini

Because you don't live near a bakery doesn't mean you have to go without cheesecake. ~ Hedy Lamarr

Just because I know what women like talking about, doesn't mean I can actually carry on a conversation with a woman. ~ Norm Bass

Did you and dad eat the raw-violi I left in the fridge?"
"Sort of. I mean, we considered eating it. It made its way onto the table. But we ended up having the rest of the rawkin' raw-sagna instead. (Rawkin' raw-sagna: a sorry excuse for a real lasagna made with uncooked squash slices, tomatoes, and cashew paste, and served on - what else? - Elvis dinner plates). I don't have the heart to tell her that dad chucked both dinners and ordered us a pizza. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

What's holding me up is I'm confused about the nature of the music. Because the modern music doesn't reach me. I mean to say the sound of the modern electric production. A lot of sequencers ... synths. That's what people are buying. Because that doesn't reach me, it throws me back to like 1948, but I don't want to be there. Back there, I'm talking about blues records ... The roots of rock 'n' roll is rhythm and blues and that's like really where I'm at, where I was always at. ~ Joe Strummer

...he was such an ass - I mean if he was any more of an ass, he'd be saddled and ridden in a small pueblo in Mexico.
--Ashland ~ Lila Felix

The spirit in which one earns his daily bread means as much to his soul as the bread itself may mean to his body. ~ Myrtle Reed

If you're unable to catch it in time, the cancer can spread to the lymph nodes and at that point, the cancer is essentially incurable, but that doesn't mean your condition can't be improved. ~ Len Dawson

I'll probably always love him. Doesn't mean I can ever trust him again. That doesn't make a relationship. ~ Abbi Glines

Infatuation means, 'A love that it is inconvenient to go on with. ~ Celia Fremlin

Here is one of the best means to acquire humility; fix well in mind this maxim: One is as much as he is in the sight of God, and no more. ~ Francis Of Assisi

What I mean is, right from that first time, there was
something in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to
say: Yes, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what a
pity we left it so late. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Our memories tell us who we are and they cannot be achieved through committee work, by consulting other people about what happened. That doesn't mean that at all times memories are telling us the absolute truth, but that the main source of who we are is that memory, flawed or not. ~ Tobias Wolff

Hadrian walked over to where the boys were fighting and sat on the grass near Denek to watch. Denek, who was only twelve years old, glanced at him curiously. "Who are you?"

"My name is Hadrian," he replied as he extended his hand. The boy shook it, squeezing harder than was necessary. "You're Denek, right? The Pickerings' third son? Perhaps you should speak with my friend Myron, seeing as how I hear you are monastery-bound."

"Am not!" he shouted. "Going to the monastery, I mean. I can fight as well as Fanen."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Hadrian said. "Fanen is flat-footed, and his balance is off. He's not going to improve much either, because Mauvin is teaching him, and Mauvin is favoring his right and rocks back on his left too much."

Denek grinned at Hadrian and then turned to his brothers. "Hadrian says you both fight like girls!"

"What's that?" Mauvin said, whacking aside Fanen's loose attack once more.

"Oh, ah, nothing," Hadrian said, trying to recant, and glared at Denek, who just kept grinning. "Thanks a lot," he told the boy. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

I think one of the reasons that I feel empty after watching a lot of TV, and one of the things that makes TV seductive, is that it gives the illusion of relationships with people. It's a way to have people in the room talking and being entertaining, but it doesn't require anything of me. I mean, I can see them, they can't see me. And that they're there for me, and I can, I can receive from the TV, I can receive entertainment and stimulation. Without having to give anything back but the most tangential kind of attention. And that is very seductive. ~ David Foster Wallace

Relying, as I do, upon the Almighty Power, and encouraged as I am by these resolutions which you have just read, with the support which I receive from Christian men, I shall not hesitate to use all the means at my control to secure the termination of this rebellion, and will hope for success. ~ Abraham Lincoln

MOANING MYRTLE: What did you call me? Do I moan? Am I moaning now? AM I? AM I? SCORPIUS: No, I didn't mean . . . MOANING MYRTLE: What's my name? SCORPIUS: Myrtle. MOANING MYRTLE: Exactly - Myrtle. Myrtle Elizabeth Warren - a pretty name - my name - no need for the moaning. ~ J.K. Rowling

recant, v.

I want to take back at least half of the "I love you"s, because I didn't mean them as much as the other ones. I want to take back the book of artsy photos I gave you, because you didn't get it and said it was hipster trash. I want to take back what I said about you being an emotional zombie. I want to take back the time I called you "honey" in front of your sister and you looked like I had just shown her pictures of us having sex. I want to take back the wineglass I broke when I was mad, because it was a nice wineglass and the argument would have ended anyway. I want to take back the time we had sex in a rent-a-car, not because I feel bad about the people who got in the car after us, but because it was massively uncomfortable. I want to take back the trust I had while you were away in Austin. I want to take back the time I said you were a genius, because I was being sarcastic and I should have just said you'd hurt my feelings. I want to take back the secrets I told you so I can decide now whether to tell them to you again. I want to take back the piece of me that lies in you, to see if I truly miss it. I want to take back at least half the "I love you"s, because it feels safer that way. ~ David Levithan

The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus, you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life. ~ John Ortberg

You're saying something with your appearance whether you mean to or not, so you may as well mean to. ~ Lyle Lovett

I'm the ugly sister. I'm the fat one. I'm the transvestite. I have had those mean things said about me at least twice a day for the last five years. It's horrible, you know? But I can brush that stuff off. ~ Khloe Kardashian

Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way. ~ Henry Miller

To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the "as if" condition. Thus, it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth. ~ Carl Rogers

Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the teapot, but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as being on all fours with its non-existence. ~ Richard Dawkins

It has occurred to me that possibly the white corpuscles may have the office of picking up and digesting bacterial organisms when by any means they find their way into the blood. The propensity exhibited by the leukocytes for picking up inorganic granules is well known, and that they may be able not only to pick up but to assimilate, and so dispose of, the bacteria which come in their way does not seem to me very improbable in view of the fact that amoebae, which resemble them so closely, feed upon bacteria and similar organisms. ~ George Miller Sternberg

It snuck up on me - growing up, I mean. ~ Jenny Han

As always the thought of his own death calmed him as much as that of others disturbed him: was it perhaps because, when all was said and done, his own death would in the first place mean that of the whole world? ~ Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing. ~ Glenn Beck