Regularity Quotes

All too often, when people don't know where they are, have jet lag, don't speak the language, and can't figure out the money or maintain intestinal regularity, they get hostile. ~ Mary-Lou Weisman

The killing fields of Chicago, of Baltimore, of Detroit, were created by the policy of Dreamers, but their weight, their shame, rests solely upon those who are dying in them. There is a great deception in this. To yell "black-on-black crime" is to shoot a man and then shame him for bleeding. And the premise that allows for these killing fields - the reduction of the black body - is no different than the premise that allowed for the murder of Prince Jones. The Dream of acting white, of talking white, of being white, murdered Prince Jones as sure as it murders black people in Chicago with frightening regularity. Do not accept the lie. Do not drink from poison. The same hands that drew red lines around the life of Prince Jones drew red lines around the ghetto. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Because neither she nor Port had ever lived a life of any kind of regularity, they had both made the fatal error of coming hazily to regard time as non-existent. One year was like another year. Eventually everything would happen. ~ Paul Bowles

Soon you'll be hosting angelic balls with regularity."
"Hey, watch the insults. ~ Nalini Singh, Archangel's Enigma

To become aware of what is constant in the flux of nature and life is the first step in abstract thinking. The recognition of regularity in the courses of the heavenly bodies and in the succession of seasons first provides a basis for a systematic ordering of events, and this knowledge makes possible a calendar ... Simultaneously with this concept, a system of relationships comes into the idea of the world. Change is not something absolute, chaotic, and kaleidoscopic; its manifestation is a relative one, something connected with fixed points and a given order. ~ Hellmut Wilhelm

Music and text have several commonalities, and one is meter and rhythm. Both spoken word and music have certain regularities, and they can be sub-divided rhythmically. ~ Jeff Britting

In the same way, metrics can record the frequency of our church attendance, the regularity of our Bible reading and the exact amount of our tithing, but they can never gauge the genuineness of any of them, or whether they are any better than "the noise of the solemn assemblies" against which the prophets fulminated. ~ Os Guinness

Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing. ~ Thomas Fuller

Since words elude me when I need them most, I learned long ago that I cannot count on QUALITY time with God when I want to pray. I need QUANTITY and regularity. Quality is not something I can predict. My husband, Andy, and I might schedule an elaborate evening out with candles and a gourmet meal, but there is no guarantee that we'll have a wonderful time together
chopping onions peppers die by side in the kitchen, reading together on the couch, sitting on the front step watching our sons ride bikes, and making plans for our life together. ~ Sybil MacBeth

The universe is not a miracle. It simply is, unguided and unsustained, manifesting the patterns of nature with scrupulous regularity. Over billions of years it has evolved naturally, from a state of low entropy toward increasing complexity, and it will eventually wind down to a featureless equilibrium. We are the miracle, we human beings. Not a break-the-laws-of-physics kind of miracle; a miracle in that it is wondrous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws. Our lives are finite, unpredictable, and immeasurably precious. Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world. ~ Sean Carroll

There is something in such laws that takes the breath away. They are not discoveries or inventions of the human mind, but exist independently of us. In a moment of clarity, one can at most discover that they are there and take them into account. Long before there were people on the earth, crystals were already growing in the earth's crust. On one day or another, a human being first came across such a sparkling morsel of regularity lying on the ground or hit one with his stone tool and it broke off and fell at his feet, and he picked it up and regarded it in his open hand, and he was amazed. ~ M.C. Escher

He shouldn't be captivated by the sight of a tear caught on her lashes, or her perfect nose, slightly pink. Those lips were even more intriguing, so he made himself look away, staring out at the forest beyond the gazebo.
He glanced down to find Ellice still looking up at him, her eyes liquid pools of chocolate.
Their gaze caught and held, the seconds ticking by in solemn regularity. He felt drawn to her like a magnet. Pulling away would be a difficult task.
He must for his own safety. This woman with her guileless eyes, soft heart, and lurid imagination was a danger. ~ Karen Ranney

The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, nor the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

The methods of the natural sciences cannot be applied to human behavior because this behaviorlacks the peculiarity that characterizes events in the field of the natural sciences, viz., regularity. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Good morning on the 7th of July.
while still in bed my thoughts turn towards you my Immortal Beloved, now and then happy, then sad again, waiting whether Fate might answer us. – I can only live either wholly with you or not at all, yes, I have resolved to stray about far away until I can fly into your arms, and feel at home with you, and send my soul embraced by you into the realm of the Spirits. – Yes, unfortunately it must be. – You will compose yourself, all the more since you know my faithfulness to you, never can another own my heart, never – never. – Oh God why do I have to separate from someone whom I love so much, and yet my life in V[ienna] as it is now is a miserable life. – Your love makes me at once most happy and most unhappy. – At my age, I would now need some conformity regularity in my life – can this exist in our relationship? – Angel, I just learned that the post goes every day – and I must therefore conclude so that you get the l[etter] straightway – be patient, only through quiet contemplation of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together – be calm – love me – today – yesterday. – What yearning with tears for you – you – you – my life – my everything – farewell – oh continue to love me – never misjudge the most faithful heart of your Beloved
L.
Forever thine
forever mine
forever us. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

How does individual randomness turn into collective regularity? Easy - the odds demand it. The ~ Anonymous

Exercise 1: Guarding the Prayer
Once we are performing the five obligatory prayers with regularity, then it is certainly worth our efforts to begin increasing extra prayers- especially the late-night prayers (tahajjud). Late-night prayer is one of the defining qualities of a salih (righteous) person, also called a wali (friend of Allah). Regarding late-night prayers, Fudayl b. 'Iyyad said that if a man was unable to do them, it was due to his wrong actions during the day. May Allah make us befitting to stand before Him, here and in the hereafter.
Agenda to Change our Condition, Hamza Yusuf & Zaid Shakir, S. 46 ~ Hamza Yusuf

It's not that I want children to fall into the pond per se, though I can't really see what harm it would do them; it's that I can't help but assess the situation from the child's perspective. And quite frankly I would be disgusted to the point of taking immediate vengeance if I was brought to a purportedly magical place one afternoon in late September and thereupon belted down to the pond, all by myself most likely, only to discover the word pond scrawled on a poxy piece of damp plywood right there beside it. Oh I'd be hopping. That sort of moronic busybodying happens with such galling regularity throughout childhood of course and it never ceases to be utterly vexing. ~ Claire-Louise Bennett

The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying. ~ Edward Hoagland

Regularity in Nature is not proof of the control of Nature by a Divine intelligence; it is rather the reverse. If something- call it matter, or ether, or x - exists, it must operate in accordance with its innate qualities; and so long as this x remains uncontrolled, its manifestations will continue unchallenged- in other words, there will be order. The same causes, the same results. That is the manifest signs of a natural order that knows nothing of God. ~ Chapman Cohen

We are apt to be angry with this cruel hardness in our life - this unflinching regularity in the smaller wheels and meaner mechanism of the human machine, which knows no stoppage or cessation, though the mainspring be forever hollow, and the hands pointing to purposeless figures on a shattered dial. ~ Mary Elizabeth Braddon

While by definition, starship engine rooms should have been predictable, uneventful places that operated according to the reliable mathematics of warp physics, she'd come to believe that, more often than not, they were in fact the nexi of entropy. Order battled chaos in these places with an almost dependable regularity. And engineers, she secretly suspected, functioned as avatars of both these forces, keeping them carefully balanced so that neither overwhelmed the other. Thus, warp drive worked, but the best engineers could still find a new wrinkle in the laws of physics when circumstances required it. Bhatnagar ~ Robert Simpson

Oh, you can be sure we will get into all kinds of mischief." He winked. "And there is a strong possibility that shenanigans and hijinks of various sorts will also occur, with regularity. ~ Sylvain Reynard

The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it. The model is constructed by associations that link ideas of circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that co-occur with some regularity, either at the same time or within a relatively short interval. As these links are formed and strengthened, the pattern of associated ideas comes to represent the structure of events in your life, and it determines your interpretation of the present as well as your expectations of the future. ~ Daniel Kahneman

We are pattern seekers, believers in a coherent world, in which regularities appear not by accident but as a result of mechanical causality or of someone´s intention. We do not expect to see regularity produced by a random process, and when we detect what appears to be a rule, we quickly reject the idea that the process is truly random. Random processes produce many sequences that convince people that the process is not random after all. ~ Daniel Kahneman

[T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all ... are essential to the well-being of a family. ~ Samuel Adams

Liberty is only possible on the condition of regularity. We cannot be free and play the game of life without abiding to the rules, but the rules have to be adapted constantly in line with our experiences and the events we encounter. ( "If he doesn't play ball " ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

The regularity with which we conclude that further advances in a particular field are impossible seems equaled only by the regularity with which events prove that we are of too limited vision. And it always seems to be those who have the fullest opportunity to know who are the most limited in view. What, then, is the trouble? I think that one answer should be: we do not realize sufficiently that the unknown is absolutely infinite, and that new knowledge is always being produced. ~ Willis R. Whitney

but a man of pleasure like yourself ought to know that all who are in the flower of youth do somehow or other raise a pang or emotion in a lover's breast, and are thought by him to be worthy of his affectionate regards. Is not this a way which you have with the fair: one has a snub nose, and you praise his charming face; the hook-nose of another has, you say, a royal look; while he who is neither snub nor hooked has the grace of regularity: the dark visage is manly, the fair are children of the gods; and as to the sweet 'honey pale,' as they are called, what is the very name but the invention of a lover who talks in diminutives, and is not averse to paleness if appearing on the cheek of youth? In a word, there is no excuse which you will not make, and nothing which you will not say, in order not to lose a single flower that blooms in the spring-time of youth. If ~ Plato

Rituals are important. I get up. I take the dogs on a walk around to the front and then I pick up the papers. Then I walk around to the front door, then me and the two dogs come in the house and I give them treats. I make coffee. It's the regularity of these kinds of rituals that I find deeply satisfying. ~ Jane Fonda

Science gains from it [the pendulum] more than one can expect. With its huge dimensions, the apparatus presents qualities that one would try in vain to communicate by constructing it on a small [scale], no matter how carefully. Already the regularity of its motion promises the most conclusive results. One collects numbers that, compared with the predictions of theory, permit one to appreciate how far the true pendulum approximates or differs from the abstract system called 'the simple pendulum'. ~ Jean Bernard Leon Foucault

Take just one well-known event: The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie -- I Wanna Hold Your Hand -- was built around it. And that Sullivan episode was indeed a major event in popular culture. But did you know that in 1961, 26 million people watched a CBS live broadcast of the first performance of a new symphony by classical composer Aaron Copland? Moreover, with all the attention that sixties rock groups receive, it may come as a surprise to learn that My Fair Lady was Columbia Records' biggest-selling album before the 1970s, beating out those of sixties icons Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Byrds. ~ Jonathan Leaf

But why has our physical world revealed such extreme mathematical regularity that astronomy superhero Galileo Galilei proclaimed nature to be "a book written in the language of mathematics," and Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner stressed the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences" as a mystery demanding an explanation? ~ Max Tegmark

Things that have never happened before are bound to occur with some regularity. You must always be prepared for the unexpected, including sudden, sharp downward swings in markets and the economy. Whatever adverse scenario you can contemplate, reality can be far worse. ~ Seth Klarman

a wish... that we may, each of us, with utter regularity, melt into the truth of our inescapable beauty. ~ Scott Stabile

I was born on an even keel. Family lore says I never cried, even at birth. I felt at ease on earth, in the right place. And like many children, I took comfort in life's regularity: Every few days it rained, the school bus came and went, and my parents were rooted in their union. ~ Amity Gaige

You're in there somewhere." He tapped at her collarbone. "You'll pop out again when-Well,when the time is right. But for now,you've slipped entirely inside your past. Like a cute little turtle in a borrowed shell.Except it's more than that.When you're in Lys's body, your very beings are entwined, so all sorts of good stuff comes with the package.Her memories,her passions,her manners-lucky for you.Of course,you also have to grapple with her shortcomings.This one,if I recall,puts her foot in her mouth with some regularity.So watch out."
"Amazing," Luce whispered. "So if I could just find Daniel,I'd be able to feel exactly what she feels toward him."
"Sure,I guess,but you do realize that once I snap my fingers,Lys has obligations at this ball that don't include Daniel.This isn't really his scene,and by that I mean,no way the guards would let a poor stable boy in here."
Luce didn't care about any of that. Poor stable boy or not,she would find him. She couldn't wait. Inside Lys's body she could even hold him, maybe even kiss him.The anticipation of it was almost overwhelming.
"Hello?" Bill flicked a hard finger against her temple. "You ready yet? Get in there,see what you can see-then get out while the getting's good, if you know what I mean."
Luce nodded.She straightened Lsys's black gown and held her head a little higher. "Snap to it."
"And...go." Bill snapped his fingers. ~ Lauren Kate

Chaos, if it does not harden into a pattern of disorder, may be more fruitful than a regularity too easily accepted and a success too easily achieved. ~ Lewis Mumford

Work hard at keeping in tune with the way your children think. Your efforts may not always bring the desired result, but we must do our part. Keep close contact with them. Teach them with regularity, both by word and by deed. Love them and let them know you care for them because of who they are and not for anything else. Answer their questions with candor and thoughtfulness. Do not ignore their struggles. Deal with their difficulties, and spare them a cynical attitude. Stay tuned in to their struggles. Most of us learn the hard way that our children were in a very different world in their own thoughts than we realized. ~ Ravi Zacharias

All complex systems are hierarchical in nature, but also exhibit other patterns of regularity. ~ Anonymous

The split between religion and science is relatively new. Isaac Newton, who first worked out the laws by which gravity held the planets and even the stars in their traces, was sufficiently impressed by the scale and regularity of the universe to ascribe it all to God. ~ Seth Shostak

During my 30 years on Wall Street, taxes on 'unearned income' have bounced up and down with regularity, and I've never detected any change in the appetite for hard work and accumulating wealth on the part of myself or any of my fellow capitalists. ~ Steven Rattner

The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused, set of appearances, is necessarily tentative; we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it ; and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption. ~ John Stuart Mill

That man who is regular and punctual will get sure success in all walks of life. ~ Swami Sivananda Saraswati

You only have so deep a well from which to make choices throughout the day. The same is true of willpower. If you accept that both your ability to choose and your ability to act are limited, you discover the virtue of routines. I try to pre-program as many of the mundane decisions as I can. A rough regularity on the insignificant things helps preserve energy for the significant ones. ~ Jimmy Soni

Boys disobey their parents with such great regularity that it's barely worth a comment; and if yours is talented enough to rebel in such grand fashion, then you ought to consider it a point of pride that he's such a sharp lad. ~ Cherie Priest

Most of us lead or are led by lives of patterned regularity. Diurnally, surprises are relatively few. And except for economic or physical uncertainties, we neither face nor court significant degrees of risk because a fundamental drive in the vast majority of us is toward the attainment of as much security as is possible.
In this sense, jazzmen, of all musicians, are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change. ~ Nat Hentoff

She had cool green eyes and jet hair, a quick smile, and was the type of girl Jem fell for with monotonous regularity. ~ Harper Lee

Short putts are missed because it is not physically possible to make the little ball travel over uncertain ground for three or four feet with any degree of regularity. ~ Walter Hagen

Mine was not an Enlightened mind, I now was aware: it was a Gothic mind, medieval in its temper and structure. I did not love cold harmony and perfect regularity of organization; what I sought was variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful. ~ Russell Kirk

The Roman character had a strong streak of snobbery: effectively, citizens preferred to vote for families with strong brand recognition, electing son after father after grandfather to the great magistracies of state, indulging the nobility's dynastic pretensions with a numbing regularity. ~ Tom Holland

To be faithful in prayer it is indispensable that we arrange all the activities of the day with a regularity that nothing can disturb ~ Francois Fenelon

Pure geometrical regularity gives a certain pleasure to men troubled by the obscurity of outside appearance. The geometrical line is something absolutely distinct from the messiness, the confusion, and the accidental details of existing things. ~ T. E. Hulme

An economists' consensus is perhaps more a rarity than a regularity. But when it happens, we need to pause and take stock. ~ Dani Rodrik

Redneck law: Must have a gun. Must shoot it regularly. ~ Willie Robertson

All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides?

Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed - and there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, where the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one o ~ Edwin A. Abbott

I wish you would recollect that Painting and Punctuality mix like Oil and Vinegar, and that Genius and regularity are utter Enemies and must be to the end of time. ~ Thomas Gainsborough

I cannot get accustomed to war; my brain refuses to understand and explain a thing that is senseless in its basis. Millions of people gather at one place and, giving their actions order and regularity, kill each other, and it hurts everybody equally, and all are unhappy
what is it if not madness? ~ Leonid Andreyev

The whole tendency of modern life is towards scientific planning and organisation, central control, standardisation, and specialisation. If this tendency was left to work itself out to its extreme conclusion, one might expect to see the state transformed into an immense social machine, all the individual components of which are strictly limited to the performance of a definite and specialised function, where there could be no freedom because the machine could only work smoothly as long as every wheel and cog performed its task with unvarying regularity. Now the nearer modern society comes to the state of total organisation, the more difficult it is to find any place for spiritual freedom and personal responsibility. Education itself becomes an essential part of the machine, for the mind has to be as completely measured and controlled by the techniques of the scientific expert as the task which it is being trained to perform. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson

He said that academia reminded him of a badly run circus. The faculty members were like underfed animals
weary of their cages, which were never large enough to begin with
and they responded sluggishly to the whip. The trapeze artists fell with monotonous regularity into poorly strung nets. The clowns looked hungry. The tent leaked. The crowd was inattentive, shouting incoherently at inappropriate moments. And when the show was over, no one cheered. ~ Susan Hubbard

Away from home, my partner and I are on holiday on a resort on an island. Mealtimes bring everyone together. We enter the dining room, where we face many tables places alongside each other… I face what seems like a shocking image. In front of me, on the tables, couples are seated. Table after table, couple after couple, taking the same form: one many sitting by one woman around a 'round table,' facing each other 'over' the table… I am shocked by the sheer force of the regularity of that which is familiar: how each table presents the same form of sociality as the form of the heterosexual couple. How is it possible, with all that is possible, that the same form is repeated again and again? How does the openness of the future get closed down into so little in the present? ~ Sara Ahmed

The fact that we once knew each other in Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas, and that we were both still alive and ambulatory, was a miracle in itself. Where we came from he's dead was as common a phrase as he's sick or he's saved. People died in our world with appalling regularity. ~ Walter Mosley

My father referred to it as "the finest song ever written for fifteen fingers." He made me play it when I was getting too full of myself and felt I needed humbling. Suffice to say I practice it with fair regularity, sometimes more than once a day. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

But don't you also find it hard to accept that your [mankind's] attempts to solve your problems fail with predictable regularity? It seems to us [Luxenbenites] you would welcome an overall solution. ~ Dan Hurwitz

It turned out that if you saw the same person with some degree of regularity, then the conversation was immediately pleasant and comfortable -- you could pick up where you left off, as it were, rather than having to start afresh each time. ~ Gail Honeyman

Well, my lord," Noorden said. "Imagine that you hear a tapping sound somewhere outside your tent. If it repeats occasionally, with no exact set pattern, then it might be the wind blowing a loose flap against a pole. However, if it repeats with exact regularity, you know that it must be a person, beating against a pole. You'd be able to make the distinction immediately, because you've learned that nature can be repetitive in a case like that, but not exact. These numbers are the same, my lord. They're just too organized, too repetitive, to be natural. They had to have been crafted by somebody. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Thorne and Cress were waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp, and when Cress and Iko spotted each other they shared a squeal. Thorne and Cinder shared a cringe, and then they were all smiling and embracing as if they hadn't seen each other in years - even though they still got together with some regularity. ~ Marissa Meyer

The sciences are like a beautiful river, of which the course is easy to follow, when it has acquired a certain regularity; but if one wants to go back to the source, one will find it nowhere, because it is everywhere; it is spread so much [as to be] over all the surface of the earth; it is the same if one wants to go back to the origin of the sciences, one will find only obscurity, vague ideas, vicious circles; and one loses oneself in the primitive ideas. ~ Lazare Carnot

There are no true monsters, only some people [ ... ] who with regularity acted like a monster. It's still episodic. [ ... ] It never works when you leave out even a small part of the picture. ~ Jim Harrison

All the work of the crystallographers serves only to demonstrate that there is only variety everywhere where they suppose uniformity ... that in nature there is nothing absolute, nothing perfectly regular. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal. ~ Pope Paul VI

Misconceptions about Young Adult fiction aren't new to fans of the genre. From being dismissed as mindless fluff for 'Twilight'-obsessed tweens, to constant warnings that the genre is dying, kerfuffles between the media and readers occur with alarming regularity. ~ Jennifer Armintrout

There are spiritual patterns at work in the universe and these announce themselves with impressive regularity wherever human minds and hearts attempt to attune themselves to the cosmos in all its radiant dimensions. ~ Ken Wilber

Nature, when left to universal laws, tends to produce regularity out of chaos. ~ Immanuel Kant

But just as astronomy succeeded astrology, following Kepler's discovery of planetary regularities, the discoveries of these many principles in empirical explorations of intellectual processes in machines should lead to a science, eventually. ~ Marvin Minsky

The typical Anarchist, then, may be defined as follows: A man perceptible by the spirit of revolt under one or more of its forms, - opposition, investigation, criticism, innovation, - endowed with a strong love of liberty, egoistic or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity, a keen desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment of justice, and imbued with missionary zeal." To the above characteristics, says Alvin F. Sanborn, must be added these sterling qualities: a rare love of animals, surpassing sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life, exceptional sobriety of demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity, even, of living, and courage beyond compare.[2] ~ Emma Goldman

I'm not saying that I was starting actively to think about it. I'm just saying that I could see why people did. See that they liked the combination of long dull uneventful days with a strong sense of purpose looming overall; the mix of aimless time, structured days and meaningful work. A bit like human life in general, you could say, the terrible regularity with which nothing happens, the genuine terror when something does. Hurry up and wait. That's the motto which governs most lives. It's the motto which governs the Wall, for sure. The only thing worse than when nothing happens is when something does.
Pg 120 ~ John Lanchester

The captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock- tick
a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? ~ Mark Twain

The conventional word that is employed to describe tyranny is "systematic." The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not. (The only rule of thumb was: whatever is not compulsory is forbidden.) Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Perhaps there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of a rat-tat! The good are eager for it; but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Every one knows that the heavenly bodies move in certain paths in relation to each other with seeming consistency and regularity which we call [physical] law ... No one attributes freewill or motive to the material world. Is the conduct of man or the other animals any more subject to whim or choice than the action of the planets? ... We know that man's every act is induced by motives that led or urged him here or there; that the sequence of cause and effect runs through the whole universe, and is nowhere more compelling than with man. ~ Clarence Darrow

Although I am even now still a layman in the area of mathematics, and although I lack theoretical knowledge, the mathematicians, and in particular the crystallographers, have had considerable influence on my work of the last twenty years. The laws of the phenomena around us
order, regularity, cyclical repetition, and renewals
have assumed greater and greater importance for me. The awareness of their presence gives me peace and provides me with support. I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems. ~ M.C. Escher

I can not understand why ministers presume to deliver sermons every week at appointed hours because it is humanly impossible for inspirations to come with clock-like regularity ~ Sinclair Lewis

... there is no quicker way of growing old than undue indulgence in regular habits. Indeed it seems probable that the reason why so many people die sooner than they should is because they have organised their lives in such a way that there is nothing left for them to do. Change, as is well-known, is not only a law of Nature, but the very breath of existence. And if you rule change out of your life there no longer seems any reason why you should continue altogether. ~ Franklin Lushington

The eighteenth-century view of the garden was that it should lead the observer to the enjoyment of the aesthetic sentiments of regularity and order, proportion, colour and utility, and, furthermore, be capable of arousing feelings of grandeur, gaiety, sadness, wildness, domesticity, surprise and secrecy. ~ Penelope Hobhouse

I believe that the infinite and mysterious charm that lies in the contemplation of a moving vessel is caused, firstly, by the regularity and symmetry that are among the primordial needs of the human spirit, to the same degree as complication and harmony - and, secondly, by the multiplication and generation of all the imaginary curves and figures produced in space by the real elements of the object. The poetic idea released by this operation of movement in the lines is the hypothesis of a being that is vast, immense, complicated but eurythmic, an animal full of genius, suffering and sighing all the sighs and all the human ambitions. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Mount Harris is of basaltic formation, but I could not observe any columnar regularity in it, although large blocks are exposed above the ground. The rock is extremely hard and sonorous. ~ Charles Sturt

Someday, of course, she would light out on her own, following her own riverbed, and though we'd follow as long as she allowed, and though we trusted she'd come and go from our lives with regularity, she would also be a half memory [ ... ] ~ Michael Paterniti

Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art. ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The laws of nature cannot be randomly reshuffled at the cusps [of an oscillating universe]. If the universe has already gone through many oscillations, many possible laws of gravity would have been so weak that, for any given initial expansion, the universe would not have held together. Once the universe stumbles upon such a gravitational law, it flies apart and has no further opportunity to experience another oscillation and another cusp and another set of laws of nature. Thus we can deduce from the fact that the universe exists either a finite age, or a severe restriction on the kinds of laws of nature permitted in each oscillation. If the laws of physics are not randomly reshuffled at the cusps, there must be a regularity, a set of rules, that determines which laws are permissible and which are not. Such a set of rules would comprise a new physics standing over the existing physics. Our language is impoverished; there seems to be no suitable name for such a new physics. Both 'paraphysics' and 'metaphysics' have been preempted by other rather different and, quite possibly, wholly irrelevant activities. Perhaps 'transphysics' would do. ~ Carl Sagan

I hate such eccentricities, Sue. There's no order or regularity in your sentiments! ~ Thomas Hardy

You can't blame your opponents for applying a strategy that beats your brains out with regularity. ~ William J. Clinton

being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every prisoner's dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well. But I learned that the 'system' required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, 'the system' put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered. ~ Charles Dickens

Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Gains
There is no man in the house that I have to try to make happy. There are no more arguments, or nights when I turn away from N in quiet dispair as he snores with an entitled regularity. Everything also stays cleaner; the toilet seat is perpetually down. I have the remote control to the television; no one can take that away. I can watch the Lifetime channel without derision. ~ Suzanne Finnamore

This cognitive illusion was first noted in 1968 by the mathematician William Feller in his classic textbook on probability: "To the untrained eye, randomness appears as regularity or tendency to cluster."33 Here are a few examples of the cluster illusion. The ~ Steven Pinker

The universe forces those who live in it to understand it. ~ Carl Sagan

A great fire at night always has a thrilling and exhilarating effect. This is what explains the attraction of fireworks. But in that case the artistic regularity with which the fire is presented and the complete lack of danger give an impression of lightness and playfulness like the effect of a glass of champaign. A real conflagration is a very different matter. Then the horror and a certain sense of personal danger, together with the exhilarating effect at night, produce on the spectator (though of course not in the householder whose goods are being burnt) a certain concussion of the brain and, as it were, a challenge to those destructive instincts which, alas, lie hidden in every heart, even that of the mildest and most domestic little clerk ... .This sinister sensation is almost always fascinating ... of course, the very man who enjoys the spectacle will rush into the fire himself to save a child or an old woman ... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Choose one meditation and then put all your effort in it. That effort has to be very regular because will is created only out of regularity. It has to be very persistent and a continuity has to be maintained. Even to miss for one day is to destroy much - and at least one hour every day has to be given to it. ~ Rajneesh

Respectability, regularity, and routine - the whole cast-iron discipline of a modern industrial society - have atrophied the artistic impulse, and imprisoned love so that it can no longer be generous and free and creative, but must be either stuffy or furtive. ~ Bertrand Russell