Quotes About Balance

In Francis, there was so much that was admirable; and the flaws were so great. Yet one forgot them.

So music to this man was a weight or a counter-weight, like those working the delicate wheels of Gaultier's automata. It would be interesting to know, thought Gaultier, what change of balance had created the need for it now.

For this, you are right, I need to be either entirely sober or very drunk indeed.

His horse stumbled in the tussocky ground and made him realize, then, how thoughtlessly fast he was riding...how thoughtlessly fast he was thinking.

All you need to do is organize your butterflies.

If you please man and never please God, you have nothing; if you please God and man forsakes you, you have everything.

He remembered having said to his uncle (with a solemn dogmatism better befitting a much younger man): Surely it is possible to love with the head as well as the heart. Mr. Delagardie had replied, somewhat drily: No doubt; so long as you do not end by thinking with your entrails instead of your brain.

this is the weakness of most 'edifying' or 'propaganda' literature. There is no diversity...You cannot, in fact, give God His due without giving the devil his due also.

I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job." "Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures.

They cultivated normality till it stood out of them all over in knobs, like the muscles upon professional strong men, and scarcely looked normal at all. And they talked interminably and loudly. From their bouncing mental health ordinary ill-balanced mortals shrank in alarm.

Incidentally, one has to be very careful with that 'Bridegroom' imagery. It is so very apt to land one in Male and Female Principles, Eleusis, and the womb of the Great Mother. And that sort of thing doesn't make much appeal to well-balanced women, who look on it as just another example of men's hopeless romanticism about sex, and who are apt either to burst out laughing or sniff a faint smell of drains.

The vital power of an imaginative work demands a diversity within its unity; and the stronger the diversity, the more massive the unity. Incidentally, this is the weakness of most "edifying" or "propaganda" literature. There is no diversity. The Energy is active only in one part of the whole, and in consequence the wholeness is destroyed and the Power diminished. You cannot, in fact, give God His due without giving the devil his due also.

You can't carry through any principle without doing violence to somebody. Either directly or indirectly. Every time you disturb the balance of nature you let in violence. And if you leave nature alone you get violence in any case.

Mademoiselle, I tell you frankly that to have a healthy mind in a healthy body is the greatest gift of le bon Dieu, and when I see so many people who have clean blood and strong bodies spoiling themselves and distorting their brains with drugs and drink and foolishness, it makes me angry. They should leave that to the people who cannot help themselves because to them life is without hope.

I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.

It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.

LINSCOTT: Well, life certainly treats you fine. CONNIE: No, Tom. Life and I go Dutch.

As we will see below, when a female slave's role as worker conflicted with that of childbearer, concern for high productivity often outweighed concern for high fertility.

I see myself as an instrument of justice, not a dispenser of it. -Detective Thanet.

For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.

A cup of tea would restore my normality. [ Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Screenplay ]