Nothing good or great can be done in the absence of enthusiasm.
In the absence of evidence, superstition. It's a Middle Ages thing. That's my theory anyway.
I suppose even Dictators have their chummy moments, when they put their feet up and relax with the boys, but it was plain from the outset that if Roderick Spode had a sunnier side, he had not come with any idea of exhibiting it now. His manner was curt. One sensed the absence of the bonhomous note. . . . Here he laid a hand on my shoulder, and I can't remember when I have experienced anything more unpleasant. Apart from what Jeeves would have called the symbolism of the action, he had a grip like the bite of a horse. "Did you say 'Oh yes?'" he asked. "Oh no," I assured him.
Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!
The complete absence of the story - that was the best thing about this whole thing, because you know that nothing's going to happen and everything's going to happen. It's just the gaze. You create your own zone.
. . . the absence of theistic belief.
Faith is a very clever concept. We invented God from our imagination and we use faith to justify His absence from reality.
He couldn't bear to live, but he couldn't bear to die. He couldn't bear the thought of he making love to someone else, but neither could he bear the absence of the thought. And as for the note, he couldn't bear to keep it, but he couldn't bear to destroy it either.
All flowers will droop in the absence of the sun that waked their sweets.
I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.
The absence of pain means death, so when something no longer bothers you, you've died to that thing.
The absence of Saddam is a huge weight off the Arab world.
Courage is not the absence of fear and pain, but the affirmation of life despite fear and pain.
Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.
Atheism, the absence of belief in gods, is a comparatively late phenomenon in history.
The more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn't there.
It is the essence of the institutions of liberty that it be recognized that guilt is personal and cannot be attributed to the holding of opinions or to mere intent in the absence of overt acts.
Heartless though it may seem to some, among the least harmful things to eat are sustainably culled wild animals. In the absence of natural predators, deer populations in parts of Britain have reached such dense numbers that the woodlands they browse fail to regenerate.
I began to know my story then. Like everybody's, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.
Courage is not the absence of fear. It is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.