Rarely Quotes

Alek said, "Do you think I'm being a fool?"
"I think you're trying to do something good. But doing good is rarely easy, and no weapon has ever stopped a war. ~ Scott Westerfeld

There are such moments in life: one unexpectedly discovers that perfection exists, that it, too, is a tiny sphere traveling in time, empty, transparent, luminous, and which sometimes (rarely) comes in our direction and encircles us for a few brief moments before traveling on to other parts and other people. ~ Jose Saramago

I don't listen to much rap, really. I can rarely listen to a whole record of it, because musically, it's very formulaic, and oftentimes it doesn't have the best hooks on every track. ~ Nellie McKay

Let's try to find ten good things to say about Albert Belle:
10. So far as we know, he's never killed anyone.
9. He is handsome, and built like a God.
8. He played every game.
7. He has never appeared on the Jerry Springer Show.
6. He was an underrated base runner who was rarely caught stealing.
5. He hasn't been arrested in several years.
4. He is very bright.
3. He works hard.
2. He has never spoken favorably about Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, or any other foreign madman.
1. The man could hit. ~ Bill James

Moral issues rarely have yes or no answers.
-Myles to Alanna when she asks about the Gift ~ Tamora Pierce

Fulfilment of masculinity is often sold on the strength of peak experiences: winning battles, pulling women, pure adrenaline, moments of ecstasy. But life ain't like that. We rarely, if ever, take our car (masculinity) on to a racetrack, so maybe we need a version that works doing the everyday things. We need a masculinity that's easy to park, with a big boot, child seats and low fuel consumption. Men need to learn to equip themselves for peace. ~ Grayson Perry

A wise person is silent and rarely wants to show his wisdom. A fool is always vocal and uses every opportunity to show his foolishness. ~ Debasish Mridha

Rarely has a man been more comfortable with his own greatness. He spent much of his leisure time penning long and flattering portraits of himself, declaring that there had never 'been a greater botanist or zoologist', and that his system of classification was 'the greatest achievement in the realm of science'. Modestly, he suggested that his gravestone should bear the inscription Princeps Botanicorum, 'Prince of Botanists'. It was never wise to question his generous self-assessments. Those who did so were apt to find they had weeds named after them. ~ Bill Bryson

Evil men rarely convince others to their side by asking them to perform dark deeds for no good reason. They will always start with the lightest shade of gray. They so often use what seems like a good cause."

"You don't think it's possible that a little gray is what's needed, sometimes?" asked Davian.

Raleth snorted.

"No," he said severely. "Gray is the color of cowardice and ignorance and sheer laziness, Davian--never let anyone tell you otherwise. If something is not clearly right or wrong then it bears actually *figuring out* which one it is, not dismissal into some nebulous third category. If you have a basis for your morality, a foundation for it, then there will always be an answer--and if you do not, then trying to decide whether *anything* is right or wrong is an exercise in futility and irrelevance. ~ James Islington

To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company, for in company I was very rarely noticed; ~ Charlotte Bronte

Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually only leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their members from their traumas. Well-functioning people are able to accept individual differences and acknowledge the humanity of others. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they're not. And somewhere in the shadows behind them-who? Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to? ~ Anonymous

Achievers rarely, if ever, see a problem as permanent, while those who fail see even the smallest problems as permanent. ~ Anthony Robbins

At home I walked through a haze of belongings that knew, at least vaguely, who they belonged to. Grampar's chair resented anyone else sitting on it as much as he did himself. Gramma's shirts and jumpers adjusted themselves to hide her missing breast. My mother's shoes positively vibrated with consciousness. Our toys looked out for us. There was a potato knife in the kitchen that Gramma couldn't use. It was an ordinary enough brown-handled thing, but she'd cut herself with it once, and ever after it wanted more of her blood. If I rummaged through the kitchen drawer, I could feel it brooding. After she died, that faded. Then there were the coffee spoons, rarely used, tiny, a wedding present. They were made of silver, and they knew themselves superior to everything else and special.

None of these things did anything. The coffee spoons didn't stir the coffee without being held or anything. They didn't have conversations with the sugar tongs about who was the most cherished. I suppose what they really did was physiological. They confirmed the past, they connected everything, they were threads in a tapestry. ~ Jo Walton

Mma Ramotswe decided to go back into her office. There was a curious thing about male conversation that she had noticed - men often ended up poking fun at one another. Women did this only rarely, but men seemed to love insulting one another. It was very strange. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Being pretentious is rarely harmful to anyone. Accusing others of it is. You can use the word "pretentious" as a weapon with which to bludgeon other people's creative efforts, but in shutting them down the accusation will shatter in your hand and out will bleed your own insecurities, prejudices, and unquestioned assumptions. ~ Dan Fox

My own gut feeling is that everyone's psychic ... and it's so ingrained a part of us that we very rarely notice it. The talent may be largely preventative, and that keeps it from being noticed, too. ~ Stephen King

Earl rarely used the word, but his whole system of teaching and his whole way of living was built around the concept of honor. You honored God by using your time wisely, and you honored your fellow man by treating him with respect. You honored your teacher by calling him "sir," and he honored his students by challenging them to face pain and become stronger. Earl had come to associate charity with pain, and he believed that love did its deepest work when applied to a wound. ~ Eric Greitens

Propaganda rarely makes good art. ~ Susan Sutherland Isaacs

Conservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, rarely resisted, towards utopianism. ~ John Derbyshire

She hesitated. "I'm not sure I understand."
"Don't you?" he asked. "You changed my heart, Rachel."
She felt her throat constrict, making any reply impossible.
"Rachel?" Her silence rarely made him uncomfortable, but this time he had no clear view of her features and no way to gauge her reaction. He wondered if he should have made a more straightforward declaration. "Did you hear me say I love you?"
She turned her cheek into his shoulder. "I heard you. ~ Jo Goodman

Yet church youth groups rarely teach apologetics, majoring instead on games and goodies. ~ Nancy Pearcey

PSYCHOSIS: A severe mental disorder, a derangement of personality. Some individuals experience mood swings and agitation, but emotional dampening and social withdrawal are the most common symptoms. Despite society's beliefs, psychotic individuals rarely become violent and are often at a much greater risk of causing harm to themselves than to others.8 There are many theories as to what causes psychosis. Many current theories agree that it is caused by a combination of inherited genetic factors and external environmental factors. ~ Alessandra Torre

Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because what "doing" would look like, and where it happens, hasn't been decided. In ~ David Allen

The perilous path to progress has never been successfully detached from sacrifice, Mr. Sheppard. The altars of advancement have rarely been bloodless, but we can hope, we can pray, that our lambs have not, and will not, die in vain. ~ Randy McWilson

Sapphique strapped the wings to his arms and flew, over oceans and plains, over glass cities and mountains of gold. Animals fled; people pointed up. He flew so far, he saw the sky above him and the sky said, "Turn back, my son, for you have climbed too high." Sapphique laughed, as he rarely did. "Not this time. This time I beat on you until you open."
But Incarceron was angered, and struck him down. ~ Catherine Fisher

Here: an exercise in choice. Your choice. One of these tales is true.
She lived through the war. In 1959 she came to America. She now lives in a condo in Miami, a tiny French woman with white hair, with a daughter and a grand-daughter. She keeps herself to herself and smiles rarely, as if the weight of memory keeps her from finding joy.
Or that's a lie. Actually the Gestapo picked her up during a border crossing in 1943, and they left her in a meadow. First she dug her own grave, then a single bullet to the back of the skull.
Her last thought, before that bullet, was that she was four months' pregnant, and that if we do not fight to create a future there will be no future for any of us.
There is an old woman in Miami who wakes, confused, from a dream of the wind blowing the wildflowers in a meadow.
There are bones untouched beneath the warm French earth which dream of a daughter's wedding. Good wine is drunk. The only tears shed are happy ones. ~ Neil Gaiman

Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class differences than in educational settings. ~ Bell Hooks

In my experience people are rarely contented to end up where they started. ~ Eleanor Catton

Rachel looked uncomfortable. "My father is rarely around," she said, "but that doesn't mean he doesn't like to keep an eye on me. Last year, he put this parental spy software on all the home computers so he could monitor what I was doing." Ema said, "Yuck." "I know, right?" Ema shook her head and said, "Parents." I could see a softening between the two. It wasn't much. Softening might be too strong a word. Thawing might be more accurate. But it was there. "But the thing is, ~ Harlan Coben

Every time he opens his mouth I have absolutely no idea what he's gonna say. He's the most honest person I've ever met. He's a quick study and rarely needs to make the same mistake twice. He really tries to learn, and does, and he makes me laugh, and the world's generally a lighter place when he's in my sight. ~ Ethan Hawke

Although people rarely died playing Quidditch, referees had been known to vanish and turn up months later in the Sahara Desert. ~ J.K. Rowling

If you put on a lousy production with white actors, it's lousy. There is a problem, or can be, at this stage of our social evolution, with mixing the casts. It may not be a question of race so much as class. You would rarely find a black man in a high executive position where he was swinging his weight around. ~ Howard Schultz

In an essay, you have the outcome in your pocket before you set out on your journey, and very rarely do you make an intellectual or psychological discovery. But when you write fiction, you don't know where you are going - sometimes down to the last paragraph - and that is the pleasure of it. ~ Cynthia Ozick

This is what is so rarely said about unlikable women in fiction – that they aren't pretending, that they won't or can't pretend to be someone they are not. They have neither the energy for it nor the desire. ~ Roxane Gay

Guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action. ~ Abraham Verghese

they both knew they could simply refuse if they really wanted to, and they both rarely did - after all, where else would they get to use their semaphores, that language that only had two speakers in the whole world? ~ Hanya Yanagihara

My experiences have taught me that things rarely improve with a simple change of scenery. ~ Pittacus Lore

Ideas rarely come out whole. They change as they get brought to life. New constraints appear, new directions suggest themselves, and new influences come to bear. ~ David DuChemin

history is one sided, none of the stories are wholly true. We only hear the stories the victor wants told. The remaining stories, the plights, justifications and heroics of the losers are gone with time. Ours is such a history. We are stronger, yet rarely ~ H.K. Savage

For-profit weather forecasters rarely predict exactly a 50 percent chance of rain, which might seem wishy-washy and indecisive to consumers.41 Instead, they'll flip a coin and round up to 60, or down to 40, even though this makes the forecasts both less accurate and ~ Nate Silver

There is a sort of camaraderie that rarely exists except between men who have fought the same enemies and know the same women. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

There is a passion for perfection which you will rarely see fully developed; but you may note this fact, that in successful lives it is never wholly lacking. ~ Bliss Carman

I believe that in every circumstance I have been able to see rather clearly the most advantageous course I could follow, which is very rarely the one I did follow. ~ Andre Gide

I choose the places I go to carefully and wisely. I'll rarely go to a shopping mall anymore. ~ Fran Drescher

I rarely acquire any enthusiasm for the opposite sex outside of being drunk. ~ Claire-Louise Bennett

That's the thing about taste: It's rarely shared. ~ Suzanne Rindell

It is a very high mind to which gratitude is not a painful sensation. If you wish to please, you will find it wiser to receive, solicit even, favors, than accord them; for the vanity of the obligor is always flattered, that of the obligee rarely. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

In my experience, adults rarely bother reading the reviews of children's books and almost never read the books themselves - particularly if they don't have children. ~ Meg Rosoff

Thwarted, or starved, in the important objects proper to young capacities, the boys and young men naturally find or invent deviant objects for themselves ... Their choices and inventions are rarely charming, usually stupid, and often disastrous; we cannot expect average kids to deviate with genius. But on the other hand, the young men who conform to the dominant society become for the most part apathetic, disappointed, cynical and wasted. ~ Paul Goodman

We rarely grow when we're happy, we grow when we hurt. ~ Maggie Q

The one trying to have the last word is rarely walking in the Word. ~ Hollisa Alewine

Real invention is a process of repeated, crushing failure that leads, very rarely, to a success. If you want to succeed faster, there's nothing for it but to fail faster and better. ~ Cory Doctorow

Children listen to superstitious tales, the story goes, that that spot, in the heart of the "Big Cane," is a haunted place. For more than a quarter of a century, human voices had rarely, if ever, disturbed the silence of the clearing. Rank and noxious weeds had overspread the once cultivated field - serpents sunned themselves on the doorway of the crumbling cabin. It was indeed a dreary picture ~ Solomon Northup

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death. ~ William Osler

Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Curiously, ghosts are rarely if ever seen in the nude. They appear fully clothed, and may even change clothing on subsequent appearances. They may change their form, to appear as they looked at different stages of their lives. Unless someone out there knows of an extoplasmic department store on the spiritual plane, we have to wonder, Where do the clothes and accessories come from? ~ Loyd Auerbach

In the conduct of our public worship where is the authority of Christ to be found? The truth is that today the Lord rarely controls a service, and the influence He exerts is very small. We sing of Him and preach about Him, but He must not interfere; we worship our way, and it must be right because we have always done it that way, as have the other churches in our group. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

Rarely have I seen any really great advertising created without a certain amount of confusion, throw-aways, bent noses, irritation and downright cursedness. ~ Leo Burnett

The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. Every Darre woman is taught to deal with such behavior from men. It is an animal trick that they use, like dogs ruffling their fur and growling. Only rarely is there an actual threat behind it, and a woman's strength lies in discerning when the threat is real and when it is just hair and noise. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Stories rarely begin at the beginning, but every storyteller has to begin somewhere, and Anna chooses to start this story with shame. ~ Steve Luxenberg

She was fully, painfully aware that very rarely did midnight strike in two hearts at once, very rarely did midnight arouse two different equal desires, and that any dislocation in this, any indifference, was an indication of disunity, of the difficulties, the impossibilities of fusion between two human beings. ~ Anais Nin

The mass of the population before the modern era rarely ate meat as the mass of the peasantry rarely do in underdeveloped countries today. In Europe, in the Middle Ages, meat, especially red meat, was associated with aristocracy, landed gentry and their militaristic and hunting culture. It was this, also, that tended to strengthen the association of meat with power and aggression. ~ Malcolm Hamilton

Leonie Barrow knew enough about real criminal investigations to know full well that cases rarely if ever hinged on an encyclopedic knowledge of tobacco ash or the curious incident of the butler's allergy to spinach. ~ Jonathan L. Howard

O Aristotle! if you had had the advantage of being "the freshest modern" instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor,–that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else? ~ George Eliot

Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. "Hate the sin and not the sinner" is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

these words of wisdom, so rarely understood: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men. ~ Jules Verne

A few generations ago, men went to work or war and rarely got to see life beyond their careers. A generation ago, our parents had to answer the question of what they would do with the last third of their lives. How would they spend their retirement? Would it be squandered on silly things or invested in significance? But now, the question of legacy isn't a matter of if you live long enough or when you retire; it's a matter of what you will do with what you have right now. You don't have to earn a living for thirty years to turn around and spend the next thirty giving it away. If significance is what matters to you, you can structure your life and work in a way that allows you to live your legacy now. In fact, your giving doesn't have to be a by-product of your success; it can be the very thing that drives it in the first place. ~ Jeff Goins

There have been a few moments when I have known complete satisfaction, but only a few. I have rarely been free from the disturbing realization that my playing might have been better. ~ Ignacy Jan Paderewski

The problem with my pride, though, is that it rarely lets me forget when it's been burned. ~ Karina Halle

Why hoard away so many back-issues of People Magazine? Fashion magazines are just empty promises. You can go bankrupt blowing all your cash on expensive beauty products, but the only way you'll ever look just like the people on those glossy front covers is if you know how to use computer editing software for photographs. Besides, people who think they are ugly, are never really all that ugly anyway. People who think they are pretty, are rarely ever all that pretty. ~ Rebecca McNutt

I have listened to much dull and heavy conversation in America, but rarely to any that I could strictly call silly (if I except the every where privileged class of very young ladies). ~ Frances Trollope

Wisdom is the inner form of man, and rarely are adjusted out ~ Haruni Machumu

In the United States, revolts tends to be directed against specific situations, rarely against the social structure as a whole. ~ Harold Rosenberg

Victims of misfortune are quick to sense another of their kind from a distance, but in old age they rarely become friends, which is in no way surprising: they have nothing to share together - not even hope. ~ Ivan Turgenev

Picture the poor Arab private. He knows no one in his unit gives a shit about him; after all, he doesn't give a shit about any of them, either. They're not family. What happens when that private is placed in the loneliest position in the world, the modern battlefield? He runs at the first sign things are going badly. (He'll be fine as long as they are going well, though. Note: things rarely go well.) ~ Tom Kratman

Those who talk loudly are rarely listened to. ~ Malcolm Forbes

Bizarrely funny ... Rarely is a documentary as well attuned to its subject as Howard Brookner's BURROUGHS, which captures as much about the life, work and sensibility of its subject as its 86 minute format allows. ~ Janet Maslin

The Christian's instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God. But this is knowledge which Christians today largely lack: and that is one reason why our faith is so feeble and our worship so flabby ... When a person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty. ~ J.I. Packer

We don't talk about white drug dealers this way. We don't even talk about white murderers this way. Somehow, we manage to think of them as people first, who just happened to do something bad. But the same respect is rarely afforded to Black folks. We must always earn the right to live. Perfection is demanded of Blackness before mercy or grace or justice can even be considered. ~ Austin Channing Brown

Since politicians and bureaucrats can rarely sign real contracts, the best way to prove you'll do something later is to do it now ~ Garett Jones

She didn't even have to smile, and she rarely did outside her house
it was the eyes, her dancer's carriage, the way she seemed to deliberate over the smallest movement of her body. ~ Alice Sebold

When you've had a life of overthinking, you have the same reaction time and time again. Shyness becomes habitual. When you're put in an unfamiliar situation, all you want to do is retreat and hide by default. You watch but don't participate. You listen but don't respond. You read, but rarely comment. You take a photo, but you rarely post. You write, but you rarely publish. All of this is because your overthinking mind cannot stop thinking about how you will be perceived by the outside world. ~ Joel Annesley

The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. ~ Karen Blixen

Oh, can these men love, my Clodius? Scarcely even with the senses. How rarely a Roman has a heart! He is but the mechanism of genius - he wants its bones and flesh. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Besides, as I have never tired of telling my Christian followers, we pagans rarely persecute Christians. We believe there are many gods, so we accept another man's religion as his own affair, while Christians, who perversely insist that there is only one god, think it their duty to kill, maim, enslave, or revile anyone who disagrees. They tell me this is for our own good. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything
evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing
it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing. ~ Michael Crichton

My own career started in New York at the 'Associated Press', a fast-paced news agency where we rarely had time for deep reporting. ~ Tom Rachman

I never turn down requests for interviews. I'm just rarely asked. ~ Bob Ross

I rarely think about myself that much. I really don't. ~ Nancy Reagan

In other circumstances, if Jamie hadn't been so miserable, Ryan would have laughed. Jamie rarely got so pissed that he lost the thread of the conversation. "Yes, you are." Cradling Jamie's face, he brushed his lips against Jamie's forehead. "Everything will be fine, you'll see." He kissed Jamie's temple.

Jamie shuddered. "Don't. Not now. I can't - not now."

Frowning, Ryan pulled back to look at his friend.

Jamie was staring at him oddly, his lips parted and curled in half a grimace, his eyes gleaming with desperation. "I - " he said before suddenly lunging forward and closing the distance between their mouths.

For a moment, Ryan's alcohol-fogged brain couldn't understand what was going on.

Jamie was kissing him.

Jamie was kissing him. Or at least trying to, his lips clumsy and awkward but desperate and needy - so needy it was weirding Ryan out. ~ Alessandra Hazard

rarely, at this age, think of the future. It might not be that afternoon, it might not be the next day, it might not even be in a week, but their time on this earth is limited. If they think in seasons, this might be their last. If they think in holidays, they might not live to see another wreath on the door. So they don't think about it, or they try not to. ~ Richard J. Alley

Hitler's strength as a leader is that he almost always works through the power of his persuasion; rarely does he command. ~ Rudolf Hess

The creatives are rarely professional and the professionals are rarely creative. ~ Simon Sinek

I regard the effort to introduce women into colleges for young men as very undesirable, and for many reasons. That the two sexes should be united, both as teachers and pupils, in the same institution seems very desirable, but rarely in early life by a method that removes them from parental watch and care, and the protecting influences of a home. ~ Catharine Beecher

Thirty years later he could not come to any other conclusion: women were indisputably better than men. They were gentler, more affectionate, more loving and more compassionate, they were rarely violent, selfish, cruel or self-centred. Moreover, they were more rational, more intelligent and more hardworking.
What on earth were men for? Michael wondered as he watched sunlight play across the closed curtains. In earlier times, when bears were more common, perhaps masculinity served a particular function, but for centuries now, men served no useful purpose. For the most part, they assuaged their boredom playing squash, which was a lesser evil; but from time to time they felt the need to change history - which expressed itself in leading a revolution or starting a war somewhere. Aside from the senseless suffering they caused, revolutions and war destroyed the achievements of the past, forcing societies to build again. Without the notion of continuous progress, human evolution took random, irregular and violent turns for which men (with their predilection for risk and danger, their repulsive egotism, their volatile nature and their violent tendencies) were directly to blame. A society of women would be immeasurably superior, tracing a slow, unwavering progression, with no U-turns and no chaotic insecurity, towards a general happiness. ~ Michel Houellebecq

The FBI had finally wised up and put Charley Davidson on the task of bringing a killer to justice. Because that's what Charley did. Brought killers to justice. She also found lost dogs, exposed cheating spouses, and tracked down the occasional skip. And she rarely referred to herself in the third person. ~ Darynda Jones

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war. ~ Winston Churchill

It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered
so many locks not enough keys. ~ Sarah Dessen