Blunt Quotes - Page 7

• Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.

  Terry Pratchett

  Girl, Running, Dog

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• The bilateral relationship is unshakable, but playing politics with that relationship could blunt Secretary Kerry's enthusiasm for being Israel's primary defender.

  Ron Dermer

  Enthusiasm, Secretary

  "Netanyahu snub takes relations with White House to a new low" by Elise Labott and Jeremy Diamond, edition.cnn.com. January 24, 2015.

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• My mother thought of my father as half barbarian and half blunt instrument, and she isolated him from his children.

  Pat Conroy

  Mother, Children, Father

  Pat Conroy (2016). “A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life”, p.144, Nan A. Talese

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• For we let our young men and women go out unarmed in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Teaching, Reading, Mean

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• I have had a number of less-than-enviable moments in my life when dealing with other people. I won't attempt to blunt that by saying I am not the only one.

  Henry Rollins

  Numbers, People, Moments

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• When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.

  Thomas Paine

  Character, Men, Feelings

  Thomas Paine (1852). “The Rights of Man: With a Brief Historical Preface”, p.32

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• To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.

  Eric Hoffer

  Hate, Hatred, Enemy

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• Time, whose millioned accidents creep in betwixt vows, and change decrees of kings, tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharpest intents, divert strong minds to the course of altering things.

  William Shakespeare

  Strong, Kings, Mind

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• What did you have in mind? A short, blunt human pyramid?

  Tom Stoppard

  Pyramids, Mind, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern

  Tom Stoppard (2013). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”, p.32, Faber & Faber

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• He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Self Improvement, Improvement, Ends

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook L 70, 1799.

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• First of all, it is clear that our efforts in Korea can blunt the will of the Chinese Communists to continue the struggle. The United Nations forces have put up a tremendous fight in Korea and have inflicted very heavy casualties on the enemy. Our forces are stronger now than they have been before. These are plain facts which may discourage the Chinese Communists from continuing their attack.

  Harry S. Truman

  Struggle, Fighting, Usa

  United States. President (1945-1953 : Truman), Harry S. Truman (1965). “Harry S. Truman: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, 1945-53”

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• When you do battle, even if you are winning, if you continue for a long time it will dull your forces and blunt you edge...If you keep your armies out in the field for a long time, your supplies will be insufficient. Transportation of provisions itself consumes 20 times the amount transported.

  Sun Tzu

  Army, Winning, Long

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• The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.

  Claudia Rankine

  Past, Tomorrow, Instruments

  Claudia Rankine (2014). “Citizen: An American Lyric”, p.65, Macmillan

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• Downright admonition, as a rule, is too blunt for the recipient.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Advice, Admonition

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• I will never understand children. I never pretended to. I meet mothers all the time who make resolutions to themselves. 'I'm going to ... go out of my way to show them I am interested in them and what they do. I am going to understand my children.' These women end up making rag rugs, using blunt scissors.

  Erma Bombeck

  Mother, Children, Rags

  Erma Bombeck (1996). “Four of a Kind: A Suburban Field Guide”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

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• Tis chiefly taste, or blunt, or gross, or fine,
  Makes life insipid, bestial, or divine.
  Better be born with taste to little rent
  Than the dull monarch of a continent;
  Without this bounty which the gods bestow,
  Can Fortune make one favorite happy?
  No.

  John Armstrong

  Dull, Littles, Taste

  John Armstrong, Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Poems of Armstrong and Johnson”, p.89

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• Recreation is intended to the mind as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of it, which otherwise would grow dull and blunt,--as good no scythe as no edge.

  Joseph Hall

  Mind, Dull, Scythes

  Joseph Hall (1839). “The Works of Joseph Hall: Latin theology with translations”, p.174

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• Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology - we are quite unable to imagine the contrary...

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Mind, World, Consciousness

  "Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists" edited by Ken Wilber, 1984.

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• Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Bullying, Ignored, Outrage

  Alexander McCall Smith (2010). “The Unbearable Lightness of Scones”, p.202, Anchor

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• It's easy for people to be characterized in public life based upon their personality, and I have a very direct, blunt personality. And I understand why some people would then characterize that, especially people who don't like you, as bullying, but it's not that.

  Chris Christie

  Bullying, People, Personality

  N.J. Gov. Chris Christie's news conference on George Washington Bridge scandal, www.washingtonpost.com. January 9, 2014.

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• Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.

  Erica Jong

  Silence, Instruments, Silence Is

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.153, Open Road Media

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• Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.

  Alain de Botton

  Distance, Curiosity, Might

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• The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.

  Alain de Botton

  Esoteric, Connected

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.67, Penguin UK

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• Close your mouth,
  block off your senses,
  blunt your sharpness,
  untie your knots,
  soften your glare,
  settle your dust.
  This is the primal identity.

  Laozi

  Block, Dust, Tao Te Ching

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• I never drink alcohol. I do not like to blunt my senses.’ ‘Goodness,’ I babbled, ‘but how awful for you. Not drinking, I mean. I mean, imagine getting up in the morning knowing that you’re not going to feel any better all day.

  Kyril Bonfiglioli

  Morning, Drinking, Mean

  Kyril Bonfiglioli (2004). “Don't Point that Thing at Me”, p.61, The Overlook Press

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