Surer Quotes

An old chinaman - he must have been sixty - shuffled by me hastily with a hop layout and spread it out in a nearby bunk. He was shaking with the yen-yen, the hop habit. His withered, claw-like hands trembled as he feverishly rolled the first pill, a large one. His burning eyes devoured it. Half-cooked, he stuck the pill in its place, and turning his pipe to the lamp, greedily sucked the smoke into his lungs. Now, with a long grateful exhalation, the smoke is discharged. The cramped limbs relax and straighten out. The smoker heaves a sigh of satisfaction, and the hands, no longer shaking, turn with surer touch to another pill. This is smaller, rolled and shaped with more care, better cooked and inhaled with a long, slaw draw. Each succeeding pill is smaller, more carefully browned over the lamp and smoked with increasing pleasure. ~ Jack Black

Preventives of evil are far better than remedies; cheaper and easier of application, and surer in result. ~ Tryon Edwards

So the life I have made
May seem wrong to you
But, I've never been surer
It's my life to ruin
My own way ... ~ Morrissey

You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity. ~ Samuel Johnson

I believe there no surer path to leaping dramatically forward in your career than to earn a Ph.D. in the humanities. Because the thought leaders in our industry are not the ones who plodded dully, step by step, up the career ladder. The leaders are the ones who took chances and developed unique perspectives. ~ Damon Horowitz

Part of him wanted to throw her down onto the straw and have done with it. For there was no surer way of losing desire for a woman than to take your fill of her. But he sensed that Eleni might be slow to realise that her duty was to please her sheikh in every aspect that he demanded. His mouth curved into a smile. She would soon learn. ~ Sharon Kendrick

But then anytime you join in a mass movement you're going to find yourself standing alongside idiots. One reason people go to mass rallies is to become stupider and surer of themselves than they are when they're alone. ~ Tim Kreider

The mountain rill Seeks with no surer flow the far bright sea, Than my unchang'd affections flow to thee. ~ Benjamin

It was safer to walk softly, and surer to ask instead of telling. ~ Stephen King

Humility is like a tree, whose root when it sets deepest in the earth rises higher, and spreads fairer and stands surer, and lasts longer, and every step of its descent is like a rib of iron. ~ Jeremy Taylor

The question of "unreality"is a very important one. Misled by grammar, the great majority of those logicians who have dealt with this question have dealt with it on mistaken lines. They have regarded grammatical form as a surer guide in analysis than, in fact, it is. And they have not known what differences in grammatical form are important. ~ Bertrand Russell

But they knew, either instinctively or from their own experience, that our early impulsive emotions have but little influence over our later actions and the conduct of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty to our friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule of life, have a surer foundation in habits solidly formed and blindly followed than in these momentary transports, ardent but sterile. ~ Marcel Proust

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities. ~ Augustus Hare

It has bloomed again,
This flower that I thought dead.
In one moment of despair
And pain,
I'd trampled it in the ground
Upon this barren plain.
Little did I know
That it would rise again,
This flower that I thought dead.
My soul would need
A surer weapon than despair
To crush a thing so bright, so fair. ~ Ruskin Bond

BY THE HUNDREDS, blacks cleared out of Groveland on the backs of citrus trucks. Others took blankets, food, and water and fled with their children into the pine leaf forests, surer than rumor that the Ku Klux Klan would be coming from all directions to burn down Stuckey Still, the black enclave west of Groveland. ~ Gilbert King

By preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship. ~ George Orwell

There is no surer or more painful way to learn a rule than to be penalized once for breaking it. ~ Tom Watson

There is no surer method of economizing and saving money than in the reduction of the number of officials. ~ Winston Churchill

Smells are surer than sounds and sights to make the heartstrings crack. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it ~ Eric Hoffer

Since we parted yester eve, I do love thee, love, believe, Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer,- One dream deeper, one night stronger, One sun surer,-thus much more Than I loved thee, love, before. ~ Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl Of Lytton

There is perhaps no surer road to peace than the one that starts from little islands and oases of genuine kindness, islands and oases constantly growing in number and being continually joined together until eventually they ring the world. ~ Dominique Pire

And this week, I am proposing legislation to strengthen our Open Records laws to make public access to our public records surer, faster, and more comprehensive. ~ Roy Barnes

For some reason, the less you pay for a watch, the surer you can be that it will never stop. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not recommending one form of love over another. I don't know if prudent or reckless love is the better, monied or penniless love the surer, heterosexual or homosexual love the sexier, married or unmarried love the stronger. I may be tempted towards didacticism, but this isn't an advice column. I can't tell you whether or not you're in love. If you need ask, then you probably aren't, that's my only advice… But I can tell you why to love. Because the history of the world, which only stops at the half-house of love to bulldoze it into rubble, is ridiculous without it. The history of the world becomes brutally self-important without love. Our random mutation is essential because it is unnecessary. Love won't change the history of the world (that nonsense about Cleopatra's nose is strictly for sentimentalists), but it will do something much more important: teach us to stand up to history, to ignore its chin-out strut. I don't accept your terms, love says; sorry, you don't impress, and by the way what a silly uniform you're wearing. Of course, we don't fall in love to help out with the world's ego problem; yet this is one of love's surer effects.'
Love and truth, that's the vital connection, love and truth. [. . .] How you cuddle in the dark governs how you see the history of the world. ~ Julian Barnes

…He wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who'd come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of my death I had waiting for me… I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that… Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I've lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? ~ Albert Camus

There is no surer mark of a low and unregenerate nature than this tendency of power to loudness and wantonness instead of quietness and reverence. To souls baptized in Christian nobleness the largest sphere of command is but a wider empire of obedience, calling them, not to escape from holy rule, but to its full impersonation. ~ James Martineau

Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims. ~ Alan Barth

There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. ~ John Maynard Keynes

It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion. ~ Paul Davies

There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I will remember, Your Grace, said Sansa, though she had always heard that love was a surer route to the people's loyalty than fear. If I am ever a queen, I'll make them love me. ~ George R R Martin

Young women and young men grow up, but old women and old men just grow older and surer they've got right on their side. ~ Stephen King

Each man must learn his own ideal and try to accomplish it: that is a surer way of progress than to take the ideas of another. ~ Romain Rolland

Let a man be but in earnest in praying against a temptation as the tempter is in pressing it, and he needs not proceed by a surer measure. ~ Robert South

Sirine puts a forkful of sweet potatoes into her mouth. The potatoes are soft as velvet, the gravy satiny. It is as if she can taste the life inside all those ingredients: the stem that the cranberries grew on, the earth inside the bread, even the warm blood inside the turkey. It comes back to her, the small secret that was always hers, for years, the only truth she seemed to possess- that food was better than love: surer, truer, more satisfying and enriching. As long as she could lose herself in the rhythms of peeling an onion, she was complete and whole. And as long as she could cook, she would be loved. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

If you insist on the chase," I say, my voice much surer than I feel."Then you better start training. 'Cause, dude you're in for a marathon. ~ Alyson Noel

No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made surer or quicker. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

... To remember,
to hear and remember, is to stop
and walk on again
to a livelier, surer measure.
It is dangerous
to remember the past only
for its own sake, dangerous
to deliver a message
you did not get. ~ Wendell Berry

One of the commonest causes of failure in Christian life is found in the attempt to follow some good man whom we greatly admire. No man and no woman, no matter how good, can be safely followed. If we follow any man or woman, we are bound to go astray. There has been but one absolutely perfect Man on this earth-the Man Christ Jesus. If we try to follow any other man we are surer to imitate his faults than his excellencies. Look to Jesus and Jesus only as your Guide. ~ R.A. Torrey

There's no faster way or surer way to consolidate power and disenfranchise critics than to operate in secret. So this plays squarely into the promotion of the unitary executive. That's one factor. ~ Ted Gup

I think that fortune watcheth o'er our lives, surer than we. But well said: he who strives will find his goals strive for him equally. ~ Euripides

Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp's rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,
a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I know no surer way of shaking off the dreary crust formed about the soul by the trying to do one's duty or the patient enduring of having somebody else's duty done to one, than going out alone, either at the bright beginning of the day, when the earth is still unsoiled by the feet of the strenuous and only God is abroad; or in the evening, when the hush has come, out to the blessed stars, and looking up at them wonder at the meanness of the day just past, at the worthlessness of the things one has struggled for, at the folly of having been so angry, and so restless, and so much afraid. Nothing focusses life more exactly than a little while alone at night with the stars. What are perfunctory bedroom prayers hurried through in an atmosphere of blankets, to this deep abasement of the spirit before the majesty of heaven? And as a consecration of what should be yet one more happy day, of what value are those hasty morning devotions, ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice. ~ Eric Hoffer

I've known since the first moment I saw you and every day after has only made me surer. I see who you are, right down to your soul. I know you're the kind of woman who gives of herself, completely. I know the promises you make mean more to you than the cost. I know that family is the most important thing to you in the entire world. But most of all, I know that you feel exactly the same thing I do - we belong together, Del. You're the piece of me that's been missing all my life and I can tell just looking that I'm the same for you. ~ Dee Tenorio

The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show. ~ Leonard Cohen

Being a scientist requires having faith in uncertainty, finding pleasure in mystery, and learning to cultivate doubt. There is no surer way to screw up an experiment than to be certain of its outcome. ~ Stuart Firestein

A sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience. ~ Mark Twain

There is no better deliverance from the world than through art, and a man can form no surer bond with it. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Let's skip [Mobile Infantry] tradition for a moment. Can you think of anything sillier than being fired out of a spaceship with nothing but mayhem and sudden death at the other end? However, if someone must do this idiotic stunt, do you know a surer way to keep a man keyed up to the point where he is willing than by keeping him constantly reminded that the only good reason why men fight is a living, breathing reality?
"In a mixed ship [men and women] the last thing a trooper hears before a drop (maybe the last word he ever hears) is a woman's voice, wishing him luck. If you don't think this is important you've probably resigned from the human race. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

There are few surer ways to become disliked by men than to perform well where they have performed poorly. ~ Bryant H. McGill

There cannot be a surer rule, nor a stronger exhortation to the observance of it, than when we are taught that all the endowments which we possess are divine deposits entrusted to us for the very purpose of being distributed for the good of our neighbor. ~ John Calvin

What surer sign is there that the creative aquifers are dry than a writer creating a writer-character? ~ David Mitchell

Rural solitude, which provides ample themes for the intellect and sweet occupations innumerable for the minor sentiments, often denies a ready object for those stronger passions that enter no less than the others into the human constitution. The suspended pathos finds its remedy in settling on the first intrusive shape that happens to be reasonably well organized for the purpose, disregarding social and other minor accessories. Where the solitude is shadowed by the secret melancholies of the solitary, this natural law is still surer in operation. ~ Thomas Hardy

A humble knowledge of ourselves is a surer way to God than is the search for depth of learning. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Why is it better to love than be loved? It is surer. ~ Sacha Guitry

There's no surer way to destroy a man than to force him into a spot where he has to aim at not doing his best, where he has to struggle to do a bad job, day after day. ~ Ayn Rand

There is no surer or more illuminating way of reading a man's character, and perhaps a little of his past history, than by observing the contexts in which he prefers to use certain words. ~ Owen Barfield

Nature has a surer plan than mortals can devise. ~ Janet Morris

Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer than a toss up. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

The surer of himself an admiral is, the finer the tactical development of his fleet, the better his captains, the more reluctant must he necessarily be to enter into a melee with equal forces, in which all these advantages will be thrown away, chance reign supreme, and his fleet be place on terms of equality with an assemblage of ships which have never before acted together. ~ Alfred Thayer Mahan

Paradoxically, the fear of breaking your neck (translation in corporate terms: losing your job) does not make change impossible. It's a much more insidious kind of fear that interferes with change: the fear of mockery. If you want to make change in your organization utterly impossible, try mocking people as they struggle with the new, unfamiliar ways you have just urged upon them. There is no surer way to stop essential change dead. The safety that is required for essential change is a sure sense that no one will be mocked, demeaned, or belittled while struggling to achieve renewed mastery. ~ Tom DeMarco

Those who keep careful watch over their conscience are not often liable to form rash judgments, for just as when the clouds lower the bees make for the shelter of their hive, so really good people shrink back into themselves, and refuse to be mixed up with the clouds and fogs of their neighbour's questionable doings, and rather than meddle with others, they consecrate their energies on their own improvement and good resolutions. No surer sign of an unprofitable life than when people give way to censoriousness and inquisitiveness into the lives of other men. ~ Francis De Sales

Susan was frustrated and angry with her disease, which she survived for more than nine years. And my father became the receptacle for her vitriol. 'She screams and carries on when the going gets tough,' he wrote, 'knowing that I understand and will never reproach her, never abandon her, whatever!' He even encouraged her to use him in this manner, suspecting that once she was drained, she became more rational, placid, and cooperative regarding treatment decisions. My dad suspected that his medical expertise had prolonged her life but was even surer that he had helped her mental suffering by letting her know that he 'was always available, even for the most trivial of problems or questions. ~ Barron H. Lerner

Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue. On the other hand, when the manners of a nation are pure, when true religion and internal principles maintain their vigour, the attempts of the most powerful enemies to oppress them are commonly baffled and disappointed. . . .

[H]e is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy to God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country. Do not suppose, my brethren, that I mean to recommend a furious and angry zeal for the circumstantials of religion, or the contentions of one sect with another about their peculiar distinctions. I do not wish you to oppose any body's religion, but every body's wickedness. Perhaps there are few surer marks of the reality of religion, than when a man feels himself more joined in spirit to a true holy person of a different denomination, than to an irregular liver of his own. It is therefore your duty in this important and critical season to exert yourselves, every one in his proper sphere, to stem the tide of prevailing vice, to promote the knowledge of G ~ John Witherspoon

We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian Church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protest injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved-but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Why is it better to love than to be loved? It is surer. ~ Sacha Guitry

The Holy Spirit is no Skeptic, & the things He has written in our hearts are not doubts or opinions, but assertions - surer & more certain than sense & life itself. ~ Martin Luther

No, you're not," he said, sounding much surer than she ~ Charlie N. Holmberg

One thing's sure and nothing surer. The rich get richer and the poor get- children ~ Ron Rash

There is no surer road to perdition than the ledger glands dictate your direction. ~ Lois Greiman

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. ~ Robert Brault

I came into the unknown
and stayed there unknowing
rising beyond all science.

I did not know the door
but when I found the way,
unknowing where I was,
I learned enormous things,
but what I felt I cannot say,
for I remained unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

It was the perfect realm
of holiness and peace.
In deepest solitude
I found the narrow way:
a secret giving such release
that I was stunned and stammering,
rising beyond all science.

I was so far inside,
so dazed and far away
my senses were released
from feelings of my own.
My mind had found a surer way:
a knowledge of unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

And he who does arrive
collapses as in sleep,
for all he knew before
now seems a lowly thing,
and so his knowledge grows so deep
that he remains unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

The higher he ascends
the darker is the wood;
it is the shadowy cloud
that clarified the night,
and so the one who understood
remains always unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

This knowledge by unknowing
is such a soaring force
that scholars argue long
but never leave the ground.
Their knowledge always fails the source:
to understand unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

This knowledge is supreme
crossing a blazing hei ~ Juan De La Cruz

There was no surer way to lose the confidence of an audience, or a jury, than by letting them think faster than yourself, so that they became aware of what you were going to say before you said it. ~ Arthur Hailey

I thought I would get calmer, surer, but each time we come close I feel almost sick at first. As though each time vibrates with the times before. I feel a terrible sorrow coming up my throat, I don't know why. And it can only be consoled against the length of her body. Lying down with her for the first time ... all the pain I didn't know I had, till at her touch it disappeared like smoke. Is this what purgatory feels like? To burn painlessly? If so, why isn't it called heaven? ~ Ann-Marie MacDonald

I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. ~ Mark Twain

Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion. ~ Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

Every man should take up his own ideal and endeavour to accomplish it. That is a surer way of progress than taking up other men's ideals, which he can never hope to accomplish. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Dare to be what you ought to be, dare to be what you dream to be, dare to be the finest you can be. The more you dare, the surer you will be of gaining just what you dare! ~ Norman Vincent Peale

I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored to belie me.-It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions. ~ Ben Jonson

Leonardo believed his research had the
potential to convert millions to a more spiritual life. Last year he categorically proved the existence of
an energy force that unites us all. He actually demonstrated that we are all physically connected ... that
the molecules in your body are intertwined with the molecules in mine ... that there is a single force
moving within all of us." Langdon felt disconcerted. And the power of God shall unite us all. "Mr. Vetra actually found a way
to demonstrate that particles are connected?"
"Conclusive evidence. A recent Scientific American article hailed New Physics as a surer path to God
than religion itself. ~ Dan Brown

A humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning. ~ Thomas A Kempis

There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence. ~ Philip James Bailey

Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are alsopracticed in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death
that is, they attempt suicide
twice as often as men, though men are more "successful" because they use surer weapons, like guns. ~ Roger Rosenblatt

The greatest and most important thing in the world is founded on weakness. This is a remarkably sure foundation, for nothing is surer than that the people will be weak. ~ Blaise Pascal

Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure. ~ Hannah More

One thin's sure and nothing's surer
The rich get richer and the poor get - children.
In the meantime,
In between time ... ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

If men and women were surer of their God there would be more genuine manliness, womanliness, and godliness in the world, and a whole lot less fear of each other. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter? ~ Charlotte Bronte

Human life has not a surer friend, nor oftentimes a greater enemy, than hope. It is the miserable man's god, which in the hardest gripe of calamity never fails to yield to him beams of comfort. It is the presumptuous man's devil, which leads him a while in a smooth way, and then suddenly breaks his neck. ~ Owen Feltham

There is no surer proof of Christ's divinity than that he is still so hated some two thousand years after his death. ~ Ann Coulter

There is no surer evidence of an unconverted state than to have the things of the world uppermost in our aim, love, and estimation. ~ Joseph Alleine

Love was a surer route to the people's loyalty than fear ~ George R R Martin

For the will, as that which is common to all, is for that reason also common: consequently, every vehement emergence of will is common, i.e. it demeans us to a mere exemplar of the species.
He, who on the other hand. who wants to be altogether uncommon, that is to say great, must never let a preponderant agitation of will take his consciousness altogether, however much he is urged to do so.
He must, e.g., be able to take note of the odious opinion of another without feeling his own aroused by it: indeed, there is no surer sign of greatness than ignoring hurtful or insulting expressions by attributing them without further ado, like countless other errors, to the speaker's lack of knowledge and thus merely taking note of them without feeling them. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In matters of great concern, and which must be done, there is no surer argument of a weak mind than irresolution; to be undetermined where the case is so plain, and the necessity so urgent. To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating, and drinking, and sleeping, from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed. ~ John Tillotson

There is no surer means of calling down God's blessing upon the family than the daily recitation of the Rosary. ~ Pope Pius XII