Short Hand Quotes

Every word, every gesture is now loaded with ambiguity, nothing can be taken at face value. We speak to each other from a safe distance, pretending all the years we soaped each other's backs and pissed in front of each other never happened. We don't use any of the baby talk, code words, or short hand gestures that had been our language of intimacy, the proof that we belonged to each other. ~ Amy Tan

I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that ~ Charles Dickens

My hands are way too big to text. I'd need short hand for my hands. -Foot to Pad ~ Ray Palla

A long tongue is a signe of a short hand.
[A long tongue is a sign of a short hand.] ~ George Herbert

In my own time there have been inventions of this sort, transparent windows tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building short-hand, which has been carried to such a perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is drudgery for the lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul. ~ Seneca The Younger

As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room ~ Jeremy Collier

I have a tradition of working with actors, over and over again. I've worked with Jason Bateman, over and over again. You get to know an actor, and you get a certain trust and a comfort, and you become really good friends, and you feel like you've got a short-hand. ~ Peter Berg

If we consider eternity, into that time never entered; eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been. ~ John Donne

You'll never be the heavyweight champion of the world," he said, "but you should be able to duck anything Edward throws at you."
Theo wanted his turn, but John said it was too hot for more lessons. He looked up into the tree where Hannah sat swinging her feet, and smiled. "Maybe your sister will come down from her perch and offer us a nice cold glass of lemonade."
Hannah gave her hand to John and allowed him to help her. "Not that I need your assistance," she said. "I'm merely practicing my manners."
We watched John and Hannah walk away, still holding hands. "He's as bad as diphtheria," Theo muttered.
"What do you mean?"
"Diphtheria made you into a perfect gentleman," Theo said, "and John makes Hannah into a perfect lady. I'm sure I don't know which is worse--being sick or falling in love. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. ~ E.F. Schumacher

Christopher observed the passage of the coach from his sight and then turned his gaze to the pair of men who approached them. It was Farrell and Captain Daniels, and while the latter was smiling broadly, the former frowned in sharp disapproval at the couple. Christopher thrust out a hand in greeting to his captain, then looked to his wife's brother. "Farrell, I don't think we've been properly introduced." Christopher smiled as he extended his hand. "I am Lord Saxton."
The young man's eyes widened, and he searched the softly smiling visage of his sister as he mechanically accepted the hand. "Lord Saxton? The Lord Saxton?"
"Aye, I am the one who wore the mask and walked with a limp," Christopher confessed. " 'Twas done partly to fool the thieves into believing the man they had murdered was still alive, and then too, I desired to wed your sister and found no other way. I hope you will value the friendship we began when you knew me as the cripple."
Farrell tried to grasp all the facts and put them together in their proper places. "You are really married to my sister, and you are the father of her…" Erienne blushed as she glanced hesitantly toward the sea captain, who seemed to be enjoying the whole exchange. His smile broadened as her husband gave a reply. "You needn't sharpen your skill with firearms to avenge your sister's honor," Christopher replied. The teasing gleam in his eyes shone brighter. " 'Twas quite properly made, I assure you."

-Christop ~ Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Excuse me," a breathy female voice came from beside her, and she lifted her head. A stunning blonde in a dress cut down to her belly button and up to her crotch hovered beside the table.
"Yes?" she asked, not certain whether to scream or laugh.
"Are you Richard Addison?" the woman breathed, ignoring Sam.
Rick blinked. "Oh, me. I thought you were talking to her. Yes, I am."
"Could I have your autograph?"
"Certainly. Do you have a pen?" The woman held out a napkin and a pen, and Rick signed his name. "There you go."
"How about your phone number?" The woman gave a low giggle, but pressed the napkin back into Rick's hand.
Sam would have stood, but Rick kicked her under the table. "Ouch," she grumbled, glaring at him.
"I'm sorry, but I don't give out my phone number."
"Are you sure?" Belly Button Girl licked her lips.
"If I might make a comment," Rick continued, granting her a warm smile, though Sam noted that his eyes remained cool and untouched, "I'm a bit occupied right now, enjoying the company of a very lovely young lady with whom I enjoy spending my every spare moment." He
straightened further, lowering his voice to a bare murmur. "So I thank you for your interest, but I am never in a million years going to give you my phone number. Good evening."
Her face turning scarlet under its inch of makeup, the woman turned away, departing with a sway of her perfect hips. "You're so cool," Sam breathed.
"You could at lea ~ Suzanne Enoch

If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far. ~ Daniel Goleman

In anything you write - in a short story, a poem - there has to be a counter-motion; it can't go all in one direction. ~ Donald Hall

It seemed such a short time ago that Erin had come
running toward him, laughing, her black hair like silk around an elfin face. And he'd melted inside just at
the sight of her, gone breathless like a boy with his first real date. It still felt like that, despite her scars,
her limp. In his heart, he carried a portrait of her that would withstand all the long, aging years, that would
leave her young and unscarred for as long as he lived. ~ Diana Palmer

Except for the two years he had lived with cowboys in North Dakota,and being the employer of a dozen or so servants,Roosevelt had never had to suffer any prolonged intimacy with the working class.From infancy,he had enjoyed the perquisites of money and social position.The money,through his own mismanagement,had often run short,and he was by no means wealthy even now, but he had always taken exclusivity for granted. ~ Edmund Morris

Here's what I've learned about "soon"; it's short for "someday." We make space in our lives for what matters, now. Not in promises and soons, but on mantels with sterling frames, in shelves we clear to make room for our now. Everything else i talk. ~ Stephanie Klein

He struggled wildly and got one hand free just as a fist looped down into his face like a runaway moon. ~ Stephen King

Replete is the world with a spiritual radiance, replete with sublime and marvelous secrets. But a small hand held against the eye hides it all," said the Baal Shem. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

I was a fairly shy person - not the hand raising type. ~ John Green

Any mystery writer is both magician and moralist ... two species of artist in short supply. ~ Sue Grafton

As soon as enough people in contemporary societies progress beyond adolescence, the entire consumer-driven economy and egocentric lifestyle will implode. The adolescent society is actually quite unstable due to its incongruence with the primary patterns of living systems. The industrial growth society is simply incompatible with collective human maturity. No true adult wants to be a consumer, worker bee, or tycoon, or a soldier in an imperial war, and none would go through these motions if there were other options at hand. The enlivened soul and wild nature are deadly to industrial growth economies - and vice versa. ~ Bill Plotkin

It's very hard to behave naturally when you know people recognise you. On the other hand, I still sometimes get upgraded in hotels because someone used to like me back in the day, which is still pretty amazing. ~ Rick Astley

-- They must go on, said Msimangu gravely. You cannot stop the world from going on. My friend, I am a Christian. It is not in my heart to hate a white man. It was a white man who brought my father out of darkness. But you will pardon me if I talk frankly to you. The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again. The white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief -- and again I ask your pardon -- that it cannot be mended again. But the house that is broken, and the man that falls apart when the house is broken, these are the tragic things. That is why children break the law, and old white people are robbed and beaten.
He passed his hand across his brown.
-- It suited the white man to break the tribe, he continued gravely. But it has not suited him to build something in the place of what is broken. I have pondered this for many hours, and I must speak it, for it is the truth for me. They are not all so. There are some white men who give their lives to build up what is broken.
--But they are not enough, he said. They are afraid, this is the truth. It is fear that rules this land. ~ Alan Paton

Patience was part of his nature, and he accepted his lot as a short-lived mammal, scurrying in and out amid the roots of the giants. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Do you wanna leave soon?
No, I want enough time to be in love with everything ...
And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short. ~ Marina Keegan

With this information, in light of the increasing human demands on vegetation, it is my personal opinion that capping CO2 emissions or reducing them to some prior level would be akin to 'biting the hand that feeds us. ~ Keith E. Idso

And he loved my mother. I saw him on the last days of his life lift that oil-scented right hand and enter its fingers into her ordered hair and rustle it free of its pins as if he had been offered velvet or the fur of a rare animal. Forever I hold that gesture. For me it was perhaps the last remembered pleasure belonging to him. It is the unspoiled core of whatever I know of love and family (and I have not been successful at the craft of it). Our shyness at embracing each other - it rarely happened - did not matter. I felt safe and comforted in his house. ~ Michael Ondaatje

The economic decline of a society without property rights is followed by the loss of other values. It is only when we have a sufficiency of necessaries that we give thought to nonmaterial things, to what is called culture. On the other hand, we find we can do without books, or even moving pictures, when existence is at stake. Even more than that, we who have no right to own certainly have no right to give and charity becomes an empty word; in a socialistic order no one need give thought to an unfortunate neighbor because it is the duty of the government, the only property owner, to take care of him; it might even become a crime to give a "bum" a dime. When the denial of the right of the individual is negated through the denial of ownership, the sense of personal pride, which distinguishes man from beast, must decay from disuse.
The income tax is not only a tax; it is an instrument that has the potentiality of destroying a society of humans. ~ Frank Chodorov

I believe the reasons we hang on to seemingly insignificant snippets of conversation, the smell of a particular pizza delivered by a particular guy, the shape of certain shadows on a particular wall, is that there may come a day when we are sitting in a hospital room visiting our mother as she lies on an uncomfortable bed, still recovering. And we are asking her questions and feeling nervous about what the doctor has said could be permanent damage caused by a blood clot the size of a pinpoint and we don't know if the way she is struggling to find the right words is a temporary exhaustion or the new reality and all we want to do is tell her we love her in a language no one has used before because we mean it in a way that no one has meant it before. And this will be a difficult time for us.
But then, in a break between the words, a commercial may come on the small television hung up in the corner of the room that we did not even know was playing. It may advertise some new drug, some insurance plan, and our mother will smile at the voice of the handsome actor standing in front of a green screen. She will then close her eyes and squeeze our hand, the one that she has been holding since we walked in, and say, "Oh, I used to have such a crush on him."
When she does this, our memory will be waiting.
Yes, yes, yes. It is love that we feel here.
This is the purpose of memory. ~ M.O. Walsh

But while it is often necessary to make sacrifices of time, short-term gratification or non-essential desires for the long-term benefit of a relationship (or a partner), it is never desirable to sacrifice your self for a relationship. ~ Franklin Veaux

I almost forgot," said Red. His voice sounded very strange, as if from a long, long distance. He reached into his pocket. "I have something for you."
He put it into my hand. A round, shiny, perfect apple, green as new grass with a faint blush of rosy pink. And now his eyes had changed so that I saw what lay there, hidden deep, so deep only the bravest or most foolhardy would seek to find it.
He has always understood me better, without words. So I laid my hand on my heart, held it there for a moment, and then moved it over and touched my palm against his breast. My heart. Your heart. ~ Juliet Marillier

How are things with you, sir?"
"Fine." He says it flat."Coffee black. BLT."
Now my heart tells me this guy needs more in life, so I take a short. "You ever had a cheese burger with grilled onions and mushrooms on pumpernickel, sir?"
That takes a minute to sink in.
Then he slaps the counter, grinning. "Bring it on."
I sense he needs more.
"You want a malt with that, by any chance?"
He did, of course. "Chocolate," he says, beaming like a kid.
Now he's loosening up.
It's a privilege to touch humanity in such a fashion. ~ Joan Bauer

I'm not going to hold my breath because life goes on. Life is too short to sit around moaning about what could have been or what was. ~ Tina Weymouth

I raised my right hand and placed my left on the Quran, which was being held by my wife and mom. Suddenly, I was blinded by a cascade of camera flashes ... ~ Keith Ellison

You know what's not sexy?" I pushed his hand away. "Barbies. Barbies are not sexy."
"But I bought condoms," he said. "I even practiced putting one on!"
The lost-puppy look on his face made me smile. "I'm proud of you, Boner Man, but that's not enough. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Time is long but life is short. ~ Stevie Wonder

History is, by and large, a record of what people did, not of what they failed to do. On the other hand, making the present seem inevitable robs history of all its life and much of its meaning. History is contingent upon the actions of people. "The duty of the historian," Gordan Craig has reminded us, "is to restore to the past the options it once had." Craig also pointed out that is an appropriate way to teach history and make it memorable. White Americans chose among real alternatives and were often divided among themselves. At various points in our history, our anti-Indian policies might have gone another way. ~ James W. Loewen

I can look at my early work and see what a pained struggle it was to draw what I was drawing. I was trying so hard to get this specific look that was in my head, and always falling short. ~ Daniel Clowes

And Liza, as soon as Alyosha was gone, unlocked the door at once, opened it a little, put her finger into the chink, and, slamming the door, crushed it with all her might. Ten seconds later, having released her hand, she went quietly and slowly to her chair, sat straight up in it, and began looking intently at her blackened finger and the blood oozing from under the nail. Her lips trembled, and she whispered very quickly to herself: "Mean, mean, mean, mean!. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity. ~ Alberto Moravia

But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in his mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?
Love. That was his answer. ~ Yann Martel

Remember that your tracks are one strand of the web woven endlessly in the hand of god. They're tied to those of the mouse in the field, the eagle on the mountain, the crab in its hold, the lizard beneath its rock. The leaf that falls to the ground a thousand miles away touches your life. The impress of your foot in the soil is felt through a thousand generations. ~ Daniel Quinn

Michael Jackson was extraordinary, When we worked together on 'Bad,' I was in awe of his absolute mastery of movement on the one hand, and of the music on the other. Every step he took was absolutely precise and fluid at the same time. It was like watching quicksilver in motion. He was wonderful to work with, an absolute professional at all times, and it really goes without saying ... a true artist. It will be a while before I can get used to the idea that he's no longer with us. ~ Martin Scorsese

On the Brevity of Our Ties
Ties in this world last only for a time. We are husband and wife, parent and child, for a short period only. Once this reality sinks in, we cannot help treasuring each moment of our brief association. ~ Kentetsu Takamori

Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It's the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It's the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days and makes us waver at another mile, another smouldering village. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Come out of the Box. Extend your hand towards other and bring more meanings to your life. ~ Amit Ray

Here are some examples of long, over-stretched muscles at odds with short, tight muscles: rhomboids versus pectoralis major infraspinatus and teres minor versus subscapularis and pectoralis major superficial spinal muscles versus abdominal muscles hamstrings versus the rectus femoris triceps versus the biceps supinator versus pronator teres ~ Clair Davies