Quotes About Vagueness

their lives were full of quiet drama, full of vague yet thrilling signs that life was not as the common run supposed it to be; they were among those... who watch life as though it were a great drab curtain which they are sure is always about to rise on some terrific and exquisite spectacle, and though it never did quite rise, they were patient, and noted excitedly every small movement of it as the actors took their places, strained to hear the unimaginable setting being shifted.

While we have agreed to pay the E.U. tens of billions of pounds in the Withdrawal Agreement, the Political Declaration that aimed to set out the principles for this future negotiation is a document deliberately vague to allow it to mean all things to all people.

Occasionally someone will tell me that they won't have pets because they're messy, and I suppose there's some truth to that, between the fur and the slobber and the occasional puddle on the floor. I have to choke down the temptation to respond that life is messy, and its vagaries go down hardest with those who fool themselves into thinking they can keep it neat.

A bit of the vagueness of music stops you going completely mad, I imagine.

things to remain flexible, they need to be complicated or vague, and preferably both.

F]or a social theorist ignorance is more excusable than vagueness. Other investigators can easily show I am wrong if I am sufficiently precise. They will have much more difficulty showing by investigation what, precisely, I mean if I am vague. I hope not to be forced to weasel out with 'But I didn't really mean that.' Social theorists should prefer to be wrong rather than misunderstood. Being misunderstood shows sloppy theoretical work.

And only when he'd finished and fallen silent did the vague smile return to his lips, in apparent gentle mockery of himself, of the man he had just described and for whom, deep down, he felt neither compassion nor disdain, only a kind of disillusioned, sympathetic solidarity.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

Arthur takes a seat beside her. The colored lights bounce off his eyeglasses and Louisa loses all interest in time-travel technology. The future and the past disappear. All she feels is the tension between two bodies. How his head had been in her lap. How her hand had been wrapped inside his. The tension leaks down her throat. The belly. The muscle. And something forged. A weld. A softness. A vagueness that is rather quickly being sharpened into a point aimed directly at Louisa's heart.

Las referencias feroces, aunque vagas, que escuchaba en boca de los cadetes, estimulaban su imaginación. En sueños, el nombre se presentaba dotado de atributos carnales, extraños y contradictorios, la mujer era siempre la misma y distinta, una presencia que se desvanecía cuando iba a tocarla o lo sumía en una ternura infinita y entonces creía morir de impaciencia.

Vagueness about numbers is a curse of the public sector. In the worst cases it borders on the criminal. Challenged to find one reliable number in the Argentine government's books, a group of the most respected economists in Buenos Aires went into a huddle and came back with the answer: "Maybe one of the trade ones, but we are not sure which.

I prefer to think Of numbers not words Their precision Puts me at Ease with the Clarity of it all No grey no vagueness It's all so exact Like a trapeze Act with nothing left To chance Some say numbers are Naive since Things are simply Not that way Just look at pi In its futile try To become a number

In the scientific community, the adjective 'theological' is some- times used pejoratively to refer to a vague or ill-formulated belief. I believe this usage to be very far from the truth. It sad- dens me that some of my colleagues remain unaware of the truth-seeking intent and rational scrupulosity that character- ise theological discourse at its best.

I was a lowly puddle of plasma, trading "I am alive" for a vague "I tend to exist" and weeping for joy over the sheer revelation.

The universal view melts things into a blur

Considering how smart Nakajima was, I bet he could have found a way to express more precisely what it was like to push his body to the limit while studying, or his perspective on the way my emotions were structured inside me. He was just being nice, communicating on my level. That's what made it sound vague.

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

A story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.

political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

People frequently comment on the emptiness in one night stands, but emptiness here has always been just another word for darkness. Blind encounters writing sonnets no one can ever read. Desire and pain cmmunicated in the vague language of sex.

How very learned many a man would be if he knew everything that was in his own books! The consequence of this is that these writers talk in such a loose and vague manner, that the reader puzzles his brains in vain to understand what it is of which they are really thinking. They are thinking of nothing.

Everyone understands, though, that a great deal of uncertainty about what to do for people will always remain.

As far as rapprochements go, it's awkward and vague, but the advantage of being as emotionally inarticulate as we are is that it will do the trick.

Today I wonder whether we should have been more forthcoming, and not only because our vagueness has promoted the mistaken view that we could have saved Lehman.