Quotes about catch (764 quotes, page 7)

“They say the doctors and the nurses are least likely to catch the epidemic. If you have a friend who is dishonest or impure, the surest way to save yourself from him is to try to save him.”

Phillips Brooks (1835–1893) American clergyman and author

"Unspotted from the World"

Way

“People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller (1996)

Life , People , Books , Reading

“A close mouth catches no flies.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 11.

“However, I try not to think that way, because not all the women are like Virtanen, Biaudet and Filatov. Rapes will eventually get more frequent. Because, this being the case, more women will be raped anyway, I sincerely hope that the predators who randomly pick their victims would catch the right women meaning green-left liberals and their voters. It is rather them than someone else. For them nothing else works except if they get to taste their own multicultural medicine.”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho (2008), published in the blog Vasarahammer Multiculturalism and Woman http://vasarahammer.blogspot.fr/2008/11/multiculturalism-and-woman-translation.html, October 19, 2008
2005-09

Women , Hope , Way , Thinking

“I was thinking too damn much to be careful. When I stabbed my key in the lock and turned it there was a momentary catch in the tumblers before it went all the way around and I swore out loud as I rammed the door with my shoulder and hit the floor. Something swished through the air over my head and I caught an arm and pulled a squirming, fighting bundle of muscle down on top of me.
If I could have reached my rod I would have blown his guts out. His breath was in my face and I brought my knee up, but he jerked out of the way bringing his hand down again and my shoulder went numb after a split second of blinding pain. He tried again with one hand going for my throat, but I got one foot loose and kicked out and up and felt my toe smash onto his groin. The cramp of the pain doubled him over on top of me, his breath sucking in like a leaky tire.
Then I got cocky. I thought I had him. I went to get up and he moved. Just once. That thing in his hand smashed against the side of my head and I started to crumple up piece by piece until there wasn't anything left except the sense to see and hear enough to know that he had crawled out of the room and was falling down the stairs outside. Then I thought about the lock on my door and how I had a guy fix it so that I could tell if it had been jimmied open so I wouldn't step into any blind alleys without a gun in my hand, but because of a dame who lay naked and smiling on a bed I wouldn't share, I had forgotten all about it.”

Mickey Spillane book The Big Kill

The Big Kill (1951)

Pain , Smile , Jerk , Way

“Maybe you ride a different wave.
Maybe you catch another ray of the sun
That I've just begun to feel.”

Edie Brickell (1966) singer from the United States

"The Wheel"
Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars (1988)

Feeling , Sun

“Pedants and snobs are fond of declaring that only accomplished French speakers can catch Proust's tone. That might be so, but the tone is only one of the things to be caught.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Marcel Proust', p. 579
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

“Folk music is always considered a good thing. There is a catch, however: it has to be "real" folk music, anonymous, evoking not an individual but a communal personality, expressive of the soil.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 7 : Chopin: From the Miniature Genre to the Sublime Style

Music , Communication , Personality

“Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.”

Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt

Babbitt (1922), Ch. 12

Men , Training

“Getting up at odd hours to catch flights. I hate the long hours of waiting. There are times when one is continuously travelling, from one city to another, hopping from one studio to another or changing from one costume to another. It is annoying, but after a point, one learns to be immune to one’s surroundings.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

[tribuneindia.com, Rani’s Routine, http://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20011011/main8.htm, 16 July, 2005]
Famous Quotes

Hate , Travel , Learning , Change

“We don't have a health care system. We have a health care maze. And we don't have a health care crisis. We have a health crisis. Eighty percent of the $2 trillion we spend on health care in this country is spent on chronic disease. If we don't change the health of this nation by focusing on prevention, we're never going to catch up with the costs no matter what plan we have. … And we've got a situation with 10,000 baby boomers a day signing up for Social Security, going into the Medicare system. And I just want to remind everybody when all the old hippies find out that they get free drugs, just wait until what that's going to cost out there.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican Presidential Debate, 2007-10-21, quoted in [The Republican Debate on Fox News Channel, 2007-10-21, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/politics/21debate-transcript.html?pagewanted=9, 2011-03-01]
Republican Debates

Health , Disease , Change , Waiting

“Genius doth catch the music of the spheres,
Which mortal ear was never meant to know.
Genius can penetrate the mysteries
Of feeling, all unknown to other hearts;
A power hath entered in the inmost soul,
Whose presence may not be contained.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

Music , Feeling , Soul , Heart

“In today’s world of tabloid press and with so much competing for people’s attention, it’s a miracle to get their attention at all. And of course having to compete with the advertising budget of even one of our adversaries is impossible. If the whole movement pooled its resources and went after simply one thing, like the veal industry, we wouldn’t make a dent, advertising dollar for advertising dollar. To me the greatest success is in catching the attention of the public and reminding them that there’s an animal involved, and that that animal is believed not to have been treated properly by a segment of the population.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Satya, November, 2000 http://www.satyamag.com/novdec00/newkirk.html.
2000

People , World , Success , Animals

“In scientific thought we adopt the simplest theory which will explain all the facts under consideration and enable us to predict new facts of the same kind. The catch in this criterion lies in the word "simplest." It is really an aesthetic canon such as we find implicit in our criticisms of poetry or painting. The layman finds such a law as {\mathrm{\partial }x \over \mathrm{\partial } t} = \Kappa { \, \mathrm{\partial}^2x \over \mathrm{\partial }y^2} much less simple than "it oozes," of which it is the mathematical statement. The physicist reverses this judgment, and his statement is certainly the more fruitful of the two, so far as prediction is concerned. It is, however, a statement about something very unfamiliar to the plainman, namely, the rate of change of a rate of change.”

J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) Geneticist and evolutionary biologist

Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 227

Law , Mathematics , Change , Painting

“We created CNR Rao Education Foundation from a part of the million-dollar Dan David Award from Tel Aviv University, Israel, because if the youth don't catch on to science at a young age, we will lose whatever science and technology advantage we have now. My wife, Indumati has been leading the work of this foundation along with members of the family. We want to see India emerge as a scientific giant.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

How I made it: CNR Rao, Scientist (2010)

Youth , Age , Education , Family

“What do we mean by “understanding” something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume I; lecture 2, "Basic Physics"; section 2-1, "Introduction"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

God , World , Imagination , Game

“I know it's called a pigskin, but it's not against your religion to catch it.”

Jason Jones (actor) (1973) Canadian-American actor and comedian

2009-06-25 – to an Iranian child, possibly playing his first game of American football.
The Daily Show with John Stewart

Religion

“Our illegal population alone exceeds the all the Irish, Jewish and British immigrants who came. Each year, we catch more people breaking in at the border than all the Swedes and Norwegians who came to America in 200 years. Half a million illegal aliens succeed in breaking in every year, more than all the Greeks or Poles who came legally from the Revolution to 1960.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, State of Emergency (2006)

People

“(mimicking a fish's gills wither side of his neck) "Hey…" (cracks) You paid to see it… "hey… Ever eaten a worm?" (2nd fish) "What? When did you ever eat a worm?" "Oh, one day, me and my buddy were laying on the bank… trying to catch our breath…"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

thank you, for those of you who got that...
15° Off Cool (2007)

Fish

“Judy: [after catching defendant in a lie; he admitted that he was living with his witness when a few moments earlier he had said he wasn't] PERFECT! So now you're living back together again. And why, Nick, did you feel as if it was necessary to lie to me a moment ago?
Defendant: I… have been staying in Minneapolis every now and then… but I… didn't mean to lie to you.
Judy: There's another reason, Nick.
Defendant: There's no reason to lie. I'm sorry.
Judy: Well…
Defendant's Witness: Not many people know that he is staying there with me.
Judy: Now ten million people know that he's staying with you.”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

Audience laughs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8B09JYv4Hs&feature=channel_video_title
Dialogue

People , Lie , Feeling , Perfection

“The mind, like the body, has its contagious diseases and its scurvy. …[W]e catch everything from those with whom we come in contact; their gestures, their accent, etc.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

Man a Machine (1747)

Disease

“[In] economics… you can disguise charlatanism under the weight of equations and nobody can catch you since there is no such thing as a controlled experiment. Now the spirit of such methods, called scientism by its detractors, continued into the discipline of finance as a few technicians thought their mathematical knowledge could lead them to understand markets. The practice of financial engineering came along with massive doses of pseudoscience.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Fooled by Randomness

page 115
Fooled by Randomness (2001)

Mathematics , Understanding , Knowledge

“Oh, you who've been a-fishing will indorse me
when I say
That it always is the biggest fish you catch that
gets away!”

Eugene Field A Little Book of Western Verse

Our Biggest Fish http://books.google.com/books?id=odM-AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Oh+you+who've+been+a-fishing+will+indorse+me+when+I+say+That+it+always+is+the+biggest+fish+you+catch+that+gets+away%22&pg=PA184#v=onepage, st. 4
A Little Book of Western Verse (1889)

Fish

“Whenever I hear of culture … I release the safety catch of my Browning!”

Hanns Johst (1890–1978) German general

Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning!
Schlageter

“Alexander Gardner who later became the Colonel of Artillery in the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, had travelled extensively in Central Asia from 1819 to 1823 C. E. He saw a lot of slave-catching in Kafiristan, a province of Afghanistan, which was largely inhabited by infields at that time. He found that the area had been reduced to “the lowest state of poverty and wretchedness” as a result of raids by the Muslim king of Kunduz for securing slaves and supplying them to the slave markets in Balkh and Bukhara. He writes:
“All this misery was caused by the oppression of the Kunduz chief, who not content with plundering his wretched subjects, made an annual raid into the country south of Oxus, and by chappaos (night attacks) carried off all the inhabitants on whom his troops could lay their hands. These, after the best had been selected by the chief and his courtiers, were publicly sold in the bazaars of Turkestan. The principal providers of this species of merchandise were the Khan of Khiva, the king of Bokhara (the great hero of the Mohammedan faith), and the robber beg of Kunduz.
“In the regular slave markets, or in transactions between dealers, it is the custom to pay for slaves in money; the usual medium being either Bokharan gold tillahs (in value about 5 or 51/2 Company rupees each), or in gold bars or gold grain. In Yarkand, or on the Chinese frontier, the medium is the silver khurup with the Chinese stamp, the value of which varies from 150 to 200 rupees each. The price of a male slave varies according to circumstances from 5 to 500 rupees. The price of the females also necessarily varies much, 2 tillahs to 10,000 rupees. Even the double the latter sum has been known to have been given.
“However, a vast deal of business is also done by barter, of which we had proof at the holy shrine of Pir-i-Nimcha, where we exchanged two slaves for a few lambs’ skins! Sanctity and slave dealing may be considered somewhat akin in the Turkestan region, and the more holy the person the more extensive are generally his transactions in flesh and blood.””

Alexander Gardner (soldier)

Alexander Gardner subsequently found a Muslim fruit merchant at Multan “who was proved by his own ledger to have exchanged a female slave girl for three ponies and seven long-haired, red-eyed cats, all of which he disposed of, no doubt to advantage, to the English gentlemen at this station.”
Memoirs of Alexander Gardner, edited by Major Hugh Pearce, first published in 1898, reprint published from Patiala in 1970, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1

Money , Faith , Travel , Girl

“If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed; but it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of genius desires to address; nor will he waste a moment upon those smaller objects, which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourse no. 3; vol. 1, pp. 70-71.
Discourses on Art

Art , Business , Sense , Heart

“2782. If you run after two Hares, you will catch neither.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1734) : Don't think to hunt two hares with one dog, and Poor Richard's Almanack ( 1737) : He that pursues two Hares at once, does not catch one and lets t'other go.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“How shall I tell what I saw? The towers are not all broken — here and there one still stands, like a great tree in a forest, and the birds nest high. But the towers themselves look blind, for the gods are gone. I saw a fishhawk, catching fish in the river. I saw a little dance of white butterflies over a great heap of broken stones and columns. I went there and looked about me — there was a carved stone with cut — letters, broken in half. I can read letters but I could not understand these. They said UBTREAS. There was also the shattered image of a man or a god. It had been made of white stone and he wore his hair tied back like a woman's. His name was ASHING, as I read on the cracked half of a stone. I thought it wise to pray to ASHING, though I do not know that god.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

God , Understanding , Bird , Fish

“In a city where buzzwords and catch phrases have a half-life of perhaps six months to a year, the term and the concept of "competitiveness" have lasted much longer; there is every sign we'll hear it for many years to come.”

Allen B. Rosenstein (1920–2018) American systems engineers

Allen B. Rosenstein and Phillip Burgess (1988) "U.S. Competitiveness." Bureaucrat. Vol. 17-18. p. 21.

Life

“When a woman reaches forty, she must wait twenty years for her husband to catch up.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Marriage

Waiting

“I am 36 years old and I have been a criminal all of my life. I have 11 felony convictions against me. I have served 20 years of my life in Jails, Reform Schools and prisons. I know why I am a criminal. Others may have different theories as to my life but I have no theory about it. I know the facts. If any man ever was a habitual criminal. I am one. In my lifetime I have broken every law that was ever made by both Man and God. If either had made more, I should cheerfully have broken them also. The mere fact that I have done these things is quite sufficient for the average person. Very few peopel ever consider it worth while to wonder why I am what I am and do what I do. All that they think it is necessary to do is to catch me, try me convict me and send me to prison for a few years, make life miserable for me while in prison and then turn me loose again. That is the system that is in practice today in this country. The consequences are that such that any one and every one can see. crime and lots of it. Those who are sincere in thier desire to put down crime, are to be pitied for all of thier efforts which accomplish so little in the desired direction. They are the ones who are decieved by thier own ignorance and by the trickery and greed of others who profit the most by crime.”

Carl Panzram (1891–1930) American serial killer

sic
Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers, p. 187, (1997), Brian King, ed. ISBN 096503240X

Life , God , School , Law

“…I wanna know about the commercial I saw on TV: An Irish guy walking through a field of green, whistling one of those Irish jigs, and a woman walks up and says, "Manly, yes, but I like it too." Then the guy pulls out a huge knife and cuts off his first two fingers and somehow catches them in what's left of his left hand and hands them to the woman. Did I mention they're both dressed in green? They they both sing this song together: "Are ya icky? Are ya sticky? Are ya hot as anything? Hey! Cut off two of your fingers, and stab yourself in the eye!"”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

Then he stabs himself in the eye and hands her the knife, and she stabs herself in the eye, okay? Okay? So what about that?
"The Commercial"
Lyrics, King Missile (1994)

Guy , Singing

“It must be worth a life of toil and care,—
Worth those dark chains the wearied one must bear
Who toils up fortune's steep,—all that can wring
The worn-out bosom with lone-suffering,—
Worth restlessness, oppression, goading fears,
And long-deferred hopes of many years,—
To reach again that little quiet spot,
So well loved once, and never quite forgot;—
To trace again the steps of infancy,
And catch their freshness from their memory!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Rosalie.
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love , Life , Fear , Hope

“I try to catch at many a tune
Like petals of light fallen from the moon,
Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,But they float away — for who can hold
Youth, or perfume or the moon's gold?”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Old Tunes"
Flame and Shadow (1920)

Youth , Light

“In order to be the go-to guy, you must have everything right. You have to be on point with your routes and catch the ball no matter where the quarterback puts it. You just have to have confidence. I'm rolling, and I want to go out and have fun.”

Ted Ginn, Jr. (1985) American football wide receiver, kick returner

[Carlton, Chuck, Ohio State's Ginn ready to be go-to guy, Dallas Morning News, 2006-09-08, 2007-01-23]

Guy , Confidence

“We'll not be victims there'll be no victims of to speak

And only then will we be free

And up will rise the meek

And when we fall we will fall together

No one will catch us so we'll catch ourselves

And where we roam, we will roam forever

No one will understand what we meant

The beaten and the bruised, forsaken, the abused

Oh what a glorious day we'll have rising up and claiming all our dues

The day will come as sure as the ever-setting sun

All of those that self-impose will find themselves so indisposed

Now, with the line drawn in the wet sand

You need to tell us where you stand

Sitting waiting watching rotting everything they warned us of is true

Now tell me what we're all supposed to do

They're coming after all of us with everything they've got

With the fury of a soldier who will answer to his God

So how will we fight? All we have is logic and love on our side”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"We Will Fall Together" from "Somewhere In the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/01/

Love , God , Understanding , Waiting

“As for catching Osama, it's irrelevant. Things are going swimmingly in Afghanistan.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Responding to assertions about problems with Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan on Hannity & Colmes (24 August 2006) - video http://movies.crooksandliars.com/H-C-Coulter-crie.mov
2006

“How to keep—is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo http://www.bartleby.com/122/36.html: The Leaden Echo, lines 1-2
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Beauty

“Hark! My ears are catching corncrake’s clicking,
Silver moonlight shines on cobhead corn;
Summer evening’s blessing me, enriching,
Valley’s wreaths of smoky slash and burn.
Neither joying I, nor grieve I, mournful;
But for forest’s darkness am I yearnful,
Rose-gilt clouds the day’s protracted ending,
Windy sleeping hill o’er all extending,
Fragrant twinflower, shortening, lingering shade;
These the things from which my heart-song’s made.

Lady June-July, for you I’m singing,
Great the silence of my ardent heart,
Merry music make, for faith is mounting,
Verdant wreath of oak eternal start.
Foolish errands now I’ll make no longer,
Fortune blessèd hands will grasp the stronger;
Rippled pool of circles now decreasing;
Time has ceased and weathervane is sleeping;
Stretches road at twilit end of day,
Bound for home unknown, I take its way.”

Eino Leino (1878–1926) Finnish poet and journalist

Faith , Music , Way , Home

“A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
And catches him. He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting —
Her baby hangs on underneath.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"A bat is born," lines 1-31; reprinted as "Bats" in The Lost World (1965)
The Bat-Poet (1964)

Dance , Baby , Night

“Nasrudin used to take a donkey across a frontier every day, with the panniers loaded with straw. Since he admitted to being a smuggler when he trudged home every night, the frontier guards searched him again and again. They searched his person, staffed the straw, steeped it in water, even burned it from time to time. […] One of the customs officers met him years later.
"You can tell me now, Nasrudin," he said. "Whatever was it that you were smuggling, when we could never catch you out?"”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

"Donkeys," said Nasrudin.
N. Hanif (ed.), Biographical Encyclopaedia of Sufis: Central Asia and Middle East (2002), ISBN 8176252662, p. 335

Home , Search , Water , Time

“For one cannot serve the national spirit merely by getting a lump in the throat whenever one catches sight of the Union Jack, or by seeing red when a newspaper reports that some foreign power has acted aggressively towards England. These reactions bear the same relation to true love of country that a chance encounter between a man and a woman who meet in the street bears to a happy marriage.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

"The Necessity and Grandeur of the International Ideal" (1935)

Love , Marriage , Chance , Country

“…when I started doing chemistry, I did it the way I fished – for the excitement, the discovery, the adventure, for going after the most elusive catch imaginable in uncharted seas.”

K. Barry Sharpless (1941) American chemist

Nobel lecture, 2001

Way , Imagination , Fish , Sea

“Sphere Music — Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former, are the true sphere music — pure, unmixed music — in which no wail mingles.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

August 5, 1838
Journals (1838-1859)

Music , Spring , Parting

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

Popularity of Authorship (1824)

Business , Time , Falseness

“By the Cretaceous crocodilians of essentially modern form were the theropods [sic] main competitors. Yet crocodilians appear to be less abundant in most Mesozoic deposits than they are later in the mammal-dominated Cenozoic. Not only that, but they tended to be small-bodied: few specimens were as big as American alligators or Nile crocodiles. It is possible that theropods were eating the crocs. Even today, big cats once in a while kill a fairly large crocodilian. A tyrannosaur could have swallowed one whole, and gone into the water after them. Constant attacks could have suppressed croc populations, and favored the smaller, harder to catch species.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 69
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

Cats , Water , Appearance

“Alfie was an organizer. He would telephone the other kids a week before that first practice session (which he euphemistically called spring training), and he would knock on their doors the morning of, and they would look out the windows and say, "Hey, it's snowing," and he would say, "It's not snowing all that hard. See you in a half-hour." So we would gather our tired, cold bodies together, throw on our baseball clothes—old shirts, old pants, sneakers, old baseball gloves—and grab a couple of bats and scuffed-up balls, and we would pile onto the subway and ride to Van Cortland Park. We would run to make sure we'd be first to claim a ball field. Of course we were first. Nobody else was that crazy. My brother would direct practice for a couple of hours, batting practice, catching fungoes, fielding, practicing our curves and drops on the sidelines, fingers aching from contact with batted or thrown baseballs. We threw ourselves across that hard bone of a field so we would be ready when the spring suns finally thawed the ground at our feet. If the still-awake dreams of hunting lions in Africa were the peak moments of my night life, those frozen ball fields of February were the highlights of my days.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

Recalling his late brother, from "Life with Alfie," https://books.google.com/books?id=PWEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA233&dq=%22Alfie+was+an+organizer%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMIiqWJ2oHaxwIVipANCh2Utw2g#v=onepage&q=%22Alfie%20was%20an%20organizer%22&f=false in Orange Coast Magazine (November 1990), pp. 233–234
Other Topics

Life , Dreams , Spring , Sun

“You feel chilled because you have no character. You’re a depressing assemblage of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of only the most banal form of capitalism. You spend your life feeling as if you’re perpetually on the brink of being obsolete — whether it’s labour market obsolescence or cultural unhipness. And it’s all catching up with you. You live and die by the development cycle. You’re glamorized drosophila flies, with the company regulating your life cycles at whim. If it isn’t a budget-driven eighteen-month game production schedule, it’s a five-year hardware obsolescence schedule. Every five years you have to throw away everything you know and learn a whole new set of hardware and software specs, relegating what was once critical to our lives to the cosmic slag heap.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Life , Feeling , Game , Learning

“I know from people I work with, that people say "I want to have Heidi’s career," and my friends are like, "but she also works very hard." It's the truth! It's not as if I sit back and watch things fly onto my plate. I went for a lot of the things. (Success) doesn't happen by waiting for things to happen because there are other people who are hungry. The early bird catches a worm.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted by InStyle December 2008 http://www.instyle.com/instyle/package/general/photos/0,,20219137_20240419_20541419,00.html

People , Truth , Bird , Waiting

“We all observe that the reality of sexual intercourse is far from perfect; yet this does not convince us that sex is a greatly overrated occupation. Every time a man glimpses a pretty girl pulling up her stocking, he catches a glimpse of what might be called the "primal sexual vision." It is unfortunate that there seems to be a certain disparity between this primal vision and most ordinary sexual experience. But it dances in front of us like a will-o'-the-wisp, luring us into tormented effort. It can lead novelists to write novels, poets to write poems, and musicians to write symphonies.”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 39

Sex , Girl , Reality , Effort

“Time after time she opened her door to catch the first glimmer of day; and she rejoiced when early Dawn lit up the sky and people in the town began to stir.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 822–824

People , Time

“What you need to do is take control of things. Don't wait for events to catch up with you; go and meet them head-on!”

Terry Brooks (1944) American writer

ibid
The Scions Of Shannara

Waiting

“… catch and shoot the Astrakhan speculators and bribe-takers. These swine have to be dealt [with] so that everyone will remember it for years.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

As quoted in Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy (1994), p. 201.
Attributions

Swine

“They're out there.
Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

First lines, Ch. 1
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)

Sex , Boy

“When I was young, art for me was a new religion. Now I see the aims and ends of art as less grand. If I can catch the play of light on a wall, and catch it just so, that is enough for me. I don’t want to write about human behavior. Art now seems to me in many ways the absolute opposite of psychology. It’s simply saying, This is how it is. This is how it looks, how it feels. To describe things well is far more worthwhile than the kind of cheap psychologizing, or even expensive psychologizing, that the novel so often indulges in.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Religion , Art , Way , Behavior

“Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star), stanza 1

Star , Singing , Past , Envy

“Who applies for that job? Who says "I want to work in lost luggage"? You don't have a good day. That's like having a job emptying port-a-potties. You're just going to catch crap all day long.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie (2003)

“A lot of the things that have been accomplished in science have been accomplished on the basis of ignorance … in the sense that you import into the science people from outside. Because once you have an established science, it has got its high priests — the guys who know everything that will work or won't work. And they don't want to be bothered. So you have to have a challenge. And the great thing is that young people are ignorant, and we should catch them before they turn into the priesthood. So I think that science should have a much more daring approach.”

Sydney Brenner (1927–2019) South African biologist, Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine 2002

Sydney Interview on the Genbank 25th Anniversary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDm7i3Rc8wU

People , Guy , Thinking , Sense

“Birth control may in time catch up with death control. …But for the present and the short-range future, it remains obvious that humanity is in course of one of the most massive and extraordinary ecological upheavals the planet has ever known. …a sequence of sharp alterations and abrupt oscillations in existing balances between microparasitism and macroparasitism can therefore be expected in the near future as in the recent past.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

Death , Birth , Time , Past

“I had lumps all over my body, dizzy spells, I was spitting blood, and I had gone there only to be given an appointment for three weeks later. Now like every American boy I had always been told: catch cancer early. Then you go down to catch it early and they make you wait three weeks for an appointment. That's the difference between what we're told and actuality.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 70

Boy , Waiting

“In its own unhurried way, age soundlessly and with persistence treads ever closer behind us on slippered feet, catches up, and finally blends itself into us—all while we are still denying its nearness.”

Sherwin B. Nuland (1930–2014) American surgeon

[The art of aging: a doctor's prescription for well-being, 2008, Random House, 9, https://books.google.com/books?id=7JR_1wsxvz8C&pg=PA9]
The Art of Aging (2007)

Age , Way

“Mon ami, if you wish to catch a rabbit you put a ferret into the hole, and if the rabbit is there he runs. That is all I have done.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

“Sadly, they played very dirty. This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style… If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they lost.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

Criticising the Dutch team's play in the 2010 World Cup final, in BBC Sport (12 July 2010) http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8812484.stm.

Football

“Christians today disagree on the sequence of these events but my 44-year study has convinced me that the historic position that the church held to for 2,000 years is right! They taught that the “rapture” (the catching away of living believers when the Lord returns) happens AFTER the tribulation but BEFORE the wrath of God falls IN the Day of the Lord as shown above. The majority of believers in the world today agree. The “pre-trib” rapture idea, started by a 15 year old Scottish girl in 1830, that I held to for 39 years and that is held to by a VERY vocal minority today is WRONG, wishful thinking and will disappoint MANY causing them to “fall away.””

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 114

God , World , Disappointment , Girl

“Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)

Disease

“Gee, I've been asked hundreds of questions about that catch in the first game of the World Series. The one that Vic Wertz hit for Cleveland. Was it my best catch? How did I play it? Honestly, I don't rate 'em—I just try to catch 'em. When he hit the ball, I just started toward the place it was heading. And I got there.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

In "Willie 'Just Knows' His Job" by Mays, in The Daily Mail (March 25, 1955), p. 16

World , Game , Question

“Despite declining catches, New England fishermen continue to receive state and federal tax incentives that encourage them — in some cases all but compel them — to acquire bigger boats and to harvest the seas more intensively. Today the fishermen of Massachusetts are reduced to fishing the hideous hagfish, for which there is a slight market in the Far East, but even their numbers are now falling.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 285
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Fish , Sea

“When America passed the fugitive slave law compelling men to catch their fellows more brutally than runaway dogs, Canada, aristocratic, unrepublican Canada, still stretched her arms to those who might reach her. But there is no refuge upon earth for the enslaved sex. Right where we are, there we must dig our trenches, and win or die.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

Sex Slavery (1890)

Men , Law , Dogs , Sex

“It was my job to catch our Jewish enemies like fish in a net and transport them to their final destination.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

As quoted in The Nazi Hunters by Neal Bascomb (2013). ISBN 978-0-545-56239-3.

Fish

“Hillary causes the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. Now she wants a 25% gun tax to make sure you can't defend yourself from the onslaught. Did I catch your attention yet?”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation
The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-09-09
Radio, 46:45
2015

War , World

“Mexico is going to be the new China because what they're doing to us is unbelievable, although they did catch El Chapo. Good? Good? They did catch El Chapo, that's good. I mean I don't know, he better not escape a third time, you know? Those tunnels, bing, boom, right under the toilet, bing boom, right up. It's pretty amazing when you think about it, right? But anyway. I have an idea: Put him on the fourth floor this time, right? No more, no more first floors.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Speech (9 January 2016), as quoted in "El Chapo on Donald Trump: 'Mi Amigo!" http://www.cbsnews.com/news/el-chapo-on-donald-trump-mi-amigo/, by Rebecca Kaplan, CBS News (10 January 2016).
2010s, 2016, January

Idea , Thinking , Time

“Tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied her raven ringlets in;
But not alone in the silken snare
Did she catch her lovely floating hair,
For, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man’s heart within.”

Nora Perry (1831–1896) American writer

The Love-knot, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love , Heart

“We’ve got to take a chance, fly by the seat of our proverbial pants. There’s so much we can do, out in this world, me and you. There’s so much we can improve, if you dig my drift, if you catch my groove.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Hi Neigbour, Salam Neighbour"
For Whom The Troubadour Sings (2010)

World , Chance , Flying

“I hate that Alex and Damon. I hope they catch AIDS and die.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Noel Gallagher cited in " Timeline: Blur v Oasis after Britpop http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4151510.stm" at news.bbc.co.uk, 14 August, 1995: Referring to Damon Albarn and Blur
Controversy with other artists

Hate , Hope

“The simultaneous existence of opposite virtues in the soul — like pincers to catch hold of God.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 92 (1972 edition)

God , Soul

“Public policy changes in very large leaps, as in the New Deal of the 1930's, the Great Society of the mid-1960's, and the Reagan revolution of 1981. These spasms of reform are interspersed with periods of rest and stasis, as if the participants are exhausted from their exertion and catching their breath. But in any event, this does not look like Darwinian, gradualistic evolution.”

John W. Kingdon (1940) American political scientist

Source: Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies - (Second Edition), Chapter 10, Some Further Reflections, p. 226

Change

“Unless we plan our resources purposefully, unless we are prepared to accept the disciplines that are necessary, we shall not be able to meet the challenge of the Communist world. As the years go by, and the people see us languishing behind, trying to prevent the evils of inflation by industrial stagnation, trying all the time to catch up with things because we have not acted soon enough—when they see the Communist world, planned, organised, publicly-owned and flaunting its achievements to the rest of the world—they will come to be educated by what they will experience. They will realise that Western democracy is falling behind in the race because it is not prepared to read intelligently the lessons of the twentieth century.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1959/nov/03/debate-on-the-address in the House of Commons (3 November 1959)
1950s

People , World , Education , Democracy

“What kind of development is it when the people lead shorter lives than before? They catch HIV/AIDS. Our children are beaten in school and won't go. Some become prostitutes. They are not allowed to hunt. They fight because they are bored and get drunk. They are starting to commit suicide. We never saw that before. Is this "development?"”

Roy Sesana (1950) Botswana activist

Source: Progress can kill http://assets.survival-international.org/static/lib/downloads/source/progresscankill/short_report.pdf, Botswana, 2005

Children , People , School , Suicide

“Memories are like fireflies darting across the surface of my mind, showing me here and there images so sharp and vivid that I catch my breath in wonder before the vignette disappears, sinking like a pebble into the quicksand of regret and recrimination.”

Susan Kay Phantom

Giovanni (p. 133)
Phantom (1990)

Memory

“When a person hasn’t in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog’s bark in every sound.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

A Dreary Story or A Tedious Story (1889)

Dogs , Bird , Personality

“That which is unique and worthwhile in us makes itself felt only in flashes. If we do not know how to catch and savor the flashes we are without growth and exhilaration.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Also quoted in Between the Devil and the Dragon : The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer (1982)
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

“There’s nothing that I would call ordinary audition about this at all. It doesn’t really.. It’s a curious thing that will be very difficult to explain. Somebody asked me, “Was it as though your hand was moving?” No. I wrote perfectly voluntarily in response to…I call it a voice, but “a voice” has sounds… or sounds as though it has something to do with hearing. And I didn’t hear anything. I think it’s the sort of hearing that you can’t really describe. It doesn’t have anything to do with ears, or waves hitting a drum or anything on that order. I don’t really know, I think maybe I’m using the wrong word when I say “hear.” I sort of recognized it, it was very rapid, I could even…. if I didn’t catch a phrase, I could sort of say, “Would you mind doing that again?””

Helen Schucman (1909–1981) Clinical Psychologist

Helen Schucman (1976), in interview by David Hammond August 1976 in Belvedere, California. Quoted in: The Voice: A Historical Moment with Helen https://acim.org/Scribing/the_voice.html at acim.org. Accessed May 21, 2014. Also online ar merelyacim.wikispaces.com http://merelyacim.wikispaces.com/An+interview+with+Helen+Schucman.
In answer of question: "Regarding the voice you heard in the scribing A Course in Miracles, did it come from outside or from within?"

Thinking

“In Malta, catch a swallow,
For all of the guilty — to set them free.
Wings fill the window,
And they beat and bleed.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)
Context: In Malta, catch a swallow,
For all of the guilty — to set them free.
Wings fill the window,
And they beat and bleed.
They hold the sky on the other side
Of borderlines.

“Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his beliefs with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his beliefs with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away.
It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.
It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, than when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with — if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.

Time

“The needs of labor require more than kind words, and are not to be satisfied by such soft phrases as we address to a horse when we want to catch him that we may put a bit in his mouth and a saddle on his back.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Source: Protection or Free Trade? (1886), Ch. 2
Context: The needs of labor require more than kind words, and are not to be satisfied by such soft phrases as we address to a horse when we want to catch him that we may put a bit in his mouth and a saddle on his back. Let me ask those who are disposed to regard protection as favorable to the aspirations of labor, to consider whether it can be true that what labor needs is to be protected?
To admit that labor needs protection is to acknowledge its inferiority; it is to acquiesce in an assumption that degrades the workman to the position of a dependent, and leads logically to the claim that the employee is bound to vote in the interest of the employer who provides him with work.
There is something in the very word "protection" that ought to make workingmen cautious of accepting anything presented to them under it. The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny — the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.

Horse

“The terms of the dialectic have reversed: now the subversive task is to affirm an authentic post-modernist optimism that gives full weight to existent horror and possible (or probable) apocalyptic disaster, yet insists — credibly — that we can, well, overcome. The catch is that you have to be an optimist (an American?) in the first place not to dismiss such a project as insane.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Tom Wolfe's Failed Optimism" (1977), Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)
Context: My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries. I learned that lesson well (though it came too late to wholly supplant certain critical opposing influences, like comic books and rock-and-roll). Yet the modernists’ once-subversive refusal to be gulled or lulled has long since degenerated into a ritual despair at least as corrupt, soft-minded, and cowardly — not to say smug — as the false cheer it replaced. The terms of the dialectic have reversed: now the subversive task is to affirm an authentic post-modernist optimism that gives full weight to existent horror and possible (or probable) apocalyptic disaster, yet insists — credibly — that we can, well, overcome. The catch is that you have to be an optimist (an American?) in the first place not to dismiss such a project as insane.

Optimism

“Originality is not something continuous but something intermittent — a flash of the briefest duration. One must have the time and be watchful (be attuned) to catch the flash and fix it.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1961)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Context: Originality is not something continuous but something intermittent — a flash of the briefest duration. One must have the time and be watchful (be attuned) to catch the flash and fix it. One must know how to catch and preserve these scant flakes of gold sluiced out of the sand and rocks of everyday life. Originality does not come nugget-size.

Time

“First catch your hare.”

Hannah Glasse (1708–1770) British writer

Sometimes attributed to Glasse, but in fact the phrase appears nowhere in her Art of Cookery. The closest is under roast hare (page 6), "Take your hare when it be cas'd", simply meaning take a skinned hare. (Reference: Acquired Tastes: Celebrating Australia's Culinary History, Colin Bannerman (and others), published by the National Library of Australia, 1998, ISBN 0-642-10693-2, page 2.)
Misattributed

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)
Context: There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

“Hence, as Narcissus, by catching at the shadow, plunged himself in the stream and disappeared, so he who is captivated by beautiful bodies, and does not depart from their embrace, is precipitated, not with his body, but with his soul, into a darkness profound and repugnant to intellect (the higher soul), through which, remaining blind both here and in Hades, he associates with shadows.”

Plotinus (203–270) Neoplatonist philosopher

First Ennead, Book VI, as translated by Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation https://books.google.com/books?id=vEt0LaOue8IC (1891) pp. 43-44.
The First Ennead (c. 250)

Beauty , Soul

“We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. F. B. I. is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex life scandles [sic] and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals. They also have a habit of sneering at local law enforcement officers.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Longhand Note of President Harry S. Truman, May 12, 1945. https://trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/trumanpapers/psf/longhand/index.php?documentVersion=both&documentid=hst-psf_naid735219-01&pagenumber=2

Life , Secret , Law , Sex

“If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?”

Margot Fonteyn (1919–1991) English ballerina

Source: Margot Fonteyn : Autobiography‎ (1975), p. 272
Variant: Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?
As quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations‎ (1988) by James Beasley Simpson
Context: I need to have a purpose in life and for that I might sacrifice some of the luxuries that I enjoy; fortunately I am fairly adaptable. I try to be aware, flexible and unbiased in my thinking. If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?

Life , Beauty , Flying

“Beware of those who manufacture final answers as they go along, of those who will catch you on their catch-phrases and let you perish in the traps. All the final answers were given in the beginning.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: The Flame is Green (1971), Ch. 9 : Oh, The Steep Roofs of Paris
Context: Beware of those who manufacture final answers as they go along, of those who will catch you on their catch-phrases and let you perish in the traps. All the final answers were given in the beginning. They stand shining, above and beyond us, but they are always there to be seen. They may be too bright for us, they may be too clear for us. Well then, we must clarify our own eyes. Our task is to grow out until we reach them.

“Upon finding out we did not catch our animals with the lazo, they cried out, "Ah, then, you use nothing but the bolas:" the idea of an enclosed country was quite new to them.”

Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle

Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter VIII: "Excursion to Colonia del Sacramiento, etc." (second edition, 1845), entry for 19 November 1833, pages 147-148 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=160&itemID=F14&viewtype=image
Context: They expressed, as was usual, unbounded astonishment at the globe being round, and could scarcely credit that a hole would, if deep enough, come out on the other side. They had, however, heard of a country where there were six months light and six of darkness, and where the inhabitants were very tall and thin! They were curious about the price and condition of horses and cattle in England. Upon finding out we did not catch our animals with the lazo, they cried out, "Ah, then, you use nothing but the bolas:" the idea of an enclosed country was quite new to them. The captain at last said, he had one question to ask me, which he should be very much obliged if I would answer with all truth. I trembled to think how deeply scientific it would be: it was, "Whether the ladies of Buenos Ayres were not the handsomest in the world." I replied, like a renegade, "Charmingly so." He added, "I have one other question: Do ladies in any other part of the world wear such large combs?" I solemnly assured him that they did not. They were absolutely delighted. The captain exclaimed, "Look there! a man who has seen half the world says it is the case; we always thought so, but now we know it." My excellent judgment in combs and beauty procured me a most hospitable reception; the captain forced me to take his bed, and he would sleep on his recado.

Idea , Animals , Country

“Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks.”

Ronald David Laing book The Politics of Experience

Source: The Politics of Experience (1967), p. 58
Context: Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I. Q. s if possible.
From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father, and their parents and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities, and on the whole this enterprise is successful.

War , Children , Time

“The casting of the net corresponds to observation; for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science.
An onlooker may object that the first generalisation is wrong. "There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them." The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

The Philosophy of Physical Science (1938)
Context: Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations: No sea-creature is less than two inches long. (2) All sea-creatures have gills. These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it.
In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation; for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science.
An onlooker may object that the first generalisation is wrong. "There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them." The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. "Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of icthyological knowledge. In short, what my net can't catch isn't fish." Or — to translate the analogy — "If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods. You are a metaphysician. Bah!"

Knowledge , Science , Sea

“The philosophic historian, studying hereafter this present age, in which we are ourselves living, may say that it was a time of unexampled prosperity, luxury, and wealth; but catching at certain horrible murders which have lately disgraced our civilisation, may call us a nation of assassins. It is to invert the pyramid and stand it on its point.”

James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine

The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Character (1865)
Context: The student running over the records of other times finds certain salient things standing out in frightful prominence. He concludes that the substance of those times was made up of the matters most dwelt on by the annalist. He forgets that the things most noticed are not those of every-day experience, but the abnormal, the extraordinary, the monstrous. The exceptions are noted down, the common and usual is passed over in silence. The philosophic historian, studying hereafter this present age, in which we are ourselves living, may say that it was a time of unexampled prosperity, luxury, and wealth; but catching at certain horrible murders which have lately disgraced our civilisation, may call us a nation of assassins. It is to invert the pyramid and stand it on its point. The same system of belief which produced the tragedy which I have described, in its proper province as the guide of ordinary life, has been the immediate cause of all that is best and greatest in Scottish character.

Age , Study , Time , Wealth

“Then the shape, tossed and bent under the wind, lifted the latch of the gate, and they could see that it belonged to a woman, who was holding her hat on with one hand and carrying a bag in the other. As they watched, Jane and Michael saw a curious thing happen. As soon as the shape was inside the gate the wind seemed to catch her up into the air and fling her at the house. It was as though it had flung her first at the gate, waited for her to open it, and then had lifted and thrown her, bag and all, at the front door. The watching children heard a terrific bang, and as she landed the whole house shook.
"How funny! I've never seen that happen before," said Michael.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

Source: Mary Poppins (1934), Ch. 1 "East-Wind"
Context: Jane and Michael sat at the window watching for Mr. Banks to come home, and listening to the sound of the East Wind blowing through the naked branches of the cherry-trees in the Lane. The trees themselves, turning and bending in the half light, looked as though they had gone mad and were dancing their roots out of the ground.
"There he is!" said Michael, pointing suddenly to a shape that banged heavily against the gate. Jane peered through the gathering darkness.
"That's not Daddy," she said. "It's somebody else."
Then the shape, tossed and bent under the wind, lifted the latch of the gate, and they could see that it belonged to a woman, who was holding her hat on with one hand and carrying a bag in the other. As they watched, Jane and Michael saw a curious thing happen. As soon as the shape was inside the gate the wind seemed to catch her up into the air and fling her at the house. It was as though it had flung her first at the gate, waited for her to open it, and then had lifted and thrown her, bag and all, at the front door. The watching children heard a terrific bang, and as she landed the whole house shook.
"How funny! I've never seen that happen before," said Michael.

Children , Waiting , Housing

“After that, the responsibility for the catch is yours.”

Ty Cobb (1886–1961) American baseball player

Source: My Life In Baseball : The True Record (1961), Ch. 17 : You Field with Your Head Too, p. 224
Context: Most collisions out on the fields are needless. Keep your ears open while you're concentrating on running toward the ball and stick to the tested formula, boys. When you shout "I'll take it!" or "I've got it!" shout it loudly and clearly. Give that signal the instant you feel the play belongs to you and not your team-mate. After that, the responsibility for the catch is yours. If you call for it, you have the confidence to play the ball, knowing you are on your own and safe from injury. The collision hazard is eliminated almost entirely.

“No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine.”

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

Oration on the Character of Washington (1856); as published in A Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time Vol. V (1888) by Edmund Clarence Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.
Context: No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country’s good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace. While it stands, the latest generations of the grateful children of America will make this pilgrimage to it as to a shrine; and when it shall fall, if fall it must, the memory and the name of Washington shall shed an eternal glory on the spot.

Love , Gratitude

Quotes about catch page 7

Quotes about catch
page 7