Perfect Miniature Quotes

When one has apparently made up one's mind to spend the evening at home and has donned one's house-jacket and sat down at the lamplit table after supper and do the particular job or play the particular game on completion of which one is in the habit of going to bed, when the weather out is so unpleasant as to make staying in the obvious choice, when one has been sitting quietly at the table for so long already that one's leaving must inevitably provoke general astonishment, when the stairwell is in any case in darkness and the street door locked, and when in spite of all this one stands up, suddenly ill at ease, changes one's coat, reappears immediately in street clothes, announces that one has to go out and after a brief farewell does so, feeling that one has left behind one a degree of irritation commensurate with the abruptness with which one slammed the apartment door, when one then finds oneself in the street possessed of limbs that respond to the quite unexpected freedom one has procured for them with out-of-the-ordinary agility, when in the wake of this one decision one feels capable, deep down, of taking any decision, when one realizes with a greater sense of significance than usual that one has, after all, more ability than one has need easily to effect and endure the most rapid change, and when in this frame of mind one walks the long city streets - then for that evening one has stepped completely outside one's family, which veers into inessentiality, while one's ow ~ Franz Kafka

Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it. ~ William Tecumseh Sherman

No one is perfect. The important thing is to keep trying and to not beat yourself up over anything you did or didn't do. Just keep moving forward. Remember, you can't change the past. The power you hold to change anything is right now. ~ Akiroq Brost

I take the chakram, my eyes on Mather. "I'm not me without it, am I?"
A smile flips across his face before he shakes his head. "You're perfect the way you are. ~ Sara Raasch

When you're and only child in a family with an only parent, you look at other, bigger families with envy. Mary Alice had a family with a station wagon, a split-level house, and a pool.
But then I looked up and saw Mary Alice's toes, as she stood at the edged of the diving board. Her second toe lay on top of her big toe on each foot. I had never seen such a thing. I wondered if Mary Alice's toes would ever prevent her from doing the things she wanted to do in life.
"Look, y'all!" she said, forming her perfect body into a perfect swan's dive. I decided then that any time I got frustrated with my overall situation in life, mad or jealous of knee socks or a pink canopy bed in a pink room, I'd take a deep breath and think about Mary Alice's toes. At least I didn't have Mary Alice's toes. ~ Margaret McMullan

I am more than perfect
because I am more than love
Petra Hermans
September 27, 2016 ~ Petra Hermans

Resilient systems fail gracefully. A perfect system is often most fragile. ~ Andrew Zolli

I am Muslim, Islam is Perfect but I am not, If I make a mistake blame it on me, not on my religion. ~ Mohammed Suleman Khan

Oh ho, the private eyeball! Poor, prosaic, wretched eyeball. Alas, alack, woe and whoa! Harder and faster they chain him to the stone of stereotype - more and more he cannot earn his daily bread without conforming to the curious standards so stringently set out for him. Once upon a time he had to talk from out of the side of stiff-lipped mouth in accents clipped and surly, and there was the bleak but sheer necessity of constant sexual acrobatics with each and every lady who entered within earshot of the case, no matter how casually. And if by chance the case were not a "caper," it was no damned case at all. There was the day he had to punch all people in the belly with the natural follow-through of one perfect, accurate, and final punch to the chin (for some reason called the button, as you may recall), but that was before the advent of judo. After judo (after World War II, that is), our hero merely had to straighten his palm and smite the nape of his vis-à-vis, who would immediately fall prone or supine but obligingly comatose. ~ Henry Kane

How seldom is generosity perfect and pure! How often do men give because it throws a certain inferiority on those who receive, and superiority on themselves! ~ Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

He was the human equivalent of a perfect piece of fruit featured on a magazine cover – impossibly succulent, such perfection couldn't be real. ~ Genna Rulon

The world's not perfect, but it's there for us trying the best it can. That's what makes it so damn beautiful."

Roy Mustang (Fullmetal Alchemist) ~ Hiroshi Arakawa

Two things are aesthetically perfect in the world - the clock and the cat. ~ Emile Chartier

We seem normal only to those who don't know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on an early dinner date would be; "And how are you crazy?"
The problem is that before marriage, we rarely delve into our complexities. Whenever casual relationships threaten to reveal our flaws, we blame our partners and call it a day. As for our friends, they don't care enough to do the hard work of enlightening us. One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with.
We make mistakes, too, because are so lonely. No one can be in an optimal state of mind to choose a partner when remaining single feels unbearable. We have to be wholly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to be appropriately picky; otherwise, we risk loving no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us that fate.
Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for.
The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn't exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently - the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the "not overly wrong" ~ Alain De Botton

Elegance is the perfect disguise for our violent nature - a mask so convincing that we often fool ourselves the moment we don it. ~ Ashim Shanker

Every element of the circus blends together in a wonderful coalescence. Acts that have been training in separate countries on separate continents now perform in adjacent tents, each part melding seamlessly into a whole. Each costume, each gesture, each sign on each tent is more perfect than the last. ~ Erin Morgenstern

They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance. ~ Joseph Conrad

If I could summarize my suggestions to parents over the past twenty-five years it would be: worry less, criticize less, preach less, listen more, have more fun, be more honest with your own feelings, develop your own joys and friendships, and don't sweat the small stuff (which is nearly everything). The goal is not to be a perfect parent, because no such thing exists. The hope is to be a good enough parent so that your child leaves home a responsible adult who can take care of him or herself. ~ Charlotte Sophia Kasl

Writing a great song is not a simple task, but I feel like when everything comes together and you sing it in a certain way that no-one else can sing it, when it's written in a certain way that's perfect for the way that you're performing it, that those are the things that make a song great. ~ William Beckett

We are called to reflect the Lord's beauty through our lives as much as through our words, and God will use this in His own perfect time. ~ Helen Roseveare

He was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St John it was perfect blessedness. ~ George MacDonald

My great adventure is really Proust. Well
what remains to be written after that? I'm only in the first volume, and there are, I suppose, faults to be found, but I am in a state of amazement; as if a miracle were being done before my eyes. How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped
and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance? One has to put the book down and gasp. The pleasure becomes physical
like sun and wine and grapes and perfect serenity and intense vitality combined. Far otherwise is it with Ulysses; to which I bind myself like a martyr to a stake, and have thank God, now finished
My martyrdom is over. I hope to sell it for £4.10. ~ Virginia Woolf

I'm OK with not being perfect, but I'm not OK with being stagnent. ~ Damon Thueson

The room was a small square of hopelessness.
A flash of red. And then:
Dimensions: 10 ft. by 9 ft.
I swallowed a horrific giggle. Perfect. And now I knew the exact measurements of hopelessness. ~ Debra Driza

The short story is an imploding universe. It has all the boil of energy inside it. A novel has shrapnel going all over the place. You can have a mistake in a novel. A short story has to be perfect. ~ Colum McCann

His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

An impersonal force might be leading you to a wilderness of perfect flatness or a peak of perfect height. But only a personal God can possibly be leading you (if, indeed, you are being led) to a city with just streets and architectural proportions, ~ G.K. Chesterton

They were part of a forest, an ecosystem that is perfect because of its wide variety of species, dominant because nothing is not allowed to be there. In the forest, everything that is inclined to thrive really does, and has a job, and some jobs are to grow things up and some jobs are to take things apart and everything is accepted because there is no notion - among bacteria and moss and busy mice - there is no notion of who deserves to do something or be in a place. There are only lives to be lived, and they are everywhere. ~ Jenny Slate

I guess I'm the perfect young lead actress. I'm not Chloe Sevigny - I'm not really a character actress. Some actors have "character" faces. ~ Berenice Bejo

Brandon: How does the character fit into the story, how will people expect them to fit into the story, and how, therefore, can I make them incongruous for those expectations? I'm looking for incongruity. Ask yourself why this character cannot fill the role in the plot that they are expected to fulfill. Ask yourself who would be perfect for this role. I'm not going to use that person. ~ Brandon Sanderson

The perfect chocolate chip cookie," I intone, "should have three rings. The center should be soft and a little gooey. The middle ring should be chewy. And the outer ring should be crispy."
"I can't hear her give this speech again," Kitty says to Peter. "I just can't."
"Be patient," he says, squeezing her shoulder. "It's almost over, and then we get cookies."
"The perfect cookie is best eaten while still warm, but still delicious at room temperature."
"If you don't quit talking, they won't be warm anymore," Kitty grumbles. I shoot her a glare, but truthfully, I'm glad she's here to be a buffer between Peter and me. Her presence makes things feel normal.
"In the baking world, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Jacques Torres has perfected the chocolate chip cookie. Peter, you and I tasted it for ourselves just a few months ago." I'm really stretching it now to make them suffer. "How will my cookie measure up? Spoiler alert. It's amazing."
Kitty slides off her stool. "That's it. I'm out of here. A chocolate chip cookie isn't worth all this."
I pat her on the head. "Oh, naïve little Kitten. Dear, foolish girl. This cookie is worth all this and more. Sit or you will not partake."
Rolling her eyes, she sits back down.
"My friends, I have finally found it. My white whale. My golden ring. The cookie to rule them all. ~ Jenny Han

It's a simple working formula: if who you are and what you have- in your relationships, at home, or on the job- are what you want, that's perfect; keep doing what you've been doing and you'll get more of it. However, if who you are and what you have is less than or different than what you want, you'll have to make some basic changes. ~ Chris Prentiss

Like This

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,

Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,

Like this.

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.

Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.

Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point
here.
If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.

This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, the returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.

Like this.

When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.

Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.

Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,
~ Rumi

She gazed out at the seductive vista. The countryside was dressed in its prettiest May garb- everything budding or blooming or bursting out in the exuberance of late spring. For Laura, the landscape at thirteen hundred feet up a Welsh mountain was the perfect mix of reassuringly tamed and excitingly wild. In front of the house were lush, high meadows filled with sheep, the lambs plump from their mother's grass-rich milk. Their creamy little shapes bright and clean against the background of pea green. A stream tumbled down the hillside, disappearing into the dense oak woods at the far end of the fields, the ocher trunks fuzzy with moss. On either side of the narrow valley, the land rose steeply to meet the open mountain on the other side of the fence. Here young bracken was springing up sharp and tough to claim the hills for another season. Beyond, in the distance, more mountains rose and fell as far as the eye could see. Laura undid the latch and pushed open the window. She closed her eyes. A warm sigh of the wind carried the scent of hawthorn blossom from the hedgerow. ~ Paula Brackston

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ... ~ Abraham Lincoln

By focusing on such a narrow slice of Nepali life, Ms. Spray and Mr. Velez have ceded any totalizing claim on the truth and instead settled for a perfect incompleteness. ~ Manohla Dargis

The new home fashion will be spare. This will be the return of an old WASP style: the good, frayed carpet; dogs that look like dogs and not a hairdo in a teacup, as miniature dogs back from the canine boutique do now.
A friend, noting what has and will continue to happen with car sales, said America will look like Havana - old cars and faded grandeur. It won't. It will look like 1970, only without the bell-bottoms and excessive hirsuteness. More families will have to live together. More people will drink more regularly. Secret smoking will make a comeback as part of a return to simple pleasures. People will slow down. Mainstream religion will come back. Walker Percy again: Bland affluence breeds fundamentalism. Bland affluence is over. ~ Peggy Noonan

You miss them so much when they deploy, and you want them to be home, but then when they are, things aren't perfect. And you feel as if they should be. Depending on the deployment and what I'd been through, I also had emotions ranging from sadness to anxiety to anger. ~ Chris Kyle

The pastor concluded by saying, 'Even if you have always had it perfect: loving parents, a loving spouse, and you've never been hurt or let down, that's great but it's still a poor representation of the love that God offers you. God will always love you stronger and deeper than any person ever can. ~ Dayo Benson

Deck, I slept with this guy," Tracy said.
"No you didn't," he said quietly. "You slept with Michael. Who turned out to not be real. That's what you should be upset about. That your perfect man was an act."
She had to smile at that. "Perfect, except for the part where he moved to Maine. That sucked."
He smiled, too. "Perfection's overrated, anyway. If he was real, you'd've been bored in a month. No one to argue with. ~ Suzanne Brockmann

Cyndi Lauper's 'Time After Time' was a perfect song. It was so beautiful and so heartfelt. Her vocals were so amazing. And, for me, that was a song I went to when I was feeling sad and wanted to feel even sadder. ~ Lea Thompson

There is value in knowing you are a smart, strong woman. And there is value in knowing that smart, strong women can make less-than-perfect choices. ~ Debora Geary

Scared?"
Terrified. "Of you? Nah. If you grow claws, I might get my sword, but I've fought you in your human shape." It took all my will to shrug. "You aren't that impressive."
He cleared the distance between us in a single leap. I barely had time to jump to my feet. Steel fingers grasped my left wrist. His left arm clasped my waist. I fought, but he outmuscled me with ridiculous ease, pulling me close as if to tango.
"Curran! Let . . . "
I recognized the angle of his hip but I could do nothing about it. He pulled me forward and flipped me in a classic hip-toss throw. Textbook perfect. I flew through the air, guided by his hands, and landed on my back. The air burst from my lungs in a startled gasp. Ow.
"Impressed yet?" he asked with a big smile.
Playing. He was playing. Not a real fight. He could've slammed me down hard enough to break my neck. Instead he had held me to the end, to make sure I landed right.
He leaned forward a little. "Big bad merc, down with a basic hip toss. In your place I'd be blushing."
I gasped, trying to draw air into my lungs.
"I could kill you right now. It wouldn't take much. I think I'm actually embarrassed on your behalf. At least do some magic or something."
As you wish. I gasped and spat my new power word. "Osanda." Kneel, Your Majesty.
He grunted like a man trying to lift a crushing weight that fell on his shoulders. His face shook with strain. Ha-ha. He wasn't the only one who got a boost ~ Ilona Andrews

It seemed to her there was a peacefulness about him that came with resignation, with the extinction of that last hope, like a perfect humility undistracted by the possible, the unrealized, the yet to be determined. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Lady Calpurnia.
He had thought her a boon- a woman with an unparalleled reputation who had simply appeared. She was the perfect solution to the problem of preparing Juliana for her first season- or so he had thought. But then he had kissed her.
And the kiss had been rather extraordinary.
He scoffed at the thought. He had been frustrated and taken aback by the arrival of his sister. Any kiss would have been a welcome distraction.
Especially one so freely given by such an enthusiastic, enjoyable partner.
Ralston hardened almost instantly, remembering the way Callie felt in his arms, her soft sighs, the way she had so willingly given herself up to the kiss. He wondered if her excitement for kissing would translate into eagerness for other, more passionate, acts. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine her in his bed, all enormous brown eyes and full, welcoming lips, wearing nothing but a willing smile. ~ Sarah MacLean