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1 " ..." vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture. "
2 " Countless communities have virtually outlawed unstructured outdoor nature play, often because of the threat of lawsuits, but also because of a growing obsession with order. Many parents now believe outdoor play is verboten even when it is not; perception is nine-tenths of the law. "
3 " After Daskalos returned to his armchair and was getting ready to continue our discussion I asked him whether the affliction of that man was due to karmic debts.“ ‘All illnesses are due to Karma,’ Daskalos replied. ‘It is either the result of your own debts or the debts of others you love.’“ ‘I can understand paying for one’s own Karma but what does it mean paying the Karma of someone you love?’ I asked.“ ‘What do you think Christ meant,’ Daskalos said, ‘when he urged us to bear one another’s burdens?’“ ‘Karma,’ Daskalos explained, ‘has to be paid off in one way or another. This is the universal law of balance. So when we love someone, we may assist him in paying part of his debt. But this,’ he said, ‘is possible only after that person has received his ‘lesson’ and therefore it would not be necessary to pay his debt in full. When most of the Karma has been paid off someone else can assume the remaining burden and relieve the subject from the pain. When we are willing to do that,’ Daskalos continued, ‘the Logos will assume nine-tenths of the remaining debt and we would actually assume only one-tenth. Thus the final debt that will have to be paid would be much less and the necessary pain would be considerably reduced. These are not arbitrary percentages,’ Daskalos insisted, ‘but part of the nature of things. "
― , The Magus of Strovolos: The Extraordinary World of a Spiritual Healer
4 " I think the idea that we have anything to begin with is a lie we tell ourselves every day until we believe it. I think the law is there to enforce fictions that would not exist otherwise. Certain laws prevent us from deviating from those fictions, and thrive as a framework for the lifestyle we are all required to live. I believe that the reason possession is nine-tenths of the law is that without those laws there wouldn’t be any possession at all. "
― Trevor D. Richardson , Dystopia Boy: The Unauthorized Files
5 " Suicide" Kissshot said disappointedly .Her eyes were downcast , facing the town spread out below her ." A common reason , one accounting for nine-tenths of vampire deaths" ." ....." ." Incidentally , the remaining tenth succumb to vampire slayers - any other reason fit within the margins of a rounding error" ." Suicide ? Why ?" ." Do they not speak of dying of boredom ?" .Boredom was a killer .Guilt could kill you - but boredom was lethal . "
6 " In general, nine-tenths of our happiness depends on our health alone. "
― Arthur Schopenhauer , Parerga and Paralipomena
7 " He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, false, and he is thereby apt to acquire a doubt of everything, including his own beliefs. "
8 " It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys. "
― Terry Pratchett , Small Gods (Discworld, #13)
9 " Memories particularly of when they weren’t being what parents are nine-tenths of the time, the taskmasters, the examples, the moral authorities, the nags of pick-that-up and you’re-going-to-be-late, keepers of the diary of her duties and routines, memories, rather, of when they found one another afresh, beyond the tensions between parental mastery and inept childish uncertainty, of those moments of respite in a family’s life when they could reach one another in calm "
― Philip Roth , American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1)
10 " You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so: that is just what we intend. "
― Karl Marx , The Communist Manifesto
11 " After some years of muddled thinking on the subject, he suddenly saw quite clearly what it was he had been running away from; why he had refused Sandy's first invitation, and what the trouble had been with Charles. It was also the trouble, he perceived, with nine-tenths or the people here tonight. They were specialists. They had not merely accepted their limitations, as Laurie was ready to accept his, loyal to his humanity if not to his sex, and bringing an extra humility to the hard study of human experience. They had identified themselves with their limitations; they were making a career of them. They had turned from all other reality, and curled up in them snugly, as in a womb. "
― Mary Renault , The Charioteer
12 " Don't knock the weather nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while. "
13 " To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself. "
14 " Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives. "
15 " Don't knock the weather nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while. "
16 " I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry. "
