Circles famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity -- or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity -- by being opinionated rather than by being learned.
-- A. N. Wilson -
The white sun like a moth on a string circles the southpole.
-- A. R. Ammons -
Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.
-- A. S. Byatt -
Nothing is more limiting than a closed circle of acquaintanceship where every avenue of conversation has been explored and social exchanges are fixed in a known routine.
-- A.J. Cronin -
Then shoulder to shoulder! Let us engirdle the little circle of the earth with the chains that bind us to each other. To one end let us aim our thoughts, and to one end let us aim our souls. Hail, dawn of liberty, behind thee is the redeeming sun.
-- Adam Mickiewicz -
I'm not comfortable being around too many people. I don't like being out in public too much. I don't like going to bars. I don't like doing celebrity stuff. So most of the characters I play are people who don't always feel comfortable beyond their small circle of friends.
-- Adam Sandler -
Are you in earnest resolved never to barter your liberty for the lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and independent? There seems to be one way to continue in that virtuous resolution; and perhaps but one. Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return; never come within the circle of ambition; nor ever bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth who have already engrossed the attention of half mankind before you.
-- Adam Smith -
Any Mexican, would recognise that Mexico was abused, undervalued and downgraded in international circles, most of all by the United States.
-- Adolfo Aguilar Zinser -
I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask questions. It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
-- Agnes Smedley -
I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q...
-- Aimee Bender -
I don't know if I've ever been in a clique. The older I've gotten, the more I've realized what a true friend really is. So my friendship circle has changed a bit.
-- Aimee Teegarden -
Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
-- Alan Lightman -
Our task is to widen our circle of compassion to include all living beings and all of nature
-- Albert Einstein -
Justice to others and to ourselves is the same; that we cannot define our duties by mathematical lines ruled by the square, but must fill with them the great circle traced by the compasses
-- Albert Pike -
The "October Revolution" is a myth generated by the winners, the Bolsheviks, and swallowed whole by progressive circles in the West.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
Trust me, it's paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven't tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it.
-- Alex Garland -
The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by disks and then I vary them... spheres of different sizes, densities, colours and volumes, floating in space, traversing clouds, sprays of water, currents of air, viscosities and odours - of the greatest variety and disparity.
-- Alexander Calder -
As I look back at the span of the Cold War in those early days, in the '50s, for example, there was a great deal of Soviet propaganda here in the United States, but it was clumsy, and it was anchored to a lot of ideological support in certain circles in America itself.
-- Alexander Haig -
Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven.
-- Alexander Pope -
In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.
-- Alexander Smith -
Nothing is more subtly destructive than a closed circle of artists feeding on one another. Envy grows from insignificant differences between people, not from overwhelming inequalities... it was envy that forced them to emulate each other, not esteem.
-- Alexander Theroux -
This is not a full circle. It's life carrying on. It's the next breath we all take. It's the choice we make to get on with it.
-- Alexandra Fuller -
The fact that lately some circles, not less powerful by their small size, have been actively promoting certain theories, as dangerous as they are illusory, of a "limited", "winnable" or "protracted" nuclear war, as well as their obsession of "nuclear superiority", make it advisable to bear always in mind that the immediate goal of all States, as was expressly declared in the Final Document of the Special Assembly of 1978, "is that of the elimination of the danger of a nuclear war"
-- Alfonso Garcia Robles -
If you wish to educate a child who has gone wrong, then you must, above all, keep your attention fixed on the intersection of two charmed circles.
-- Alfred Adler -
If we want world peace, we must break the vicious circle of violence and reprisal, of an eye for an eye, of endless hate.
-- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas -
I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers...
-- Alice Walker -
That's when I heard the sounds of a certified genius spinning around in circles like a dog chasing its tail.
-- Ally Carter -
Everything in the phenomenal universe is straight line and circle. The horizon, our heads, arms, electrons, the oceans, planets and stars. Their principle function is to radiate. The task of the human being is also to radiate.
-- Alonzo King -
I know people that could serve me canned tuna and saltine crackers and have me feel more at home at their table than some people who can cook circles around me. The more you try to impress people, generally the less you do.
-- Alton Brown -
The literary man has a circle of the chosen few who read him and become his only public. . . . What more natural than that he should write for those who, even if they do not pay him, at least understand him?
-- Amado Nervo -
You have so much going on. It comes off like a..." "Static?" I suggested. "Exactly!" He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. "You need to tune it, get your frequencies in check, like a radio." "I would love to.Just tell me how." "It's not a matter of turning a dial. You have no on or off switch." He walked around in a large lazy circle. "It's something you have to practice. It's more like being potty-trained. You have to learn when to hold it and when to release." "That's a pretty sexy analogy," I said.
-- Amanda Hocking -
Cat: a soft indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Don't compare yourself with anyone else. The world is full of runners, so you'll probably see one every time you circle the block or your favorite park. Some will be thinner than you, some smoother-striding, some faster. But don't let this get you down. There's only one runner who really counts: you. Running is your activity. Make it work for you, and don't worry about anyone else.
-- Amby Burfoot -
If Broadway was a river running from the top of Manhattan down to the Battery, undulating with traffic and commerce and lights, then the east-west streets were eddies where, leaf-like, one could turn slow circles from the beginning to the ever shall be, world without end.
-- Amor Towles -
Life is a full circle, widening until it joins the circle motions of the infinite.
-- Anais Nin -
Contrary to popular opinion, classical music does not have to be enjoyed amid exclusive circles, there need not be any snobbishness attached to it. It's there for everyone. I play for the people.
-- Andre Rieu -
When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists.
-- Andres Segovia -
People are more willing to buy branded goods provided they are persuaded that they are getting value from them. And they need to be convinced of those benefits, in authentic everyday language, without being confronted by corporate-speak. Get it right, and you create a virtuous circle. Get it wrong, and you get punished for it.
-- Andrew Curry -
Like the vain curlings of the watery maze, Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise, So Man, declining always, disappears In the weak circles of increasing years; And his short tumults of themselves compose, While flowing Time above his head does close.
-- Andrew Marvell -
The work itself has a complete circle of meaning and counterpoint. And without your involvement as a viewer, there is no story.
-- Anish Kapoor -
There's something imminent in the work, but the circle is only completed by the viewer.
-- Anish Kapoor -
The bottom had arrived. She crashed against it, but it brought no sense of closure or understanding. She just lay there at the bottom looking up. She knew there must be a very tiny circle of light up there somewhere, but just now she couldn’t see it.
-- Ann Brashares -
All life goes in a circle, around and around, you started at one place, and then came right back to it again.
-- Ann Petry -
They say that art should stand the test of time. Life lasts a limited amount of time. Mountains and trees and earth will outlive human beings, but we don't know if they will be here always. Art does outlast the life span of its maker. Art should communicate to an increasing circle of strangers-people who do not know the artist, but come to know the work, and through the work, come to know something about the humanity of the artist that rings with their own humanity.
-- Anna Deavere Smith -
Create around one at least a small circle where matters are arranged as one wants them to be.
-- Anna Freud -
The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed.
-- Anna Garlin Spencer -
I only really understand myself, what I'm really thinking and feelings, when I've talked it over with my circle of female friends. When days go by without that connection, I feel like a radio playing in an empty room.
-- Anna Quindlen -
I want friends, not admirers. People who respect me for my character and my deeds, not my flattering smile. The circle around me would be much smaller, but what does that matter, as long as they're sincere?
-- Anne Frank -
In the sheltered simplicity of the first days after a baby is born, one sees again the magical closed circle, the miraculous sense of two people existing only for each other.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh -
Should l go on playing bridge and dining, going in the same old monotonous circle? It's easy that way, but it's a sort of suicide, too.
-- Antoinette Perry -
Hell is the bloodcurdling mansion of time, in whose profoundest circle Satan himself waits, winding a gargantuan watch in his hand.
-- Antonio Machado -
I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.
-- Antonio Tabucchi -
A negative and toxic person never feels teased with the genuine presence of the pretenders in his network and he always feels pleased with the absence of the genuine leader in his circle.
-- Anuj -
Meton (astronomer in 5th century BC): With the straight ruler I set to work To make the circle four-cornered .
-- Aristophanes -
There is nothing strange in the circle being the origin of any and every marvel.
-- Aristotle -
Moral virtue is ... a mean between two vices, that of excess and that of defect, and ... it is no small task to hit the mean in each case, as it is not, for example, any chance comer, but only the geometer, who can find the center of a given circle.
-- Aristotle -
Everything comes in circles. [...] The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle -
Pessimism is carefully cultivated in some intellectual circles, as if it were a precious plant that the human race could not afford to lose.
-- Arthur Lynch -
Each one of us is bound to make the little circle in which he or she lives better and happier. Bound to see that out of that small circle the widest good may flow.
-- Arthur Penrhyn Stanley -
My worst fears were confirmed as Thierry and I sat in the centre circle after the final whistle. His name was sung from the rooftops, while my contribution was recognised by a deafening silence. It was like I was the invisible man
-- Ashley Cole -
Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.
-- Audre Lorde -
Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.
-- Audre Lorde -
Take care of the small circle around you. When you have succeeded with them, then move outwards, one small step at a time.
-- Audrey Hepburn -
Imagine a person with a gift of ridicule [He might say] First that a negative quantity has no logarithm; secondly that a negative quantity has no square root; thirdly that the first non-existent is to the second as the circumference of a circle is to the diameter.
-- Augustus De Morgan -
The gambling reasoner is incorrigible; if he would but take to the squaring of the circle, what a load of misery would be saved.
-- Augustus De Morgan -
It is easier to square a circle than to get round a mathematician.
-- Augustus De Morgan -
Coaches and headmasters praise sport as a preparation for the great game of life, but this is absurd. Nothing could be more different from life. For one thing sports, unlike life, are played according to rules. Indeed, the rules are the sport: life may behave bizarrely and still be life, but if the runner circles the bases clockwise it's no longer baseball.
-- Barbara Holland -
Real obstacles don't take you in circles. They can be overcome. Invented ones are like a maze.
-- Barbara Sher -
I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God.
-- Baruch Spinoza -
It's true that the Federal Reserve faces a lot of political pressure and is unpopular in many circles.
-- Ben Bernanke -
To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.
-- Ben Marcus -
I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.
-- Ben Okri -
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
-- Benoit Mandelbrot -
It's a great life, and Margaret and I are going to stay put above the Arctic Circle where we're happy.
-- Bern Will Brown -
Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.
-- Bernard Malamud -
We know we're coming full circle with God when we stand at a very similar crossroad where we made such a mess of life before, but this time we take a different road.
-- Beth Moore -
George Klein says that Elvis had five real friends outside of his circle, and I was blessed to be one of them. I spent a lot of time with Elvis in Vegas and at Graceland.
-- Bill Medley -
In uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life-one's own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough.
-- Bill Moyers -
In the end, I've found, people like the direct approach. It's much more valuable to them to have a leader who's absolutely clear and open than to have one who soft-soaps or talks in circles.
-- Bill Parcells -
You guys pair up in groups of three, then line up in a circle.
-- Bill Peterson -
Each day my friend's simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men.
-- Bill W. -
I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow...
-- Billy Collins -
What comes first? The melody, always. It's all about singing the melodies live in my head. They go in circles. I guess I'm quite conservative and romantic about the power of melodies. I try not to record them on my Dictaphone when I first hear them. If I forget all about it and it pops up later on, then I know it's good enough. I let my subconscious do the editing for me.
-- Bjork -
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.
-- Black Elk -
Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.
-- Black Elk -
Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.
-- Black Elk -
The power of the world always works in circles.
-- Black Elk -
The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle - which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected.
-- Black Elk -
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.
-- Black Elk -
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a person is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
-- Black Elk -
Grace draws a circle around everyone and says they're in.
-- Bob Goff -
I'm formally trained, I don't know what classically trained really means. I've worked with Sanford Meisner. And I've worked at Circle Rep with Marshall W. Mason and Lanford Wilson and some really good people. I was lucky. I had a lot of really good influences.
-- Brad Dourif -
An average person who develops the habit of setting clear priorities and getting important tasks completed quickly will run circles around a genius who talks a lot and makes wonderful plans but gets very little done.
-- Brian Tracy -
When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if they are seen from the center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I or can exist.
-- Bruce Lee -
A comedian sees the world bent. I'm tangent to the circle.
-- Buddy Hackett -
If you have a kid who goes to kindergarten and doesn't know what a circle is, doesn't know what red and green are, and doesn't know what right and left are, by the time he learns those things, the rest of the class is far ahead of him.
-- C. Everett Koop -
For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
-- C. S. Lewis -
The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.
-- C. S. Lewis -
What one side considers a defense the other considers a threat. In the vortex of the struggle, each is trapped by his own fearful outlook and by his fear of the other; each moves and is moved within a circle both vicious and lethal.
-- C. Wright Mills -
Planning a wedding is hell. Things are said. Doors are slammed. Quarrels about the most inconsequential things--yellow tablecloths or white? hors d'oeuvres set out on tables or passed around on trays?--are often pitched at such a level that it seems the combatants may never recover from them. Much of the anxiety, of course, is tribal. It is wrenching to have to open the sacred circle to admit an outsider.
-- Caitlin Flanagan
