Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Genius is nothing more than common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials.
Bell Labs was an astonishing place for many decades, though it fell on somewhat hard times during the telecom meltdown some years ago, as its corporate owner had to cope with shrinking markets.
If you look, like, in 1960, there was no such thing as an astronaut. It was a totally fanciful concept, but nine years later or whatever, we were landing on the moon, which is just astonishing.
Actors act... Their job is to become this character. And I have, in fact, seen Sam Heughan become Jamie and Caitriona Balfe become Claire right before my eyes. It was an astonishing transformation.
First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.
What is overlooked is the astonishing amount of history Hollywood has got right... For better or worse, nothing has been more influential in shaping our visions of the past than the commercial cinema.
I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later, in 65 or 66. That really impressed me - Cecil Taylor is an amazing character... Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.
Anyone who has ever spent time listening to a legislature knows the astonishing speed at which all presiding officers and reading clerks can spit out the formulaic incantations of parliamentary procedure.
Christianity is under attack globally, and particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where Christian populations are ceasing to exist at astonishing rates due to widespread persecution by Islamists.
It seems astonishing to be paid for indulging in pure pleasure. For me to go to Coburg is rather as if a trainspotter was sent for a few weeks to Swindon or a chocoholic asked on holiday by Green and Black.
President Obama's astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women.
Even for southerners, Arkansans are amazingly friendly and extend hospitality to all strangers with astonishing openness. You couldn't find a pretension in that state if you hunted from Jonesboro to El Dorado.
Well, I think people don't recognise my face because I'm so much older now, but it is astonishing that people can recognise a voice. I do sometimes get recognised, and indeed a lot of people do come and see me.
Whether you're a programming prodigy or the office manager holding it all together, technology empowers small groups of passionate people with an astonishing degree of leverage to make the world a better place.
I find Suez astonishing for the first hour. It is a ditch in a desert, but a stunning one. The sensation of being hemmed in by huge ships, moving at a stately pace through a man-made waterway, is extraordinary.
It goes back to the starfish. That's when the light bulb really popped over my head. We'd found one on the beach, and I was struck by what astonishing creatures they are, talking with Dad about how they regenerate.
Without Ataturk's vision, without his ambition and energy, without his astonishing boldness in sweeping away traditions accumulated over centuries, today's Turkey would not exist, and the world would be much poorer.
I'm very fond of an old map of London that used to belong to my father. I'm a big London fan, and the evolution of the city is astonishing, when you look back to Pepys and how small it was - everyone knew each other.
I'd love to make films in England, and I tried to. I think there's a wealth of amazing talent and astonishing writing over here; there just seems to be more of a culture of developing films than actually making them.
The pace of digital innovation is astonishing. It's impossible to imagine life without the web, smartphones, social networks. And yet the consumer products and everyday objects all around us are still essentially dumb.
The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled.
Social mores change all the time. In the mid-1970s, it would've been astonishing, say, to see two men holding hands in the streets. And the attitude to having a fling with a girl, or whatever, was quite different then.
My father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible to compete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow old people were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it trying to climb stairs.
The educator wants the child to be finished at once and perfect. He forces upon the child an unnatural degree of self-mastery, a devotion to duty, a sense of honour - habits that adults get out of with astonishing rapidity.
For many people, Mrs. Brown has come from the middle of nowhere. But Mrs. Brown was first written for radio. I wrote it for a radio series in 1992. It was a five-minute piece for radio, and it's been absolutely astonishing.
I do admire actors who manage to lose huge amounts of weight for roles: you have to have astonishing discipline to do that to your body and maintain it for a certain length of time before letting yourself go back to normal.
When the Bitcoin white paper emerged in 2008, it was completely revolutionary. The amount of concepts that had to come together in just the right way - computer science, cryptography, and economic incentives - was astonishing.
I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this - never to neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening.
And, as I have said, it's made me think twice about the imagination. If the spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become! Victor Hugo said of his voices that they were like his own mental powers multiplied by five.
What matters here are the works - finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off.
English girls' schools today providing the higher education are, so far as my knowledge goes, worthily representative of that astonishing rise in the intellectual standards of women which has taken place in the last half-century.
It's just astonishing to me, but not surprising in some respects, how dependent we are on the somewhat meaningless and certainly ephemeral feedback that we get from strangers on the Internet. I think that's a dangerous dependence to develop.
Those who know the sport of swimming understand that the grueling practices that fill a pre-Olympic winter lay the base for any success that might come later in the Games, especially if one has it in mind to swim an astonishing eight events.
The idea that modernisation makes for enhanced national power and rapid progress and helps everyone achieve greater happiness has its origins in the astonishing political, economic and military successes of western Europe in the 19th century.
Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.
In the last ten years of watching films I have found that some of the foreign films I saw affected me most. One American film that stands out for me for its workmanship and artistry is 'Ratatouille.' It was an astonishing effort in filmmaking.
I remember as a student going to Covent Garden, where they took out the stall seats and you hunkered down on the floor - I heard Pavarotti in Tosca there, and the experience of being in that same room with that astonishing voice has never left me.
Many children fully realize their parents see them as astonishing creatures and incorporate that into their daily presentations. That is, they throw their stuff on the floor because if you are truly amazing you can pretty much do what you want. Right?
The real story of the Ground Zero mosque is that the project only became feasible because of the appalling and astonishing fecklessness of the officials who were charged with the reconstruction of the site and the neighborhood all the way back in 2001.
It's not that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but it's your best friends who are your diamonds. It's your best friends who are supremely resilient, made under pressure and of astonishing value. They're everlasting; they can cut glass if they need to.
If U.S. focuses on truth and justice, we'll realize that Israel has been there for 3,000 years - the same language, the same people, the same culture for 3,000 years - and it's always astonishing to me that we somehow now think that they're the occupiers.
The most astonishing subset of the Deep Web is a collection of dark alleys called the Dark Web. The Dark Web is generally thought of as a collection of criminal elements intent on subverting the law, stealing our money, and possibly kidnapping our daughters.
When we contemplate the heroes of Christianity, and compare our feeble efforts with their astonishing performance and self devotion, we should fall into despair, were there not a few softening features, by which they are brought back to the ranks of humanity.
If we stop dragging trawls and dredges through it, the life of the seas would recover with astonishing speed. Because most marine animals are highly mobile during at least one stage of their development, the rewilding of the seas needs little help from humans.
Katwe is fifteen minutes from my home. It's entirely about knowing it from the inside. For instance, the incredible vibrancy of style. Kampala is the center of used clothing in the world. Everyone dresses in secondhand clothes, but they look astonishing for it.
'Merry Wives of Windsor' is a wonderful machine. It's one of the great farces, and it's astonishing to remember that this is written by the same man who wrote 'Hamlet,' 'The Taming of the Shrew' or 'Cymbeline.' It's so similar, and yet the form is so different.
If our grazing land was allowed to revert to natural ecosystems, and the land currently used to grow feed for livestock was used for grains, beans, fruit, nuts and vegetables for humans, this switch would allow the UK to absorb an astonishing quantity of carbon.
I think that the first men to land on Pluto are going to make some very astonishing discoveries. But I am also sure that they will never go there in rockets. They will have to make the immense trip by some more powerful means - like the anti-gravitational drive.
Playing Sgt, Trotter in 'The Mousetrap' is the same as playing Scripps in 'The History Boys,' in the sense that they're dream roles that I've always wanted to do. The fact they're letting me do this professionally and I'm getting paid for it, I find astonishing.
'Between Shades of Gray' is a story of astonishing force. I feel grateful for a writer like Ruta Sepetys who bravely tells the hard story of what happens to the innocent when world leaders and their minions choose hate and oppression. Beautiful and unforgettable.