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41 " The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men's. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is the sort of decision of despair. Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders. "
― Thornton Wilder , The Ides of March
42 " I think maybe bad things seem worse when people are alone. When they can turn that bad thought over and over in their head, polishing it like a stone, until it shines dark and black. Maybe the key to making things better is being with other people. Little by little, smiles and laughter and hugs can chip away at any dark stone, even if it’s as big as a boulder to start. Then finally, bit by bit, it shrinks until it’s no bigger than a pebble, something that even I could kick down the road. "
― Shannon Wiersbitzky , What Flowers Remember
43 " The shrinks call it Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. I call it hell. The demons are waiting in each corner, ready to drag me back to the battlefield.- Puncture Wounds (2014) "
― James Coyne
44 " A man shrinks or expands into the degree and nature of his ambition. Ambition needs to be cultivated and refined, and yet has no teachers. "
― Neel Burton
45 " It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit’s joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false—it is impalpable—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. "
― Nathaniel Hawthorne , The Scarlet Letter
46 " Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation. "
― Idries Shah , Reflections
47 " Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates. "
― Vandana Shiva , Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis
48 " What the theologian shrinks from, the poet grasps intuitively. "
― Cynthia Bourgeault , Love is Stronger than Death: The Mystical Union of Two Souls
49 " Even when the moon shrinks and disappears, it shows itself again gradually. When ancient people saw that eternal cycle of death and recovery, they prayed to the moon for their own rebirth. Rebirth. Will I be reborn? ... If I were reborn, what would I become? "
― Fuminori Nakamura , The Kingdom
50 " If wool shrinks when you wash it, why don't sheep get smaller when it rains? "
― Ron Brackin
51 " the war taught me that nothing counts as much as loyalty" " Bullshit. you still haven't learned that when humans are under pressure, we're all willing to lie" " even to the people we care?" " we lie more to our loved ones, because we care about them so damn much. why do you think we tell the truth to priests and shrinks and total strangers we meet on trains? it's because we don't love them, so we don't care what they think. "
52 " Speech baffled my machine. Helen made all well-formed sentences. But they were hollow and stuffed--linguistic training bras. She sorted nouns from verbs, but, disembodied, she did not know the difference between thing and process, except as they functioned in clauses. Her predications were all shotgun weddings. Her ideas were as decorative as half-timber beams that bore no building load.She balked at metaphor. I felt the annoyance of her weighted vectors as they readjusted themselves, trying to accommodate my latest caprice. You're hungry enough to eat a horse. A word from a friend ties your stomach in knots. Embarrassment shrinks you, amazement strikes you dead. Wasn't the miracle enough? Why do humans need to say everything in speech's stockhouse except what they mean? "
― Richard Powers , Galatea 2.2
53 " The world shrinks to include only two people, only one of whom -- the beloved -- has power. This inequitable distribution naturally breeds resentment and feelings of hopelessness that the dependent person dare not express for fear of alienating the necessary person even more. "
― Jeanne Safer , The Golden Condom: And Other Essays on Love Lost and Found
54 " Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we are aware that the fly is about to enter our eye. "
― James Joyce , A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
55 " The brave man is not he who feels no fear For that were stupid and irrational But he whose noble soul its fear subdues And barely dares the danger nature shrinks from. "
56 " The way we live is changing. Each year, our free time shrinks a little more as computers clamor for an increasing percentage of our attention. "
57 " May I share with you my earliest memory of a political row? It was with my mother, about the Queen - classic Freudian stuff, shrinks would say. I was eight, and refusing to watch the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast. "
58 " Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows. "