Out Of Balance Quotes

“The truly correct proof is one that strikes a harmonious balance between strength and flexibility. There are plenty of proofs that are technically correct but are messy and inelegant or counterintuitive. But it's not something you can put into words - explaining why a formula is beautiful is like trying to explain why the stars are beautiful.”

— Yōko Ogawa

“Had I been given The [Pentagon] Papers themselves that early, I would probably have become a prisoner of them-as it was, I had a good sense of the bureaucratic history [in them] as related by an expert, but I was also free to do several hundred interviews, not merely to flesh out the bureaucratic history, but to balance the pure paper history with a human history, and to relate secret decisions as they were not always set down on paper.”

— David Halberstam

“Because if you take something you're a thief.' She nursed the silence a moment. Downed the balance of her drink and silently signaled for another. 'Sounds simple, but you'd be amazed how many people don't get it. They steal but they call themselves honest. They cheat on their spouses and lovers but they think they're good people. They lie but they'd never call themselves liars. Well, let me tell you something, Todd ... She pointed toward him with her right hand, with her lit cigarette. He leaned away slightly. She looked into the mirror of his eyes and saw herself going too far. 'You are what you do. That's what I'm trying to tell you. What we do defines us. However we behave, conduct our lives ... that's real. The rest is just a story for publication.”

— Catherine Ryan Hyde

“Courage is not the absence of fear. Only fools have no fear.
Rather, courage is the intellectual mastery of fear by understanding
the true risks and opportunities of the situation and keeping those
things in balance”

— Julian Assange

“It's a tradition my great-grandfather started almost a hundred years ago, after my father was born. He gave my father fifty newly minted silver dollars and explained that each time something really amazing happened to him, he had to return one of the dollars to the universe so that someone else could wish on it.
I smile, recalling how Patrick had once told me a story of his grandfather standing on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1936 and throwing a silver dollar into the water after his beloved Yankees won the World Series. They won it for the next three years too, and his grandfather always believed that it was his coins - good luck returned to the universe - that kept their streak alive ...
... My father always used to tell me that if you keep the coins, you throw things out of balance ... It's all about passing the luck on and thanking the world for whatever good things have happened to you.”

— Kristin Harmel

“If we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state.”

— George F. Will

“The answer to finding better work/life balance is to find the right blend between all our life activities-regardless of where and when they occur.”

— Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

“You can use power for good or bad, for control or freedom. You grew up watching your dad abuse it one way and it made you take the opposite direction. That's what we all think. Everything's about balance. That's what sustains life. Maybe your role is to keep your dad in check?”

— Katie Kacvinsky

“It is not always on the great or the important that the balance of the universe depends.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

“Most weeks, I work 100-plus hours on TheMuse.com. There are definitions of 'work-life balance' that would say I have none.”

— Kathryn Minshew

“Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance. When the novelist puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality.”

— D.H. Lawrence

“I like comfy feet. If I'm not barefoot, you'll probably find me with a pair of New Balance on.”

— Reid Scott

“It is not poverty that is to be heared, but the lack of balance between riches and poverty.”

— Pearl S. Buck

“Almost all genius up to now was one-sided-the result of a sickly constitution. One type had too much sense of the external, the other too much inner sense. Seldom could nature achieve a balance between the two-a complete constitution of genius. Often a perfect proportion arose by chance, but this could never endure because it was not comprehended and fixed by the spirit-they remained fortunate moments. The first genius that penetrated itself found here the exemplary germ of an immeasurable world. It made a discovery which must have been the most remarkable in the history of the world-for with it there begins a whole new epoch for humanity-and true history of all kinds becomes possible for the first time at this stage-for the way that had been traversed hitherto now makes up a proper whole that can be entirely elucidated. That point outside the world is given, and now Archimedes can fulfill his promise.”

— Novalis

“Since my asana techniques increase circulation to all organs in the body and increase lung efficiency, I recommend Bikram Balance natural whole food beverage as a way to provide all the critical nutrients to oxygenate the blood and restore the acid/alkaline balance.”

— Bikram Choudhury

“I told Ing once that she dances like a German and she didn't like it, but it's true: she dances seriously, like lives are hanging in the balance, like precision dancing can save the starving children of India.”

— Audrey Niffenegger

“Research conducted throughout the world shows gender balance in top positions contributes to improved competitiveness and better business performance.”

— Beth Brooke

“It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“She's kind of funny looking. Her face is out of balance
broad forehead, button
nose, freckled cheeks, and pointy ears. A slammed-together, rough sort of face you can't ignore. Still, the whole package isn't so bad. For all I know maybe she's not so wild
about her own looks, but she seems comfortable with who she is, and that's the important thing.”

— Haruki Murakami

“The day that the balance between the two sections of the country - the slaveholding States and the non-slaveholding States - is destroyed is a day that will not be far removed from political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster.”

— John C. Calhoun

“Anyone who's promoting the exact diet that they were in previous years probably isn't keeping up with the latest science, though in general, the balance of evidence has remained remarkably consistent - centering one's diet around whole plant foods.”

— Michael Greger

“Initially I was very drawn to the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist philosophy. It was helping me deal with the balance of these external and internal issues with my chess life. Tai chi is the martial embodiment of Taoist philosophy. Initially, I had no intention of competing in the martial arts; it was just the meditation.”

— Joshua Waitzkin

“Eliminate the overwhelming cost of phantom wars and fools' errands, and humankind might begin to balance its books. After all, its only debts are to itself.”

— Marilynne Robinson

“Having the balance of a work life and a family life has been so good for me.”

— Nelly Furtado

“I did a couple comedies to balance myself as an actor and balance how audiences see Donnie Yen as an actor, and I would even say as a celebrity or icon, to some fans. I want to show that I'm not Terminator.”

— Donnie Yen

“I'm Sorry are two of the most powerful words in our language, especially when they are not flipped blithely over the shoulder but spoken from the heart. They help restore order, balance, harmony. They reduce pain. They heal broken friendship. If they were medecine, they'd be called a miracle.”

— Jerry Spinelli

“I agree that Ruskin has done much harm to counter balance much good in giving people the trick of talking about Art instead of really doing a little of it to enable them to understand.”

— William H. Hunt

“To improve their sense of balance," Mr. Foster explained. "Doing repairs on the outside of a rocket in mid-air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the circulation when they're right way up, so that they're half starved, and double the fi‚ow of surrogate when they're upside down. They learn to associate topsy-turvydom with well-being; in fact, they're only truly happy when they're standing on their heads.”

— Aldous Huxley

“I have great respect for actors like Jodie Foster and Natalie Portman who went to school the entire time they were acting. All I did was one small little independent film, and I realised I couldn't balance both lives.”

— Nikki Reed

“My journey has always been the balance between chaos and order.”

— Philippe Petit

“Those carrying a credit card balance should scale back to making the minimum payment each month so they have more money to put into savings.”

— Suze Orman

“I don't like balance. Balance is not a word you can use in Versace fashion.”

— Donatella Versace

“Life is like a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. -ALBERT EINSTEIN”

— Anthony Robbins

“I have never felt brutalized as an actor. Many actors do, some times, but I've never had that experience. If I'm not happy with the balance, I just won't work with that person again.”

— Jack Nicholson

“Can't you do something?" I ask Kauko, forcing myself not to scream. "Help her restore the balance!"
He shakes his head, his fleshy lips pressed together. "It's too late, my Saadella. And too much for a humble priest. Only a Valtia could do such a thing."
What I need to be to save her, she must die for me to become.”

— Sarah Fine

“Only bottles and locks and drawn curtains," Pen says, trying to balance on the edge of the sidewalk to little avail. "This cold is drawing the burn right out of my veins," she sulks. "I think I'm already sober."
"You aren't," I assure her.”

— Lauren DeStefano

“Being the owner of Dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot. Some day, if I ever get a chance, I shall write a book, or warning, on the character and temperament of the Dachshund and why he can't be trained and shouldn't be. I would rather train a striped zebra to balance an Indian club than induce a Dachshund to heed my slightest command. When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. He even disobeys me when I instruct him in something he wants to do.”

— E.B. White

“I try to have a balance of things you like and things you don't like about a character. But once you start that, all these scripts are like, "You play the douchebag friend of Ashton Kutcher." It's all these characters that are overconfident or hyper-masculine.”

— Jemaine Clement

“If only 50 or more people were doing for the country what I have been doing, there would not be a pay freeze or a balance of payments problem.”

— Robert Maxwell

“Justice, though due to the accused, is due the accuser also. The concept of fairness cannot be strained till it is narrowed to a filament. We are to keep our balance true.”

— Benjamin Cardozo

“When I first started working on movies as a production assistant, we were shooting 65, 75, 85 days. I mean, granted some of those things were "Godzilla," "Deep Impact," and those kinds of things, but these days it's like 30-35 days or 40-45 days and you just feel like you're humping trying to get everything done. It's like "Move on, move on, move on!" That's not the way to get the best performances or the most interesting shots. You have to constantly balance schedule and quality of work. For me, that's the biggest thing.”

— Michael Sucsy

“The short-term international capital market is shrunken and erratic, and cannot be relied upon to cushion the effects of tendencies to disequilibrium in the balance of payments.”

— Gunnar Myrdal

“Our work has only begun. In our time we have an historic opportunity to shape a global balance of power that favors freedom and that will therefore deepen and extend the peace. And I use the word power broadly, because even more important than military and indeed economic power is the power of ideas, the power of compassion, and the power of hope.”

— Condoleezza Rice

“We depend on manly characteristics to keep us safe. Every single one of the dead firemen heroes on 9/11 were men. This was one group where liberals didn't ask why there wasn't a more pleasing gender balance, because the Upper West Side is not fireproof. What happens in combat in some distant field is abstract to liberals, but they can understand the need to have strong, brave men in their fire department.”

— Kate O'Beirne

“Every time I get a chance to be out in the ocean, it's like hitting a reset button for me where I just feel alive again, in perfect balance. Music can give me that, as well, but not as easily. The ocean is the way I know how to find it almost daily.”

— Jack Johnson

“Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas. But can it really? ... True effectiveness requires balance.”

— Stephen Covey

“Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor also brought balance to our highest court; most recently, as been repeated many times, when she cautioned about how war doesn't give a blank check.”

— Joe Biden

“I have so much admiration for women who are mothers, who balance family and work. I see them and I have this word in my head - respect. I also look to learn. I see these women and I think, 'Yes, it can be balanced, it can all work out.'”

— Beyonce Knowles

“Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one's balance in spite of them.”

— Carl Von Clausewitz

“We need to strive to keep things in proper balance. Good balance comes in doing things in a timely way and in not procrastinating our preparation or waiting to fulfill our responsibilities until the last minute.”

— M. Russell Ballard