I avoided reality for most of my life. But once you deal with it, it's kind of cool.
I still can't understand how Cecil and my old tutor, Fitz, got along so well, when we often called Fitz 'the Genius' and avoided calling Cecil anything at all, so as not to be rude.
It is possible I never learned the names of birds in order to discover the bird of peace, the bird of paradise, the bird of the soul, the bird of desire. It is possible I avoided learning the names of composers and their music the better to close my eyes and listen to the mystery of all music as an ocean. It may be I have not learned dates in history in order to reach the essence of timelessness. It may be I never learned geography the better to map my own routes and discover my own lands. The unknown was my compass. The unknown was my encyclopedia. The unnamed was my science and progress.
Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.
It’s funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes. The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature,” he said. “You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.
I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.
The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainly not to be trusted.
There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity.
If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.
The payment for sins can be delayed. But they cant be avoided.
What is deferred is not avoided.
Besides, humans aren't prey. They are our natural enemies. They are to be avoided.
It was my view that the catastrophe. . . . could have been avoided if Vasilevsky had taken the position he should have. He could have taken a different position. . . . but he didn't do that, and as a result, in my view, he had a hand in the destruction of thousands of Red Army fighters in the Kharkov campaign.
Aesthetic delectation is the danger to be avoided.
War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind.
Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided 'Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.
There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.
Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all. Bertha: What's that? Socrates: Philosophy. Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here. Socrates: Where are they? Bertha: In the philosophy department. Socrates: Philosophy is not department. Bertha: Well, we have philosophers. Socrates: Are they dangerous? Bertha: Of course not. Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers.
With the benefit of hindsight, had more care been taken, maybe this could have been avoided
My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.