Quotes about fine

A collection of quotes on the topic of fine, doing, likeness, thing.

Quotes about fine

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) First Czechoslovak president

“Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in… A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals

Justice, Sense

“Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa più, meno sa—Who knows most, knows least.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

As spoken to Michael Kelly, from Reminiscences of Michael Kelly, of the King's Theatre, and Theatre Royal Drury Lane, including a period of nearly half a century; with Original Anecdotes of many distinguished Personnages, Political, Literary, and Musical (London, Henry Colburn, 1826; digitized 2006), 2nd ed., vol. I (p. 225) http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC00439352&id=ph3XEMzGt5YC&pg=RA2-PA225&lpg=RA2-PA225&dq=%22Melody+is+the+essence+of+music%22&hl=en

Music, Horse

“Be true to yourself.
Make each day your masterpiece.
Help others.
Drink deeply from good books.
Make friendship a fine art.
Build a shelter against a rainy day.
Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Friendship, Books, Art, Drink

“I don’t care about losing people who don’t wanna be in my life anymore. I’ve lost people who meant the world to me and I’m still doing just fine.”

Karl May (1842–1912) German writer

Life, People, World

“Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming but still…
Iris, blue each spring”

Ome Shushiki (1669–1725) Japanese waka poet in the middle of the Edo period

Source: Japanese Haiku

Dreams, Hope, Spring, Dead

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

Death, Fate, Imagination, Sense

“There are lots of women who are attracted to tyrannical men. Like moths to a flame. And there are some women who do not need a hero or even a stormy lover but a friend. Just remember that when you grow up. Steer clear of the tryant lovers, and try to locate the ones who are looking for a man as a friend, not because they are feeling empty themselves but because they enjoy making you full too. And remember that friendship between a woman and a man is something much more precious and rare than love: love is actually something quite gross and even clumsy compared to friendship. Friendship includes a measure of sensitivity, attentiveness, generosity, and a finely tuned sense of moderation.”

Amos Oz book A Tale of Love and Darkness

Source: A Tale of Love and Darkness

Love, Women, Men, Friendship

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Books, Music, Wine, Weather

“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

For Bestfriend, Nature, Suffering, Success

“One swallow does not make a summer,
neither does one fine day;
similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Source: The Nicomachean Ethics

Depressing, Time, Summer, Personality

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Wisdom, Justice, Law, Idea

“Dr. Franklin says "it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself I should not care for fine clothes or furniture.”

P.T. Barnum (1810–1891) American showman and businessman

Source: The Art of Money Getting; Or, Golden Rules for Making Money

World, Clothes

“Everything is going to be fine in the end.
If it's not fine it's not the end.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Well fine, then. I could send you out to win my favor. Possibly on a quest involving bringing a large mug of coffee and a doughnut. Or the wholesale slaughter of all my enemies. I haven't decided which.”

Holly Black book The Darkest Part of the Forest

Source: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Coffee

“They are a pretty amazing bunch… some people have been here for 18 hours, which is… unbelievable! I don't think I would ever wait 18 hours on something, not even an organ, that I needed. I don't think I would wait that long, I would be like, oh fine, never mind…”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

Talking about the fans, on the red carpet of the premiere of Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince "Interviewing Daniel Radcliffe" http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=nl-NL&vid=d4e31f2f-c0e1-486a-b69d-c25fa9bcc7f7

People, Thinking, Waiting

“When we were children, we often played war. We had a fine collection of lead soldiers. My brothers would take different countries: Xavier had Italy; Pierre, Germany. Or they would swap around. Well, I, gentlemen, always had France.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Reminiscing during an ocean voyage to Tahiti, quoted in The Atlantic, November 1960
Early life

War, Children, Country

“Arrogance is a killer, and wearing ambition on one's sleeve can have the same effect. There is a fine line between arrogance and self-confidence. Legitimate self-confidence is a winner. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open—to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Self-confident people aren't afraid to have their views challenged. They relish the intellectual combat that enriches ideas.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

People, Confidence, Idea, Courage

“Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Variant: Someone who is a clever speaker and maintains a 'too-smiley' face is seldom considered a humane person.
Source: The Analects, Chapter I

Appearance

“Paul's last words to Linda: "You're up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It's a fine spring day. We're riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is clear-blue".”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

I had barely got to the end of the sentence when she closed her eyes and gently slipped away. She was unique, and the world is a better place for having known her. I love you, Linda. note: Last words to his wife, Linda, as recounted by McCartney in a statement released to the press three days after her death Source: as quoted in "Linda's Death 'Heartbreak' for McCartney" https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=99480655 by Emma Ross, Tucson Citizen (April 21, 1998), p. B1

Beauty, Spring

“True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

“Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night;
Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night…”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Variant: When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
Source: Romeo and Juliet

Love, World, Star, Night

“A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Star, Dead

“Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.”

Peter Singer book Practical Ethics

Source: Practical Ethics

People, Beauty, Art, Way

“When you looked into my eyes,
I stood there like I was hyp-notized.
You sent a feeling to my spine,
A feeling warm and smooth and fine.
But all I could do were stand there paralyzed.
When we kissed, ooh what a thrill,
You took my hand and, ooh baby, what a chill.
I felt like grabbin' you real tight,
Squeeze and squeeze with all my might.
But all I could do were stand there paralyzed.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Paralyzed, written by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley (1956)
Song lyrics

Feeling, Kiss, Baby

“The bullet is a fool, the bayonet is a fine chap.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

Nauka pobezhdat, Dokumenty, vol. III, p. 504, cited in af.mil http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1986/nov-dec/menning.html. Compare with "The bullet is a mad thing; only the bayonet knows what it is about." from "The Science of Victory," 1796.

Fools

“They learn to speak, write, and do arithmetic. They have a phenomenal memory. If one read them the Encyclopedia Britannica they could repeat everything back in order, but they never think up anything original. They'd make fine university professors.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Thinking, Learning, Universe, Memory

“A fine thing: suddenly to forget about one’s history, one’s past, to stop feeling that one’s present happiness is endangered by what one used to be.”

Peter Handke (1942) Austrian writer, playwright and film director

Source: Das Gewicht der Welt [The Weight of the World], p. 7

Feeling, History, Past, Forgetting

“If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulses of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavor is to subdue our children’s spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), pp. 185-186.

Love, Life, Children, Truth

“Mankind will endure. In twenty years the world will belong to man again; even if it's only to a couple of savages on the tiniest island … that'll be a start. And as long as there's some small beginning, that's fine. In a thousand years they'll have caught up to where we are now and then surpass even that … to accomplish what we only dreamed of.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

World, Dreams

“Let your beauty be not just the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on fine clothing; but in the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruptible adornment of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God very precious.”

Saint Peter (-1–67 BC) apostle and first pope

1 Peter 3:3-4 ( World English Bible http://biblehub.com/web/1_peter/3.htm) First Epistle of Peter

God, Beauty, Heart, Personality

“It is due to justice; due to humanity; due to truth; due to the sympathies of our nature; in fine, to our character as a people, both abroad and at home, that they should be considered, as much as possible, in the light of human beings, and not as mere property. As such, they are acted on by our laws, and have an interest in our laws.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

They may be considered as making a part, though a degraded part, of the families to which they belong. Speech in the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830, on the Question of the Ratio of Representation in the two Branches of the Legislature (2 December 1829) http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes/slavery.html 1820s

People, Truth, Justice, Law

“Imagine that one not very fine day two or three of your states in the Southwest, in the space of 24 hours, declare themselves independent of the U.S... declare themselves a fully sovereign nation, decreeing that Spanish will be the only language. All English-speaking residents, even if their ancestors have lived there for 200 years, have to take a test in the Spanish language within one or two years and swear allegiance... Otherwise they will not receive citizenship and be deprived of... (their) rights. Today Russia faces precisely this scenario.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Interview With Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on Ukraine (May 1994)

Imagination

“A man of many parts - a learned and deeply religious person, a very fine and powerful actor who swayed millions of people, a orator and above all, a man of the masses.”

N. T. Rama Rao (1923–1996) Indian actor and Andhra Pradesh former chief minister

By Narasimha Rao in "Obituary: N. T. Rama Rao".
About NTR

Parting, Personality, People, Learning

“Just as fine clothes and handsome shoes would not be suitable to me.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Diogenes Laertius

Clothes, Shoe

“It is a very fine speech, Lysias, but is not suitable for me; for it was manifestly the speech of a lawyer, rather than of a philosopher.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Diogenes Laertius

“Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”

Xenophon (-430–-354 BC) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

“Imagine that one not very fine day two or three of your states in the Southwest, in the space of 24 hours, declare themselves independent of the U.S.... declare themselves a fully sovereign nation, decreeing that Spanish will be the only language. All English-speaking residents, even if their ancestors have lived there for 200 years, have to take a test in the Spanish language within one or two years and swear allegiance to the new nation. Otherwise they will not receive citizenship and be deprived of civic, property and employment rights. What would be the reaction of the United States? I have no doubt that it would be immediate military intervention. Today Russia faces precisely this scenario.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Interview With Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the New Russia and Ukraine (May 1994)

Imagination

“The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Mood, Weather

“Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Source: Adam Bede (1859)
Context: These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people — amongst whom your life is passed — that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire — for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields — on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.
So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin — the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

Truth, Feeling, Motivation, Falseness

“So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Good Morning, Sea

“… you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

Hope, Failure, Question, Success

“During our recent Human Rights Defenders Forum at The Carter Center, it was reported that between two hundred and three hundred children are sold in Atlanta alone each month! Our city is considered to be one of the preeminent human trafficking centers in the United States, perhaps because we have the busiest airport in the world and because, until recently, the penalty for someone convicted of selling another human being was only a $50 fine. A much heavier penalty of up to twenty years’ imprisonment can be imposed by the federal government, but only if there is proof that the trafficking took place across state lines. An analysis by Atlanta social workers found that 42 percent of the sexual exchanges they investigated were in brothels and hotel rooms in the most affluent areas of the city, while only 9 percent were in the poorer neighborhoods in the vicinity of the airport. Like Kara, they too conclude that the primary culprits are the men who buy sexual favors and the male pimps and brothel owners who control the women and garner most of the financial gains.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Women, Men, Children, World

“Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Birthday, Age, Happiness

“There's a fine line between audacity and idiocy.”

Jim Butcher Turn Coat

Source: Van Darkholme TDNコスギ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXsTOpysLNI Source: Turn Coat

“Our revolution is not a public-speaking tournament. Our revolution is not a battle of fine phrases. Our revolution is not simply for spouting slogans that are no more than signals used by manipulators trying to use them as catchwords, as codewords, as a foil for their own display. Our revolution is, and should continue to be, the collective effort of revolutionaries to transform reality, to improve the concrete situation of the masses of our country.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Reality, Effort, Country

“The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

World

“The polite thing would be to go back inside, give you privacy when you read it. But, I’m just not that mature.'
'It’s nothing. Fine.' Feeling foolish, Laurel opened the envelope.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Savor the Moment

Feeling, Reading

“Stop moping, sule," galladon said with a grunt."It doesn't suit you-it takes a fine sense of pessimism to brood with any sort of respectability.”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

Sense

“I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane.
It never is, sir.
Lane, you're a perfect pessimist.
I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Hope, Perfection

“You speak horse?" Hazel asked.
"Speaking to horses is a Poseidon thing," Percy said. "Uh, I mean a Neptune thing."
"Then you and Arion should get along fine," Hazel said. "He's a son of Neptune too."
Percy turned pale. "Excuse me?”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Horse

“Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it does not need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Art, Future

“Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely.”

Louise Labé (1524–1566) female French poet of the Renaissance, born in Lyon

Women, Men, Education, Law

“They done
Wrong
Like ink from a busted pen
Thrown away 'cause of someone else
Used up
But he come back
Dressed in night
Fine as a king
With his queen
The wrong
Made right
So right.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Night

“No, you're mistaken. Not 'What filthy weather' but 'It's a fine rainy day.”

Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt (1960) French writer

Weather

“But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

Thinking

“Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.”

Olaf Stapledon book Odd John

Source: Odd John

Food, Dogs, Thinking

“We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (May 3, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)
Context: Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: we read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

Feeling, Reading

“It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.”

Dylan Thomas book Under Milk Wood

Source: " Under Milk Wood http://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_umw1.html" (1954)

People, Spring, Cats, Sleep

“Its a fine line between love and stalking.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Love

“You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.”

Rohinton Mistry (1952) Canadian writer

Hope, Question, Despair

“When I ask how old your toddler is, I don't need to hear '27 months.' 'He's two' will do just fine. He's not a cheese. And I didn't really care in the first place.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Literature, Water, Wine

“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.”

Mark Twain book Roughing It

Source: Roughing It

Angels

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Friendship, Relationship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain

People, World, Music

“‎All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”

H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer

Life, Moving On, Art

“You have little time left, and none of it for crap. A fine state. I would say that the best of us always comes out when we are against the wall, when we feel the sword dangling overhead. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Source: Tales of Power

Way, Feeling, Time, Personality

“The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

“Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave -
The water below is as dark as the grave,
And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat -
It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat”

Margaret Atwood book The Penelopiad

Source: The Penelopiad

Hope, Water

“I also hate people to ask cheerfully how you are when they know you're feeling like hell and expect you to say "fine”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Hate, People, Feeling, Hell

“Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) American artist, writer and activist

Love, Beauty, Coffee, Tree

“I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine against a wall."”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

From a speech given at the White Shrine Club, Fresno, California, quoted in The Event Makers I’ve Known (2012) by Elvin C. Bell, p. 161. She is described as being in her late 70s, so c. 1960–1962

Reading

“Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Funny, Drawing

“But we're going to smile and pretend we're fine with the dorky birthmas gifts because people do not get that they can't mush a birthday into christmas.”

P. C. Cast book Chosen

Source: Chosen

People, Smile, Birthday, Christmas

“A fine glass vase goes from treasure to trash, the moment it is broken. Fortunately, something else happens to you and me. Pick up your pieces. Then, help me gather mine.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Help

“One may view the individual’s everyday life in terms of the working away of a conversational apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and reconstructs his subjective reality… [for example] ‘Well, it’s time for me to get to the station,’ and ‘Fine, darling, have a good day at the office’ implies an entire world within which these apparently simple propositions make sense… the exchange confirms the subjective reality of this world… the great part, if not all, of everyday conversation maintains subjective reality… imagine the effect…of an exchange like this: ‘Well, it’s time for me to get to the station,’ ‘Fine, darling, don’t forget to take along your gun.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 147-163

Life, World, Imagination, Reality

“p>Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them - will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn't rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”

Eduardo Galeano book The Book of Embraces

The Nobodies; Cied in Mother Jones Magazine (1991) The Book of Embraces. March-April 1991. p. 71
The Book of Embraces (1991)

Life, Children, World, Religion

“Do not conceive that fine Clothes make fine Men, any more than fine feathers make fine Birds—A plain genteel dress is more admired and obtains more credit than lace & embroidery in the Eyes of the judicious and sensible.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Bushrod Washington http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-chron-1780-1783-01-15-12 (15 January 1783) 1780s

Men, Bird, Clothes

“Thinking more of others’ happiness than of her own was very fine; but did it not mean giving up her very individuality, quenching all the warm love, the true desires, that made her herself? Yet in this deadness lay her only comfort; so it seemed.”

Elizabeth Gaskell book Wives and Daughters

Wives and Daughters, ch. 11
Wives and Daughters

Love, Thinking, Dead, Happiness

“We see from Lenard's table that a cathode ray can travel through air at atmospheric pressure a distance of about half a centimetre before the brightness of the phosphorescence falls to about half its original value. Now the mean free path of the molecules of air at this pressure is about 10-5 cm., and if a molecule of air were projected it would lose half its momentum in a space comparable with the mean free path. Even if we suppose that it is not the same molecule that is carried, the effect of the obliquity of the collisions would reduce the momentum to half in a short multiple of that path. Thus, from Lenard's experiments on the absorption of the rays outside the tube, it follows on the hypothesis that the cathode rays are charged particles moving with high velocities, that the size of the carriers must be small compared with the dimensions of ordinary atoms or molecules. The assumption of a state of matter more finely subdivided than the atom of an element is a somewhat startling one; but a hypothesis that would involve somewhat similar consequences—viz. that the so-called elements are compounds of some primordial element—has been put forward from time to time by various chemists.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

Royal Institution Lecture (April 30, 1897) as quoted by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century http://books.google.com/books?id=CGJDAAAAIAAJ (1910). Quotes eat me

Travel, Time

“Oh child that didst despise thy life so much
When it seemed only thine to keep or lose,
How the fine ear felt fall the first low word
"Value life, and preserve life for My sake!"”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book X : The Pope.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Life

“The class instinct of the bourgeoisie is far better developed than that of the proletariat. The governing class naturally knows its interests better than the governed, who have so much less opportunity to become informed and are also sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not, systematically deceived and misled from a recognition of their interests. Do not say that it is the rough form in which socialism is often set forth that frightens and embitters the bourgeoisie. That is absolutely false. It is not the form; it is the content which they detest; and the more harmless the form so much the more dangerous do the contents appear to the gentlemen of the bourgeoisie. The fineness of the form makes no difference to them. That is clear from the manner in which they fight out their quarrels among themselves.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Nature, Appearance, Fight, Falseness

“The laws of thermodynamics, as empirically determined, express the approximate and probable behavior of systems of a great number of particles, or, more precisely, they express the laws of mechanics for such systems as they appear to beings who have not the fineness of perception to enable them to appreciate quantities of the order of magnitude of those which relate to single particles, and who cannot repeat their experiments often enough to obtain any but the most probable results.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903) physicist

From the preface to Elementary Principles in Statististical Mechanics (1902), p. viii. Full book https://archive.org/details/elementaryprinc00gibbgoog

Law, Behavior, Appearance

“It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Men, Food, Nature, Knowledge

“(On considering himself as a heartthrob) Personally I can't see it, but if other people can, fine. Cool!”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

http://www.movietome.com/people/86509/daniel-radcliffe/trivia.html

People, Personality

“You know when you're [driving] drunk, you're like [Imitates car driving and going over the bumps on the edge of the road], behind you, you hear [Imitates big rig horn] [slurring] "Shut up, stupid!" You know, if you hear the magical sound [Imitates police siren], one of two things will pop in your head. Either one, [slurring] "I'm okay, I'm fine…I can beat this." Or two, [police siren] "I'm gonna go to jail. Ima gonna jail. Hey, gonna hafta let you go babe, Ima gonna jail. Tell the kids I love 'em, bye."”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

Hot & Fluffy (2007)

Love, Stupidity, Cars

“What most people don't know about love, sex, and relations with other human beings would fill a book. Strangers in Paradise is that book. I have long suspected that what people did in private was much funnier than it ever was erotic. Terry Moore obviously thinks so too. Strangers in Paradise is a delightful new comic, and Terry Moore is a fun writer and a fine cartoonist.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Blurb on The Complete Strangers In Paradise (2004), Vol. 1

Love, People, Books, Sex

“Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Ch. 1

“Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.”

Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990) Canadian eductor

Source: Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977), p. 362

Art, Forgetting, Funny

“Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Four (16 July 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

People, Pleasure, World

“One of the things you want to do with a conception like compassion is that you want to start thinking about it like a psychologist, or like a scientist, because compassion is actually definable. The easiest way to approach it is to think about it in Big-5 terms, because it maps onto Agreeableness, which you can break down into Compassion and Politeness. The liberal types, especially the Social Justice types, are way higher in Compassion. It's actually their fundamental characteristic. You might think, 'well, compassion is a virtue.' Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child, hey great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way. We don't want to be thinking for a second that compassion isn't a virtue that can lead to violence, because it certainly can. The other problem with compassion - this is why we have conscientiousness - there's five canonical personality dimensions. Agreeableness is good if you are functioning in a kin system. You want to distribute resources equally for example among your children, because you want all of them to have the same chance, and even roughly the same outcome. That is, a good one. But the problem is that you can't extend that moral network to larger groups. As far as I can tell, you need conscientiousness, which is a much colder virtue. It's also a virtue that is much more concerned with larger structures over the longer period of time. And you can think about conscientiousness as a form of compassion too. It's like: 'straighten the hell out, and work hard and your life will go well. I don't care how you feel about that right now.' Someone who's cold, that is, low in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness, will tell you every time. 'Don't come whining to me. I don't care about your hurt feelings. Do your goddamn job or you're going to be out on the street.' One might think, 'Oh that person is being really hard on me.' Not necessarily. They might have your long term best interest in mind. You're fortunate if you come across someone who is disagreeable. Not tyrannically disagreeable, but moderately disagreeable and high in conscientiousness because they will whip you into shape. And that's really helpful. You'll admire people like that. You won't be able to help it. You'll feel like, 'Oh wow, this person has actually given me good information, even though you will feel like a slug after they have taken you apart.' That's the compassion issue. You can't just transform that into a political stance. I think part of what we're seeing is actually the rise of a form of female totalitarianism, because we have no idea what totalitarianism would be like if women ran it, because that's never happened before in the history of the planet. And so, we've introduced women into the political sphere radically over the past fifty years. We have no idea what the consequence of that is going to be. But we do know from our research, which is preliminary, that agreeableness really predicts political correctness, but female gender predicts over and above the personality trait, and that's something we found very rarely in our research. Usually the sex differences are wiped out by the personality differences, but not in this particular case. On top of that, women are getting married later, and they're having children much later, and they're having fewer of them, and so you also have to wonder what their feminine orientation is doing with itself in the interim, roughly speaking. A lot of it is being expressed as political opinion. Fair enough. That's fine. But it's not fine when it starts to shut down discussion.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Life, Women, Children, People

“I'm not here for your entertainment.
You don't really want to mess with me tonight.
Just stop and take a second.
I was fine before you walked into my life.
'Cause you know it's over
Before it began.
Keep your drink, just give me the money.
It's just you and your hand tonight.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

U + Ur Hand, written by Pink, Max Martin, Lukasz Gottwald, and Rami Yacoub
Song lyrics, I'm Not Dead (2006)

Life, Money, Drink

“So, so what?
I'm still a rock star,
I got my rock moves,
And I don't need you.
And guess what,
I'm having more fun.
And now that were done,
I'm gonna show you tonight
I'm alright,
I'm just fine.
And you're a tool.
So, so what?
I am a rock star,
I got my rock moves.
And I don't want you tonight.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

So What, written by Pink, Max Martin, and Shellback
Song lyrics, Funhouse (2008)

Star

“I started selling my portraits. Sizing up my customer, I charged ten or twenty francs a caricature, and it worked like a charm. Within a month my clientele had doubled. Had I gone on like that I'd be a millionaire today. Soon I was looked up to in the town, I was 'somebody'. In the shop-window of the one and only frame-maker who could make out a livelihood in Le Havre, my caricatures were impudently displayed, five or six abreast, in beaded frames or behind glass like very fine works of art, and when I saw troops of bystanders gazing at them in admiration, pointing at them and crying 'Why, that's so-and-so!', I was just bursting with pride.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

after Monet's death
Source: Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 22 : About the first steps in his career

Art, Cry

“We don't really feel our games have created a standard. I have no concern over others making similar games, it just shows that players wanted games that were like this, that are difficult, and wanted other studios to make challenging games that achieve the same level of satisfaction. We enjoy those games and their approach to creating them are never the same, anyway. We enjoy seeing the differences. We're totally fine with seeing more games come out that borrow aspects. Our main focus is keeping game creation fresh for ourselves.”

Hidetaka Miyazaki (1974) Japanese video game director

Dark Souls 3 Interview: "It Wouldn’t Be Right to Continue Creating Souls" https://www.gamespot.com/articles/dark-souls-3-interview-it-wouldnt-be-right-to-cont/1100-6432425/ (November 20, 2015)

Feeling, Game

“The curious crime, the fine
Felicity and flower of wickedness.”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book X: The Pope, line 590.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Flowers

“I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought they knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom — therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

22d–e
Plato, Apology

Wisdom, Error, Knowledge

“If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Speech at the American Enterprise Institute http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/21/cheney_obama_keeping_america_safe_96615.html (21 May, 2009) 2000s, 2009