Shorter Quotes

Why couldn't Pheidippides have died at 20 miles? ~ Frank Shorter

Everyone of us who can look back over a longer or shorter life experience will probably say that he might have spared himself many disappointments and painful surprises if he had found the courage and decision to interpret as omens the little mistakes which he made in his intercourse with people, and to consider them as indications of the intentions which were still being kept secret. As ~ Sigmund Freud

He limps in his life like the lame man in the Proverbs, whose legs were not equal, for his praying is shorter than his preaching. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

is, in the words of The Westminster Shorter Catechism, "any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God" (Q. 14).6 Sin is mutiny, either by its omission ("want of conformity to") or its commission ("transgression of the law of God"). ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

What Jessica said - hair much shorter, wearing a darker mouth of different outline, harder lipstick, her typewriter banking in a phalanx of letters between them - was: "We're going to be married. We're trying very hard to have a baby."
All at once there is nothing but his asshole between Gravity and Roger. "I don't care. Have his baby. I'll love you both - just come with me Jess, please ... I need you ... "
She flips a red lever on her intercom. Far away a buzzer goes off. "Security." Her voice is perfectly hard, the word still clap-echoing in the air as in through the screen door of the Quonset office wth a smell of tide flats come the coppers, looking grim. Security. Her magic word, her spell against demons. ~ Thomas Pynchon

The Forbidden Room and Seances are related. Both of them are made up of lost film matter adapted through the medium of me and Evan, but the way they present themselves is totally different. One of them is this big Russian nesting doll of movie narratives and the other is much shorter experience on the internet. ~ Guy Maddin

I can't actually explain why my lines got shorter, but they did. Just as I can't explain why my early poems were 'all image' and my current ones are relatively abstract. The sense of the line changed with the theme, somehow my ear (or brain or heart/mind) fell in love with a short line and very very simple words. ~ Gregory Orr

Only the young can be alone freely. The time is shorter now for company, And sitting by a lamp more often brings Not peace, but other things. ~ Philip Larkin

Jesus Christ, bro, what the hell were you doing in there? Shaving your legs? Thirteen-year-old girls take shorter showers than that!"

"I was literally in there for five minutes. ~ Elle Kennedy

The shorter the chain between raw food and fork, the fresher it is and the more transparent the system is. ~ Joel Salatin

Stand out or Fade out! for 'me-too' Brands have a shorter shelf life ~ Bernard Kelvin Clive

The fifth-century Greek writer we know as Dionysius the Areopagite once said that as he grew older and wiser his books got shorter and shorter. ~ Anonymous

My job doesn't define me. The people I love define me. And if Nan's aneurysm taught me one thing, it's that those people are getting older, and their lives are getting shorter. I don't want to be a full day's journey away from them. I want to make the most of our time together and enjoy the absolute crap out of them while I have the chance. ~ Whitney Dineen

She'd chopped it too. It was longer than Matt's, shorter than Kellan's, somewhere in between like ... Denny. Fuck. I looked like Denny now. Anna was gonna flip when she saw this. After my hair was completely fucked, Harold took me to meet the rest of the cast. ~ S.C. Stephens

And we certainly don't have full conversations on cellphones. You know? Usually the reception is so bad, but it's only bad on your side. The person talking to you has no clue. They're just rambling on and on. You've got your finger jammed in your ear, you're shushing people on the streets. You're ducked behind a dumpster so you can hear about your friend's new hair cut. What about the bangs are they shorter?! Are the bangs shorter?! The bangs! ~ Ellen DeGeneres

The car resembles a dragon fly or any other jumping animal that moves shorter distances in straight lines and then changes its direction at different points. ~ Fritz Todt

Music is interior decoration. ~ Wayne Shorter

There are many of our so-called captains on industry who, if the truth were told, and a shorter and uglier word were not unpermissible, are little better than malefactors of great wealth. ~ James Branch Cabell

As life speeds by, nostalgia has a shorter pregnancy. Games still in progress are given the straight-to-sepia status of "Instant Classics" no matter how oxymoronic that phrase appears. ~ Steve Rushin

My motto? Don't trust someone who is just as cagey as yourself."
"What kind of detective are you?" "A lousy one and proud of it. I write, remember?"
She looked down at her hand & laughed. "Berretta doesn't make lighters." "Why I was a writer! My life revolved around fiction. I could make something up"
"She looked down at her hand & laughed. "Berretta doesn't make lighters."
"So they're not Tolstoy, they're a little shorter ... Okay, okay a lot. Go ahead, read my mystery series anyway."
"A detective has their boundaries especially me. So mine shifted occasionally ... okay a lot"
"Beat it, Buster. My temper and this mace have a hair trigger."
"Interference could be lethal." I got right up in his face, hissing, "Don't push me, I'm hormonal."
I'm not really a lousy detective, just rough around the edges. ~ Peggy A. Edelheit

What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta (the same boy grown to manhood), who sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together. ~ Beryl Markham

I was genuinely starstruck when I met Kermit the Frog. Like many stars here tonight, he's a lot shorter in real life. ~ Bret McKenzie

Being in love has a shorter guarantee than a kettle, and in the long run it can be a lot less use in a marriage. Better to be armed with a dose of blind faith, so that when the love runs out you can believe it will be back again. Because it will. What I have learned…is that married love is never complete or finite. It has to be elastic, adjustable. If you become too attached to a way of loving, the beautiful buzz, the thrill, you'll have no way of replacing it when it's gone. Marriages are custom made; you just jiggle them around until you find a way to make them fit. ~ Morag Prunty

The with is shorter than the without, but the with makes the without bearable, as the shadow of memory is long and bright. Let this be a lesson in love. ~ Jarod Kintz

If I'm writing a book, and I'm warned, 'Oh, this is unsaleable, you need to make it shorter,' or, 'It has to be this, or that,' I'm proud to say I don't pay attention. ~ William T. Vollmann

Ideas are the easy part. I spend a lot of time batting them away, trying to keep them from distracting me from what I actually have to focus on and finish. A lot of times, they are a siren temptress beckoning me with the promise of a much shorter, simpler, more slender novel over the horizon, but of course that's very dangerous. ~ Michael Chabon

Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Our lives were short, and we never would have wanted to have them be shorter. Sometimes perspective comes far too late. You cannot trust yourself. You think you can, but you can't. Not because you are selfish. You cannot live for anyone else's sake. As much as you may want to, you can't stay alive just because other people want you alive. You cannot stay alive for your parents. You cannot stay alive for your friends. And you have no responsibility to stay alive for them. You have no responsibility to anyone but yourself to live. ~ David Levithan

Maximum sentence length: seventeen words. Minimum:one No semicolons. Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation. Besides, they are ugly. Make sure each sentence is at least four words longer or shorter than the one before it. ~ Richard Hugo

I don't know, Call said. He was starting to worry that there weren't any good guys. Just people with longer or shorter Evil Overlord lists. ~ Holly Black

I lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn, for about 10 years, and then we moved out to Jersey City after my wife and I bought a house up in the Catskills. I miss Brooklyn, but the commute to the Catskills is about 45 minutes shorter. ~ Pablo Schreiber

Yes, winning the gold medal was undoubtedly the biggest day of my career - mostly because I won the way I had prepared to run it. It was a totally satisfying experience. ~ Frank Shorter

Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him." Yes, for HIM. Seek not only the help, the gift, thou needest seek: HIMSELF; wait for HIM. Give God His glory by resting in Him, by trusting him fully, by waiting patiently for Him. This patience honors Him greatly; it leaves Him, as God on the throne, to do His work; it yields self wholly into His hands. It lets God be God. If thy waiting be for some special request, wait patiently. If thy waiting be more the exercise of the spiritual life seeking to know and have more of God, wait patiently. Whether it be in the shorter specific periods of waiting, or as the continuous habit of the souls. Rest in the Lord, be still before the Lord, and wait patiently. "They that wait on the Lord shall inherit the land." "My soul, wait thou only upon God! ~ Andrew Murray

I get on with all my exes, so there's nothing I need to forget about. I don't know - life is shorter than it seems. ~ Agyness Deyn

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity. ~ Emily Dickinson

I always go into a bit of a funk when the days get shorter and there's not enough sunlight. ~ Wynonna Judd

Even if the skies were shorter than my knees, I would not kneel. ~ Cyrus The Great

Unfortunately, mortal life is very fragile, and very short. Yours could be shorter than usual. ~ Rachel Caine

People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine. ~ Brian Tracy

My Snowman sadly bowed
his head
in March, one sunny day,
and this is what he softly said
before he went away:

'In the middle of December
I was handsome, round,
and tall,
now I hardly can remember
those December days at all.
Oh my stomach's started
shrinking,
I am losing all my form,
and I'm thinking as I'm
shrinking
that I wish it weren't warm.

I can feel my shoulders
stooping
as my body's getting thin,
my nose has started
drooping
and my mouth has lost
its grin,
I am surely getting
shorter,
there is little left
of me,
my head is but a quarter
of the size it used to be.

I am getting hard of hearing
and my vision's little use,
for my ears are disappearing
and my eyes are coming loose.
Through the icy weeks
of winter
I stood prouder than a king,
now I'm thinner than
a splinter,
winter's melting into spring!' ~ Jack Prelutsky

Crisis' seems to be too mild a word to describe conditions in countless African-American communities. It is beyond crisis when in the richest nation in the world, African Americans in Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations of the world. ~ Johnnetta B. Cole

The difference between children and adults is that they're shorter - not dumber. ~ Mo Willems

I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated! ~ Wayne Shorter

The older you are when you buy an annuity, the shorter your life expectancy will be - so the greater a monthly paycheck the same sum of money will buy you. When interest rates are higher, the size of the paycheck for the same sum of money will rise also. ~ Jean Chatzky

If there is a war, then all of the things most of us do won't matter any more. I have a feeling that one has to work all day and all night and live too, and swim and get the sun one's hair and laugh and love as many people as one can find around and do this all terribly fast, because the time getting shorter and shorter every day. ~ Martha Gellhorn

The arts can open the door to the imagination, pushing the envelope of how peace can be created. It takes courage to take this kind of risk, and courage is what we all need to create a better world. ~ Wayne Shorter

Once again we may ask - how is it that Jesus assumed an authority and reign that he did not previously possess? The answer is found in an important distinction. We may distinguish Jesus' essential dominion or reign from his mediatorial dominion or reign. This is how Ebenezer Erskine and James Fisher, two eighteenth-century Scottish commentators on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, express the difference. Q. 17. How manifold is [Jesus'] kingdom? A. It is twofold; his essential and his mediatorial kingdom. Q. 18. What is his essential kingdom? A. It is that absolute and supreme power, which he hath over all the creatures in heaven and earth, essentially and naturally, as God equal with the Father, Psal. ciii. 19, "his kingdom ruleth over all - " Q. 19. What is his mediatorial kingdom? A. It is that sovereign power and authority in and over the church, which is given him as Mediator, Eph. i. 22.52 ~ Guy Prentiss Waters

I'm learning more about life when I'm playing too, and writing music. I'm learning more about life, the connection. ~ Wayne Shorter

Life is short but heartache is shorter ~ Tyler Perry

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A ~ A.S. Bhalla

I like shorter jokes. I like fewer words. I think the more ideas there are the, the fewer words there should be. ~ Demetri Martin

I have a friend who likes to date younger women because their stories are shorter. Old men like us, our stories are longer. ~ Jerry N. Uelsmann

Some rabbis say that, at birth, we are each tied to God with a string, and that every time we sin, the string breaks. To those who repent of their sins, especially in the days of Rosh Hashanah, God sends the angel Gabriel to make knots in the string, so that the humble and contrite are once again tied to God. Because each one of us fails, because we all lose our way on the path to righteousness from time to time, our strings are full of knots. But, the rabbis like to say, a string with many knots is shorter than one without knots. So the person with many sins but a humble heart is closer to God. ~ Rachel Held Evans

A leaf that falls into a stream (or a leaf we intentionally drop into a stream) just where the water disappears into the ground ... will come out again at the next opening, because the underground stream has faithfully carried it there, though during this journey it has been beyond the reach of any outside interference. In the same way, an idea that has been introduced into our minds (or that we ourselves have intentionally introduced) will produce its effects after longer or shorter subconscious development. ~ Charles Baudouin

This was not Newt's fault; in his younger days he would go every couple of months to the barber's shop on the corner, clutching a photograph he's carefully torn from a magazine which showed someone with an impressively cool haircut grinning at the camera and he would show the picture to the barber, and ask to be made to look like that, please. And the barber, who knew his job, would take one look and then give Newt the basic, all-purpose, short-back-and-sides. After a year of this, Newt realized that he obviously didn't have the face for haircuts. The best Newton Pulsifer could hope for after a haircut was shorter hair. ~ Neil Gaiman

I like editing. Generally, you work under the assumption that everything can be shorter. I like to see if I can reconstruct a sentence. I find that enjoyable work. ~ Sheldon Harnick

Owing to the corner pick-up stops required in any case by buses, the short signal frequencies interfere with bus travel time less than long signal frequencies. These same shorter frequencies, unstaggered, constantly hold up and slow down private transportation, which would thereby be discouraged from using these particular streets. In turn, this would mean still less interference and more speed for buses. ~ Jane Jacobs

Flowers bloomed without glimpsing your smile in spring, leaves have fallen in autumn chiming in with the gloom, the chill of winter has gone and now is the first light of summer without you near but in our hearts will forever hold you dear ... Elizabeth's Shorter Poems ~ Elizabeth E. Castillo

We might not want to share our food or our money, but we do want to share our judgement. We want others to think we have more fun.But we need meeting-places of the mind. A Kilimanjaro of spirit that we've all visited so we can say of other things: it's shorter, or taller, or the same height as Kilimanjaro. ~ Tibor Fischer

But I would argue that a longer war it's more difficult to keep records than a shorter war. ~ Christopher Shays

Another of Brother Lawrence's helpful ideas was to pray shorter conversational prayers continually through the day rather than trying to pray long sessions of complex prayers. ~ Rick Warren

She tasted disgusting, worse than Gurdyroots! Okay, Ron, come here so I can do you…"
"Right, but remember, I don't like the beard too long--"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, this isn't about looking handsome--"
"It's not that, it gets in the way! But I liked my nose a bit shorter, try and do it the way you did last time."
Hermione sighed and set to work, muttering under her breath as she transformed various aspects of Ron's appearance. He was to be given a completely fake identity, and they were trusting to the malevolent aura cast by Bellatrix to protect him. Meanwhile Harry and Griphook were to be concealed under the Indivisibility Cloak.
"There," said Hermione, "how does he look, Harry?"
It was just possible to discern Ron under his disguise, but only, Harry thought, because he knew him so well. Ron's hair was now long and wavy; he had a thick brown beard and mustache, no freckles, a short, broad nose, and heavy eyebrows.
"Well, he's not my type, but he'll do," said Harry. ~ J.K. Rowling

It is just called Continuing Legal Education. You can go to lectures, you can even listen to tapes on airplanes - they want you to stay current. So you do have to stay current to maintain your license even if you are not practicing. ~ Frank Shorter

I spent five years, at least, working with Miles. Together, we recorded ESP, Nefertiti, Sorcerer
and I can tell you; each of these albums instantly became jazz classics. Hey, we had Wayne Shorter playing tenor sax, Ron [Carter] on bass, Tony Williams played drums. That was great band we had. ~ Herbie Hancock

I am not going to live, and I can choose to be as much for her as I can be, to burn as brightly for her as I wish, and for a shorter time, than to burden her with someone only half-alive for a longer time. It is my choice, William, and you cannot make it for me. ~ Cassandra Clare

The correct method for tracking the stock market is to use semilogarithmic chart paper, since the market's history is sensibly related only on a percentage basis. The investor is concerned with percentage gain or loss, not the number of points traveled in a market average. Arithmetic scale is quite acceptable for tracking hourly waves. Channeling techniques work acceptably well on arithmetic scale with shorter term moves. ~ Robert Prechter

I fell off a bridge when I was 14, then had surgery when I was 17. Now my left wrist is an inch-and-a-half shorter than my [right one] and doesn't quite have the mobility to wrap around a guitar neck without a bit of pain. ~ Zach Condon

You train best where you are the happiest. ~ Frank Shorter

Faced with such insecurity, labor unions seek a solution in demands for higher wages, shorter hours, pensions, and such things. But this approach takes monopolistic capitalism for granted, and accepts the unnatural division between property and responsibility as permanent. A much more radical solution is apt to come, and this may take either of two forms. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

When writing emails, the rule is, the shorter and more effective your email, the better. ~ Jason Luong

I thought it was time to get a group together and the first person I thought of was Wayne Shorter. I called Wayne and in the meantime, Wayne called me to make an album with him, which was Super Nova. ~ Miroslav Vitous

The more we communicate with God, the shorter the distance to the long distance call! He never has voicemail on! EL ~ Evinda Lepins

I guess I don't really believe in retirement. I believe in shorter days and maybe in weekends! ~ Alice Waters

... people didn't seem to be able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colorful, if you liked the color of blood. ~ Terry Pratchett

I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Doing as many makeovers as I do, I've learned a few things about what makes women feel better about themselves. The starting point is usually getting a new haircut. I don't want to generalize, because every case is different, but I think it's best to err on the side of styling your hair shorter the older you get. In my opinion, it's generally not a good look for women over thirty to have hair way below their shoulders. ~ Tim Gunn

If I'm very drunk, I can improvise. But generally speaking, no. Generally speaking, almost all of my work is material that was first done on the printed page. And the shorter ones that you might call poems, I had a stretch from '79, '80, for five or six years, where I wrote a lot of poetry as such. Simply because I was asked to. ~ Richard Meltzer

We live longer
but less precisely
and in shorter sentences. ~ Wislawa Szymborska

Did you hear about the middle Eastern potentate?" he asked me. "This potentate called a meeting of the wise men in the kingdom, and said, "I want you to gather all the world's knowledge together in one place so that my sons can read it and learn."The wise men went off, and after year, they came back with twenty-five volumes of knowledge. This potentate looked at it and he said, "No. It's too long. Make it shorter." So the wise men went off for another year. When they came back, they gave the potentate a piece of paper with one sentence on it. A single sentence. You know what the sentence was?"
Bob looked at me. I shook my head.
"The sentence was: "This too shall pass."
Bob paused, let it sink in: "I heard that when I was very young and it has always stuck with me. ~ A. J. Jacobs

If all you have is music, then you don't have music ~ Wayne Shorter

Figure 36. A "trick" can be played on Nature by slowing down the light that takes shorter paths: glass of just the right thickness is inserted so that all the paths will take exactly the same time. This causes all of the arrows to point in the same direction, and to produce a whopping final arrow-lots of light! Such a piece of glass made to greatly increase the probability of light getting from a source to a single point is called a focusing lens. ~ Richard Feynman

I have worked out with the Thunder, Lakers, Knicks, Grizzlies, Spurs, and a few others before the draft. I have worked out primarily against shorter and supposedly faster players in these workouts. ~ Jeremy Lin

When I was a small boy, I was bullied more than most, mainly because I was a foot shorter than everyone else. ~ Robert Reich

Chronic stress in infancy and early childhood has been identified as a major contributor to adult health problems. In 2009, Jack Shonkoff and colleagues published a major review in the Journal of the American Medical Association that stated that "adult disease prevention begins with reducing early toxic stress." Considering the state of American's health, this is something we should take quite seriously. A recent report from the Institute of Medicine (2013) noted the following:

"For many years, Americans have been dying at younger ages than people in almost all other high-income countries. This disadvantage has been getting worse for three decades, especially among women. Not only are their lives shorter, but Americans also have a longstanding pattern of poorer health that is strikingly consistent and pervasive over the life course."

One way we can improve the health of the next generation is to challenge the hegemony of the cry-it-out advocates. We need to stand by the others we serve as they make the decision to defy cultural norms and respond to their babies. The health of the next generation depends on it. ~ Kathleen Kendall-Tackett

There are a lot of actresses who can wear their Uggs during a scene, and I only do that if they make me do that - like if I'm working with a shorter man and they request me to take off my shoes. ~ Alysia Reiner

In 1978, Elizabeth Blackburn, working with Joe Gall, identified the DNA sequence of telomeres. Every time a cell divides, it gets shorter. But telomeres usually don't. So there must be something happening to the telomeres to keep their length in equilibrium. ~ Carol W. Greider

Larry said that Michelangelo was a poof, so I wondered why he'd sculpted a guy with a really tiny cock. But I know when you go to old houses, the doorways are much smaller, 'cause people were shorter then, so maybe cocks were smaller too. It makes me glad I wasn't born a few centuries ago. ~ J.L. Merrow

Physicians today, as human beings, are not exempt from the perverse economic pressures created by fee-for-service regimes to see more patients for shorter appointments and order more tests and procedures. If the incentives were changed to pay to foster better health outcomes, I am convinced physician behavior would change over time. ~ Mitch Kapor

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter. ~ Brian Eno

Despite the boredom of the infinity, we want life not shorter than the eternity! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

You pakeha," she murmured, "all your streets must be straight and even. You tear them from the earth without hearing its groans. And yet the winding, rocky ways are the shorter ones if you take them in peace. ~ Sarah Lark

Buzz has reduced my range. Running safely with him means using fewer and shorter routes, with multiple laps per day or multiple returns there per week. Neither of us minds repeating ourselves. This is what runners do. ~ Joe Henderson

Everyone's attention span is getting shorter. As a result, everything - films, music, art - gets watered down and dumber. Every now and again, you get something great, but not often. ~ Kelis

Today the darkness begins to grow shorter and the light to lengthen, as the hours of night become fewer ... Realize that the true light is now here and, through the rays of the gospel, is illumining the whole earth. ~ Gregory Of Nyssa

Your body is baggage you carry through life. The more excess the baggage, the shorter the trip. -Arnold Glasow ~ Brian Mills

To accept truth is to walk in love ~ Jeremy Shorter

Susan B. Anthony said that the bicycle did more to emancipate women than any other single thing. The bicycle was linked in the psyches of women at that time as a symbol of practical emancipation. Women could go places, wear their skirts shorter to manage the bicycle, and be independent. ~ Susan Vreeland

And the day we bargained about the betrothal, and you told me I had something you wanted very badly, what you wanted to do with me…was this?"
"Among other things," he agreed, tenderly brushing his knuckles over her flushed cheek.
"If I had known all this," she said with a rueful smile, "I'm certain I would have asked for additional concessions."
That startled him-the thought that she would have tried to drive a harder bargain if she'd realized exactly how much and what sort of power she really held. "What kind of additional concessions?" he asked, his face carefully expressionless.
She put her cheek against his shoulder, her arms curving around him. "A shorter betrothal," she whispered. "A shorter courtship, and a shorter ceremony."
A fresh surge of tenderness and profound pride swept through him at her sweetness and her candor, and he wrapped his arms tightly, protectively around her, smiling with joyous contentment. He had realized within minutes of meeting her that she was rare; he had known within hours that she was everything he wanted. Passionate and gentle, intelligent, sensitive, and witty. He loved all of her qualities, but he hadn't discovered the one he particularly admired until much later, and that was her courage. He was so proud of the courage that had enabled he to repeatedly confront adversity and adversaries-even when the adversary was him. ~ Judith McNaught

The last shot wasn't bad," he said, dropping the subject of the duel. "However, the target is the twig, not the leaves. The end of the twig," he added.
"You must have missed the twig yourself," she pointed out, lifting the gun and aiming it carefully, "since it's still there."
"True, but it's shorter than it was when I started."
Elizabeth momentarily forgot what she was doing as she stared at him in disbelief and amazement. "Do you mean you've been clipping the end off it?"
"A bit at a time," he said, concentrating on her next shot.
She hit another leaf on the twig and handed the gun back to him.
"You're not bad," he complimented.
She was an outstanding shot, and his smile said he knew it as he handed her a freshly loaded gun. Elizabeth shook her head. "I'd rather see you try it."
"You doubt my word?"
"Let's merely say I'm a little skeptical."
Taking the gun, Ian raised it in a swift arc, and without pausing to aim, he fired. Two inches of twig spun away and fell to the ground. Elizabeth was so impressed she laughed aloud. "Do you know," she exclaimed with an admiring smile, "I didn't entirely believe until this moment that you really meant to shoot the tassel off Robert's boot!"
He sent her an amused glance as he reloaded and handed her the gun. "At the time I was sorely tempted to aim for something more vulnerable. ~ Judith McNaught

The end product of the shorter
deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater
focus. ~ Timothy Ferriss