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Quotes About Adaptability

changing the plan at the last moment. "Oh, come on. The chicken can wait. Can't it? Sure it can." He was talking a mile a minute. "You can put the other thing back
~ Donna Tartt
Lincoln revealed early on a quality that would characterize his leadership for the rest of his life—a willingness to acknowledge errors and learn from his mistakes.
~ Doris Kearns Goodwin
A severe attack of rheumatoid arthritis sent him to the hospital for six weeks at the end of 1918. Cautioned that he might be required to use a wheelchair for the remainder of his days, he said, "All right! I can work that way, too.
~ Doris Kearns Goodwin
she had to fight for qualities that had not been even in her vocabulary. Patience. Self-discipline. Self-control. Self-abnegation. Chastity. Adaptability to others - this above all. This always.
~ Doris Lessing
To my mind the whole push and thrust and development of the world is towards the more complex, the flexible, the open-minded, the ability to entertain many ideas, sometimes contradictory ones, in one's mind at the same time.
~ Doris Lessing
Looking back over nearly a quarter of a century, she saw that that had been the characteristic of her life -passivity, adaptability to others.
~ Doris Lessing
Determined to look on the bright side of things, Philippa collected her winnings, and ate them. 'I don't know,' she said. 'We're a nice, representative group. I can do card-tricks, and you can train animals and Haji Ishak can he on nails and Sheemy Wurmit can do a comic turn with his parrot and Signor Manoli can swear in ten different dialects of Sicilian. We only need a good bass-baritone and a tenor rebec, and we could work out a tour.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
You Scotsmen: you wish to be like the elephant, hacked to pieces for refusing to bow. You should follow my rule: here am I, supple and amenable as a goatskin glove of Vendôme and pleasant to all, Duke and dotard alike.
~ Dorothy Dunnett
She drew herself up to her full height—it was a little difficult on a donkey—and said primly, "I have always found that in painful situations it is a sensible idea to take each hour as it comes and not to anticipate beyond. But oh how I wish I could have a bath!
~ Dorothy Gilman
I have a flexible mind—I believe it's one of the advantages of growing old," she explained. "I find youth quite rigid at times.
~ Dorothy Gilman
Experience has taught me, said Peter (...) that no situation finds Bunter unprepared. That he should have procured The Times this morning by the simple expedient of asking the milkman to request the postmistress to telephone to Broxford and have it handed to the 'bus-conductor to be dropped at the post-office and brought up by the little girl who delivers the telegrams is a trifling example of his resourceful energy.
~ Dorothy L. Sayers
To learn six subjects without remembering how they were learnt does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh; to have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes the approach to every subject an open door.
~ Dorothy L. Sayers
An international power supply is the device which means it doesn't matter what country you're in, or even if you know what country you're in (more of a problem than you might suspect) - you just plug your Mac in and it figures it out for itself. We call this principle Plug and Play. Or at least, Microsoft calls it that because it hasn't got it yet. In the Mac world we've had it for so long we didn't even think of giving it a name.
~ Douglas Adams
Or you can turn your figures into, for instance, a flock of seagulls, and the formation they fly in and the way in which the wings of each gull beat will be determined by the performance of each division of your company.
~ Douglas Adams
Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud.
~ Douglas Adams
He knew where his towel was.
~ Douglas Adams
Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Dieu! Misplace a single le or la and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge.
~ Douglas Coupland
win a game of Scrabble using only three vowels. He can also bring fresh air into an unventilated bathroom, and he can renovate castles and huts on small budgets using knick-knacks from thrift stores and some well-chosen latex paint colours.
~ Douglas Coupland
D'Agosta had long ago learned, when working with Pendergast, to never get caught without two things: a gun and a flashlight.
~ Douglas Preston
perfection was not only impossible, but the enemy of success. The real key was flexibility in the face of the unexpected, or, as someone once said, the "known unknowns.
~ Douglas Preston
If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles,one would hardly see anybody,
~ Agatha Christie
It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again." "Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.
~ Agatha Christie
Every one's got their own ways of working. I know that. I give my inspectors a free hand always. Every one's got to find out for themselves what method suits them best.
~ Agatha Christie
often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again." "Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.
~ Agatha Christie