shorten QUOTES

1 " There must be a mistake," I said. He adjusted his bag on his shoulder. " That's a creative name. What do you shorten it to? Missy? "

2 " Ignorance
is not bliss. Ignorance is tragedy. Ignorance is
devastation. Ignorance creates lack. Ignorance
creates disease. Ignorance will shorten your life.
Ignorance will empty your life and leave you with
the husks, nothing to account for. No, ignorance is
not bliss.
Here’s another note to make: What you don’t know
will hurt you. What you don’t know will tragically
affect your life. What you don’t know will leave
your life empty. What you don’t know will leave
you without a relationship. We’re all affected by
knowledge, whether we know or whether we don’t
know. That’s why you’ve got to read the books. "

― Jim Rohn

3 " The Clock on the Morning Lenape BuildingMust Clocks be circles?Time is not a circle.Suppose the Mother of All Minutes startedright here, on the sidewalkin front of the Morning Lenape Building, and the paradeof minutes that followed--each of them, say, one inch long--headed out that way, down Bridge Street.Where would Now be? This minute?Out past the moon?Jupiter?The nearest star?Who came up with minutes, anyway?Who needs them?Name one good thing a minute's ever done.They shorten fun and measure misery.Get rid of them, I say.Down with minutes!And while you're at it--take hourswith you too. Don't get me startedon them.Clocks--that's the problem.Every clock is a nest of minutes and hours.Clocks strap us into their shape.Instead of heading for the nearest star, all we dois corkscrew.Clocks lock us into minutes, make Ferris wheel riders of us all, lug us round and roundfrom number to number,dice the time of our lives into tiny bitsuntil the bits are all we knowand the only question we care to ask is" What time is it?" As if minutes could tell.As if Arnold could look up at this clock onthe Lenape Building and read:15 Minutes till Found.As if Charlie's time is not forever stuckon Half Past Grace.As if a swarm of stinging minutes waits for Betty Lou to step outside.As if love does not tell all the time the Huffelmeyersneed to know. "

4 " If you want to double your productively, shorten the timeline to by 50%. "

― Richie Norton

5 " Do you want to know what General Putnam is thinking? It’s this. He’s thinking that he can’t win the war if he doesn’t keep the people on his side. He’s thinking that he can’t keep the people on his side if the troops are running amok among the civilian population—raping the women, stealing cattle, burning houses. He is determined to scare the wits out of the troops to keep them in line. And he’s thinking that it doesn’t matter very much who he executes to do it. So many men have died, so many mothers have wept, so many brothers and sisters have cried. He is thinking that in the long run if he executes somebody, he’ll shorten the war and save more lives. It doesn’t matter to him very much who he executes; one man’s agony is like another’s, one mother’s tears are no wetter than anybody else’s. And that’s why he’s going to have Sam shot. "

― James Lincoln Collier , My Brother Sam Is Dead

6 " To destroy the life that dwells in others
is beyond your power. The life of those you have slain
has vanished from your eyes, but is not destroyed. You
thought to lengthen your own life and to shorten theirs,
but you cannot do this. Life knows neither time nor
space. The life of a moment, and the life of a thousand
years: your life and the life of all the visible and invisible
beings in the world, are equal. To destroy life, or to alter
it, is impossible; for life is the one thing that exists. All
else, but seems to us to be. "

― Leo Tolstoy

7 " By far the most important consequence of the conceptual revolution brought about in physics by relativity and quantum theory lies not in such details as that meter sticks shorten when they move or that simultaneous position and momentum have no meaning, but in the insight that we had not been using our minds properly and that it is important to find out how to do so. "

― Percy Williams Bridgman

8 " Unless death is made a lesson for the living, the life lived is wasted.
Why should life come into existence only to be destroyed? One dies and another is born—for what? A few miserable hours of life—then oblivion!

With this recognition of the finality of death, no one should willingly withhold acts that would bring benefits, joy or happiness to others. In death, the hesitant act can no longer be performed—the word of praise is as impossible as yesterday's return.

What perversity justified inflicting pain, suffering and death upon others who have done no wrong? If death ends all, why fight while we are living? Why shorten life with unnecessary pain and suffering? How futile are the petty problems of individuals, with their hates and jealousies, when all vanish with death?

All the prayers in the world cannot wipe out one injustice.
Every wrong is irreparable.
The dead cannot forgive.
All the tears and sighs are of no avail.
Forgiveness cannot be granted when lips cannot move.

Praise cannot be heard when ears cannot hear; joy cannot be experienced when the heart no longer beats; and the happiness of an affectionate embrace can no longer be felt when arms are limp and the eyes are forever closed. "

― , An Atheist Manifesto

9 " A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life. Now he inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature. His maxim is: From self-love I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction. It is asked then simply whether this principle founded on self-love can become a universal law of nature. Now we see at once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself, and therefore could not exist as a system of nature; hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal law of nature, and consequently would be wholly inconsistent with the supreme principle of all duty. "

― Immanuel Kant , Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

10 " life is too short so no need to shorten it with sadness "

11 " Day and Night
The night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing. "

― Idries Shah , Caravan of Dreams

12 " The quest for an ever-whiter shade of bread, which goes all the way back to the Greeks and Romans, is a parable about the folly of human ingenuity -- about how our species can sometimes be too smart for its own good. After figuring out an ingenious system for transforming an all but nutritionally worthless grass into a wholesome food, humanity pushed on intrepidly until it had figured out a way to make that food all but nutritionally worthless yet gain! Here in miniature, I realized, is the whole checkered history of " food processing." Our species' discovery and development of cooking (in the broadest sense of the word) gave us a handful of ingenious technologies for rendering plants and animals more nutritious and unlocking calories unavailable to other creatures. But there eventually came a moment when, propelled by the logic of human desire and technological progress, we began to overprocess certain foods in such a way as to actually render them detrimental to our health and well-being. What had been a highly adaptive set of techniques that contributed substantially to our success as a species turned into a maladaptive one -- contributing to disease and general ill health and now actually threatening to shorten human lives. "

13 " Naming can satisfy a need, it can shorten a conversation that otherwise might go on for hours. "

14 " Everyone defends his treasure, and will do so automatically.The real questions are, what do you treasure, and how much do you treasure it? Once you have learned to consider these questions and to bring them into all your actions, you will have little difficulty in clarifying the means. The means are available whenever you ask. You can, however, save time if you do not protract this step unduly. The correct focus will shorten it immeasurably. "

― , A Course in Miracles

15 " ...And although thus short, we shorten many ways,
Living so little while we are alive;
In eating, drinking, sleeping, vain delight
So unawares comes on perpetual night,
And puts all pleasures vain unto eternal flight. "

― , Anthology of American Literature, Volume 1: Colonial through Romantic

16 " If we all got fed up at the same time, which could happen coming on evening, we would all sit down and Mick would sign a song. We learned many songs while setting spuds and many a story was told, imaginary or otherwise. We understood well the story of the Gobán Saor, an old Irish legend. The Gobán Saor ruled a large kingdom which he wanted to leave to the cleverest of his three sons. One day, he took his eldest son on a long journey and after some time walking he said: " Son, shorten the road for me." The son was totally at a loss as to how to help his father, so they returned home. The following day the Gobán Saor took his second son, and again the same thing happened. On the third day he took his youngest son and after they had travelled some distance he said once more: " Son, shorten the road for me." The youngest son immediately began to tell his father a story that was long and interesting, and they became so engrossed in the tale that they never noticed the length of the journey. In our lives, Mick was the Gobán Saor's youngest son. "

17 " They also knew that there was a string of DNA at the end of each chromosome called a telomere, which shortened a tiny bit each time a cell divided, like time ticking off a clock. As normal cells go through life, their telomeres shorten with each division until they’re almost gone. Then they stop dividing and begin to die. This process correlates with the age of a person: the older we are, the shorter our telomeres, and the fewer times our cells have left to divide before they die. By the early nineties, a scientist at Yale had used HeLa to discover that human cancer cells contain an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres. The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres indefinitely. This explained the mechanics of HeLa’s immortality: telomerase constantly rewound the ticking clock at the end of Henrietta’s chromosomes so they never grew old and never died. "

― Rebecca Skloot , The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

18 " Soon, she and the rest of them would be ironic much of the time, unable to answer an innocent question without giving their words a snide little adjustment. Fairly soon after that, the snideness would soften, the irony would be mixed in with seriousness, and the years would shorten and fly. "

― Meg Wolitzer , The Interestings

19 " i also dislike people who try to talk down to my understanding. they are like people who when walking with you try to shorten their steps to suit yours, hypocrisy in both cases is equally exasperating. "

― Helen Keller , The Story of My Life

20 " Opulence and fame will shorten your life, ask for long life, and you'll enjoy the former in small quantities, for it is a substitute. "

― , Classic Quotations From The Otherworlds

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