Pivot Point Quotes

No twenty-first-century reader can understand the ultimate triumph of the Allied powers in World War II in 1945 without a grasp of the large drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. The liberation of western Europe is a triptych, each panel informing the others: first, North Africa; then, Italy; and finally the invasion of Normandy and the subsequent campaigns across France, the Low Countries, and Germany. From a distance of sixty years, we can see that North Africa was a pivot point in American history, the place where the United States began to act like a great power - militarily, diplomatically, strategically, tactically. ~ Rick Atkinson

Julius Caesar. His murder is a pivot point for the rest of the action to take place. Other examples?"

"Othello," said Amber.

"Murder for jealousy. Others?"

"Hamlet," offered Heather.

"Murder for power. Others?"

"The Sopranos," said Rick. Everyone laughed.

"Murder of the English language," Skyler quipped, gathering another smattering of laughter. ~ Haley Walsh

Maybe he had become addicted after all - addicted to being the pivot point, to being as central as that crucial joint between copulating man and woman, but with a danger that did not know the bounds of orgasm. ~ Victor Robert Lee

There was a point of equilibrium in any organization's middle management, a fulcrum of responsibility that remained still while the upper and lower ranks of the bureaucracy moved around it. Tyren knew from experience that a shrewd official could find this pivot-point within the org chart and, once entrenched, enjoy near-complete autonomy with almost no responsibility. ~ J. Zachary Pike

Then I circle the pivot point. The point right before the path separates. ~ Kasie West

D-Day represents the greatest achievement of the american people and system in the 20th century. It was the pivot point of the 20th century. It was the day on which the decision was made as to who was going to rule in this world in the second half of the 20th century. Is it going to be Nazism, is it going to be communism, or are the democracies going to prevail? ~ Stephen Ambrose

And the Bastard grant us ... in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

The thing he wished for most was a thing he had never wished for at all, not until he had discovered her. And it came true that night, and many nights after. A brief and shining span of happiness, it was the pivot point around which his whole life spun. ~ Laini Taylor

We're all dreaming, Arctor said. If the last to know he's an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected. He wondered how much of the garbage that Donna had overheard he had seriously meant. He wondered how much of the insanity of the day
his insanity
had been real, or just induced as a contact lunacy, by the situation. Donna, always, was a pivot point of reality for him; for her this was the basic, natural question. He wished he could answer. ~ Philip K. Dick

There is no sharp boundary line separating the reactions of the immune bodies from chemical processes between crystalloids, just as in nature there exists every stage between crystalloid and colloid. The nearer the colloid particle approximates to the normal electrolyte, the nearer its compounds must obviously come to conforming to the law of simple stoichiometric proportions, and the compounds themselves to simple chemical compounds. At this point, it should be recalled that Arrhenius has shown that the quantitative relationship between toxin and antitoxin is very similar to that between acid and base. ~ Karl Landsteiner

It was so kind of you to mention that I don't wear stays. What's the point? If you squeeze it in at one point, it only comes out at the other. ~ Lillie Langtry

Many times we recognize our weakness, but we fail to recognize what God can accomplish through it. It's a giving up point for far too many people who claim to know the all-powerful God. "I just can't" is a foolish statement for those who know God; it should not be in our vocabulary. "I can't" should be replaced by "I can do all things through him who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:13). Weakness should cause us to surrender to Christ in a way we never have before, to cry out to the One who has also known weakness, who has been tempted in every way, who knows the pull to give up, to move on, to pursue His own way. ~ Francis Chan

The real turning point in human history is less apt to be the day the wheel is invented or Rome falls than the day a boy is born to a couple of hick Jews. ~ Frederick Buechner

So turtles, right?"
"Right."
"They exist."
Casey was so smart. "Yes."
"And they move really slow."
"So slow," Josy agreed.
"But they don't know that. To them, that's their normal speed, and everyone else moves superfast."
"That must be really weird."
"Totally. But the point is you're a turtle. You don't know any different because you don't need to. It's just who you are. You do things your own way. You take your time. And turtles have their homes already around them, so anyone who goes near them is already in their home. It's how I feel about you. I go near you, and I feel like I'm home. ~ T.J. Klune

If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing. ~ Kingsley Amis

I have a slight controversy with the Dogme brethren because I've been saying that rules are to be interpreted; not that I haven't followed the rules, because I don't see the point of submitting yourself to a set of rules if you don't follow them. But having said that, it is always a lot of interpretation. ~ Susanne Bier

My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it. ~ Paul Theroux

I saw it all suddenly while I was reading Howards End . . . Forster's the only one who understands what the modern novel ought to be . . . Our frightful mistake was that we believed in tragedy: the point is, tragedy's quite impossible nowadays . . . We ought to aim at being essentially comic writers . . . The whole of Forster's technique is based on the tea-table: instead of trying to screw all his scenes up to the highest possible pitch, he tones them down until they sound like mothers'-meeting gossip . . . In fact, there's actually less emphasis laid on the big scenes than on the unimportant ones: that's what's so utterly terrific. It's the completely new kind of accentuation - like a person talking a different language . . . . ~ Christopher Isherwood

Still everyone, including the abbot, had said that he was running away from his grief. They'd had no idea what they were talking about. He'd cradled his grief, almost to the point of loving it. For so long he refused to give it up, because leaving it behind was like leaving her. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, especially those whose skill is literary, find no opportunity for the independent exercise of their talents, but have to hire themselves out to rich corporations directed by Philistines, who insist upon their producing what they themselves regard as pernicious nonsense. If you were to inquire among journalists in either England or America whether they believed in the policy of the newspaper for which they worked, you would find, I believe, that only a small minority do so; the rest, for the sake of a livelihood, prostitute their skill to purposes which they believe to be harmful. Such work cannot bring any real satisfaction, and in the course of reconciling himself to the doing of it, a man has to make himself so cynical that he can no longer derive whole-hearted satisfaction from anything whatever. I cannot condemn men who undertake work of this sort, since starvation is too serious an alternative, but I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to man's constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account. Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect. ~ Bertrand Russell

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

Inside stillness lies a treasure. It can be opened using nothing more than silent awareness - the gaze of the soul. If you wish to open your soul's treasure, regard the present moment as a uniquely precious thing - the still point around which the world revolves. ~ Deepak Chopra

It is important in building up Zion and preparing for Paradise to keep an eye on Babylon, because the saints have always had a habit of subsiding into the ways of Babylon... Brigham Young said exactly the same thing in language just as strong when the Saints got to the Valley: "Have we not brought Babylon with us? Are we not promoting Babylon here in our midst? Are we not fostering the spirit of Babylon that is now abroad on the face of the whole earth? I ask myself this question, and I answer, Yes, yes... we have too much of Babylon in our midst." It is hard for us to envisage the concept of Zion, let alone Paradise, when we have been so long accustomed to living in Babylon. We are disquieted by vague images of people wandering around in gardens apparently with nothing to do. Far more appealing to us are the vigor and give-and-take and drama of the marketplace... The world today is about as different from Zion as any world possibly can be. In face, it has reached the point, the Lord has told us in emphatic terms, where he is about to remove the whole thing-- sweep the slate clean, that Zion may be established. ~ Nibley, Hugh

There is no such thing as good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral- immoral from a scientific point of view. ~ Oscar Wilde

And rose from her stool to make a big, bullying point of walking to the scales and weighing them herself. Anna felt scolded and two feet tall. She carried the agitation all the way home and didn't speak another word of German for the rest of the day. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Even gods decay. Like, in 1890 somebody sold off thousands of mummified Ancient Egyptian sacred cats - _for fertilizer_. Get the point? Constancy isn't. ~ Jonathan Gash

Universal adoption of the institutions of the free society would better enable adaptation to climate both now and in the future. It would also ensure that, if at some point in the future, a real catastrophe, whether human-induced or otherwise (including climate change), does loom on the horizon, humanity would be in a better position to address it. ~ Julian Morris

Water splashes and runs in a film across the glass floor suspended above the mosaics. The Hacı Kadın hamam is a typical post-Union fusion of architectures; Ottoman domes and niches built over some forgotten Byzantine palace, years and decades of trash blinding, gagging, burying the angel-eyed Greek faces in the mosaic floor; century upon century. That haunted face was only exposed to the light again when the builders tore down the cheap apartment blocks and discovered a wonder. But Istanbul is wonder upon wonder, sedimented wonder, metamorphic cross-bedded wonder. You can't plant a row of beans without turning up some saint or Sufi. At some point every country realizes it must eat its history. Romans ate Greeks, Byzantines ate Romans, Ottomans ate Byzantines, Turks ate Ottomans. The EU eats everything. Again, the splash and run as Ferid Bey scoops warm water in a bronze bowl from the marble basin and pours it over his head. ~ Ian McDonald

Similarly the call to growth can be conceptualized as personal (a daimon or genius, an angel or a muse) or as impersonal, like the tides or the transiting of Venus. Either way works, as long as we're comfortable with it. Or if extra-dimensionality doesn't sit well with you in any form, think of it as "talent," programmed into our genes by evolution. The point, for the thesis I'm seeking to put forward, is that there are forces we can call our allies. As Resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels. ~ Steven Pressfield

My life in Hollywood surrounded by celebrities became a point of view for me - sports, fashion, music, film, arts, and politics as a media play. ~ John Van Hamersveld

To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

This is about you. This is about everything it took you to get to this point, everything it cost you, and everyone who laughed when you dared to dream of something big and bright. You're here tonight because you refused to give up and refused to give in. You're here where they all said you'd never be, and no one can say you haven't earned the right to play this game. ~ Nora Sakavic

I think civilization is going to get to a point where we suddenly become responsible, stewards of the whole evolutionary process. This requires domains of consciousness, not just levels and frequencies. ~ Jean Houston

That is to say, if we think the big takeaway from this Big Book is the rightness or wrongness of homosexual activity, then we've managed to take a sublime narrative and pound it into a single talking point. ~ Kevin DeYoung

What is the point of life except to gather more experiences and to understand yourself? ~ Jaym Gates

What if getting bigger isn't the point? What if you merely got better? ~ Seth Godin

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like'. Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity. ~ Richard J. Foster

When you're used to being at a point where you're deadlifting close to 600 pounds, getting to be 5.5 percent body fat and seeing veins in places you shouldn't see them, it kind of skews your understanding of what is normal and OK. ~ Matt McGorry

Sinatra's endurance has become a rallying point for many people who feel that their sacrifices and hard work are no longer honored. ~ Pete Hamill