Offensively Large Quotes

However, it's usually random acts of good intent, like this one, which get you into the worst trouble in the long run. They say that if you want to change the world then you should be that change you want to see. Well that's what Gandhi said and see what they did to him. Ya, random acts of good intent are the ones that just might get you killed. The further you stick your neck out for others the more likely it's going to chopped, or at least get a large heavy albatross around it. ~ Andrew James Pritchard

The war has ended with every one owing every one else immense sums of money. Germany owes a large sum to the Allies, the Allies owe a large sum to Great Britain, and Great Britain owes a large sum to the United States. The holders of war loan in every country are owed a large sum by the States, and the States in its turn is owed a large sum by these and other taxpayers. The whole position is in the highest degree artificial, misleading, and vexatious. We shall never be able to move again, unless we can free our limbs from these paper shackles. ~ John Maynard Keynes

It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small matters over a period of years. But the catch is that you can never know when a seemingly small decision may prove to be, from the vantage of later years, the big decision of your life. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

The Slytherin sleeping quarters felt to James like someplace a very tasteful and wealthy pirate captain might sleep. The room was wide, with a sunken floor and low ceilings hung with gargoyle head lanterns. The large beds were mahogany with great square pillars at each corner. The Slytherin House crest hung on curtains at the end of each bed. The three boys clambered onto Ralph's immaculately made bed. ~ G. Norman Lippert

What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant. Certainly many of our most satisfying avocations today consist of making something by hand which machines can usually make more quickly and cheaply, and sometimes better. Nevertheless I must in fairness admit that in a different age the mere fashioning of a machine might have been an excellent hobby... Today the invention of a new machine, however noteworthy to industry, would, as a hobby, be trite stuff. Perhaps we have here the real inwardness of our own question: A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary. It is an assertion of those permanent values which the momentary eddies of social evolution have contravened or overlooked. If this is true, then we may also say that every hobbyist is inherently a radical, and that his tribe is inherently a minority.

This, however, is serious: Becoming serious is a grievous fault in hobbyists. It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational justification. To wish to do it is reason enough. To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an industry–lowers it at once to the ignominious category of an 'exercise' undertaken for health, power, or profit. Lifting dumbbel ~ Aldo Leopold

Books give us pleasure not because they make us comfortable, though some good ones may, but because they entertain us, they make us laugh, they make us cry; they inform, persuade, disturb, convince, seduce us; they make us think, speculate, see - and we recognize what we see as true, not as the truth but as a truth in the writer's fabulous construction that corresponds to what we have observed in ourselves, or others, or in the world at large, or can conceive of observing. ~ William McPherson

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order. ~ Frank Herbert

If walls could keep us small, peasants would all be tiny and kings as large as giants," said Ser Jorah. "I've seen huge men born in hovels, and dwarfs who dwelt in castles. ~ George R R Martin

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

I'll tell you, Liz Cheney is going to be a very good candidate. I worked with her during the Bush campaigns. She's smart, she's focused, she's disciplined - and she's got a great back story. She's got a large family. She's a great mom. And she's a hard worker. I think she's going to be a very effective campaigner. ~ Mark McKinnon

Let us recognize that a large fraction of our suffering and that of our fellow human beings is brought about by what we do to one another. It is humankind, not God, that had invented knives, arrows, guns, bombs, and all manner of other instruments of torture used through the ages. The tragedy of the young child killed by a drunk driver, of the innocent young man dying on the battlefield, or of the young girl cut down by a stray bullet in a crime-ridden section of a modern city can hardly be blamed on God. After all, we have somehow been given free will, the ability to do as we please. We use this ability frequently to disobey the Moral Law. And when we do so, we shouldn't then blame God for the consequences. ~ Francis S. Collins

Unions can play a valuable role in large organisations where it is difficult to talk to a thousand people. They can negotiate annual pay awards with management, represent grievance cases, and explain and advise on complicated changes in employment or pension law. ~ Jim Ratcliffe

Here's the thing: the act of reading changes your life, sometimes in large ways, sometimes in small ways, but every book you read asks you to move outside of yourself and your own experience to consider the lives of others. So I can't identify a particular book that altered my life, but I do know that the act of reading has pushed me to engage more deeply with the world (real and imagined), and I'm grateful for that. ~ Ethan Rutherford

I really don't have that many run-ins. People by and large are very nice to me. ~ Peggy Lee

By and large, I think it should be a rule in the teacher employment manual that you can't go attend any event where if you took your classroom on a student field trip, they would summarily be obliterated. That should be rule No. 1. ~ Dennis Miller

Harry noticed a ring on his uninjured hand that he had never seen Dumbledore wear before: It was large, rather clumsily made of what looked like gold, and was set with a heavy black stone that had cracked down the middle. ~ J.K. Rowling

This is my favorite part of the hunting. Getting to know them . Hearing their legends. I want them to be as large in my mind as they can possibly be, and when I see them I don't want to be disappointed. ~ Kendare Blake

Where else is fatness at a premium? The answer is clear. There are two classes of mammals which are liable to accumulate large quantities of adipose tissue - hibernating mammals and aquatic mammals. ~ Elaine Morgan

It has been reliably established that from 1933 to 1945 millions of innocent people were systematically slaughtered on command. Gas chambers
were built, death camps were guarded, daily quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency
as the manufacture of appliances. These inhumane policies may have originated in the mind of a single
person, but they could only have been carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of people
obeyed orders. ~ Stanley Milgram

It wasn't true, the evidence was faked, but the odd thing is that, whether it s true or not, the consequences are the same: one large group of human beings
or another turned out to be triple-distilled sons-of-bitches, which proves that we all have it in us. Whether the Communists staged a diabolical lie or the Americans sowed plague in China, the one thing that matters is that, as a man, you're
in the gutter. Colonel Babcock. [...] Maybe the West is a civilization, but the Communists are an ugly truth about man. Don't accuse them of inhuman methods: everything about them is human. We're all one great, lovely zoological family, and we shouldn't forget it. That's how you came to be in the gutter Colonel and it's no use your taking refuge on an island and behaving like an ostrich - being English, I mean; the gutter is there, it's you, or rather in you; it flows in your veins. ~ Romain Gary

The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one:
ETC. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

What I learned from my years in Silicon Valley is that design can have a primary role in how a business is shaped, how a company can be design-driven. In my experience of large industry in Europe, that knowledge has been lost. ~ Yves Behar

The things women find rewarding about work are, by and large, the same things that men find rewarding and include both the inherent nature of the work and the social relationships. ~ Grace Baruch

In your car you're in your own private world and in the world at large, both at the same time. ~ A.S.A Harrison

Only a few more steps, I kept telling myself, just a few more steps and I--The box slipped out of my grasp. My knees bent as I tried to regain my grip but it was too late. The box full of totally breakable stuff started to fall.
"Son of a bitch-ass, rat bastard, mother fu - "
The box halted suddenly, a foot from the cement, startling me so strongly that my string of curses was cut off. The weight of the heavy box was completely gone, and my obviously weak arm muscles wept with relief. At first I wondered if I'd developed some kind of superpower, but then I saw two very large hands that weren't mine on either side of the box.
"I admire anyone who can successfully use the word 'rat bastard' in a sentence. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Change is a continuous process. You cannot assess it with the static yardstick of a limited time frame. When a seed is sown into the ground, you cannot immediately see the plant. You have to be patient. With time, it grows into a large tree. And then the flowers bloom, and only then can the fruits be plucked. ~ Mamata Banerjee

Up close like this, I can see that her skin is smooth and clear except for two freckles on her right cheek,and her eyes are gray-green that makes me think of fall.It's the eyes that get me.They are large an arresting,as if she sees everything.As warm as they are,they are busy,no-bullshit eyes,the kind that can look right into you.. ~ Jennifer Niven

I shield my eyes from the sun to see her cold look - the expression I saw in my mind even before I looked at her. She looks older to me than she ever has, stern and tough and worn by time. I feel that way, too.
"These people have no regard for human life," she says. "They're about to wipe the memories of all our friends and neighbors. They're responsible for the deaths of a large majority of our old faction." She sidesteps me and marches toward the door. "I think they're lucky I'm not going to kill them. ~ Veronica Roth

To a large degree, a particular collision of genes and temperament with a suboptimal or hostile environment may explain the development of borderline personality disorder. ~ Dolores Mosquera

But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Hole and the Thread A CERTAIN great Sufi was asked about the role and status of some of his predecessors. He said: 'To erect a small building you may first have to excavate a large hole. 'To make a large carpet you may have to start with a single thread. 'When you can see the building or the carpet, your question is answered. 'But when your question is about the hole in the ground and the thread in the hand, you can only be answered in this parable.' * * * ~ Idries Shah

Sentences spoken by writers, unless they have been written out first, rarely say what writers wish to say. Writers are unlucky speakers, by and large, which accounts for their being in a profession which encourages them to stay at their desk for years, if necessary, pondering what to say next and how best to say it. Interviewers propose to speed up this process
by trepanning writers, so to speak, and fishing around in their brains for unused ideas which otherwise might never get out of there. Not a single idea has ever been discovered by means of this brutal method
and still the trepanning of authors goes on every day.
I now refuse all those who wish to take the top off my skull yet again. The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

You can solve any large or complex problem by breaking it down into smaller, simpler problems. ~ Richard Louv

SCIENCE FICTION IS OFTEN DESCRIBED, AND EVEN DEFINED, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. "If this goes on, this is what will happen." A prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large doses of a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life.

This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as "escapist," but when questioned further, admit they do not read it because "it's so depressing. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I'm sorry, she thought. But she said nothing. I can't save you or anybody else from being dark. She thought of Frank. I wonder if he's dead yet. Said the wrong things; spoke out of line. No, she thought. Somehow he likes Japs. Maybe he identifies with them because they're ugly. She had always told Frank that he was ugly. Large pores. Big nose. Her own skin was finely knit, unusually so. Did he fall dead without me? A fink is a finch, a form of bird. And they say birds die. ~ Philip K. Dick

It's become horribly and offensively popular to say that someone is on the autism spectrum, so all I'll say is his inability to notice when I was crying had to be some kind of pathology. ~ Lena Dunham

We all line up except for this guy in a wheelchair, Devyn. He smiles at me when I line up, introduces himself. He has a movie star smile, just white teeth and charisma, big eyes, dark skin. He'd be perfect looking if he didn't have such a large nose, but the truth is it looks good on him, natural and powerful. He winks at Issie, who blushes.
"You can do it, Is," he says.
She rolls her eyes, twists her lip, and says, "As long as I don't pass out."
"If you pass out, I'll put you in my lap and wheel you across the finish line," he says, and it somehow isn't sleazy because you can tell by his eyes how much he cares about Issie. I instantly like him.
She blushes worse. Her face looks like she's already sprinted a mile. ~ Carrie Jones

It's the way I am."
"How did you become this way?"
"Why is anyone the way they are? That's kind of hard to answer. Why do some people like cheese and other people hate it? Do you like cheese? Mrs. Jones - my housekeeper - has left this for supper." He takes some large, white plates from a cupboard and places one in front of me. We're talking about cheese ... Holy crap. ~ E.L. James

It is better for you to take responsibility for your life as it is, instead of blaming others, or circumstances, for your predicament. As your eyes open, you'll see that your state of health, happiness, and every circumstance of your life has been, in large part, arranged by you - consciously or unconsciously. ~ Dan Millman

The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there. Books about birds show pictures of the peregrine, and the text is full of information. Large and isolated in the gleaming whiteness of the page, the hawk stares back at you, bold, statuesque, brightly coloured. But when you have shut the book, you will never see that bird again. Compared with the close and static image, the reality will seem dull and disappointing. The living bird will never be so large, so shiny-bright. It will be deep in landscape, and always sinking farther back, always at the point of being lost. Pictures are waxworks beside the passionate mobility of the living bird. ~ J.A. Baker

I'm not against extracting a modest amount of wildlife out of the ocean for human consumption, but I am really concerned about the large-scale industrial fishing that engages in destructive practices like trawling and longlining. ~ Sylvia Earle

It often happens, that misery will follow a marriage when the dowry is too large. ~ Decimius Magnus Ausonius

Extraordinarily, Heaviside didn't bother to patent his invention. The patent was filed instead by AT&T, which had nothing to do with the discovery but nonetheless went on to become one of the largest corporations in the world thanks in large part to its unrivaled lead in long-distance telephony. ~ Bill Bryson

Color is a major element in scale. A small room can have a larger look by the use of closely related values, hues, and intensity. A large room can be made to look smaller by marked contrasts of color and value, hue, and intensity. Value is one of the most important elements. Whether light or dark, little value contrast makes for unity, and sharper contrast makes for stronger punctuation. ~ Van Day Truex

The very necessity of bringing our armament up to a certain level as rapidly as possible must place in the foreground the idea of as large returns as possible in foreign exchange and therewith the greatest possible assurance of raw material supplies, through exporting. ~ Hjalmar Schacht