Avid Best Quotes

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An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine (Dissertations on First Principles of Government)
he none the less argued that ‘an avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty’ because it can accustom a nation ‘to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws’.
Christopher Hitchens (Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (Books That Changed the World))
Using what you make every day is the best way to improve the quality of what you’re offering. Nothing will help you find ways to make your offer better than being its most avid and demanding customer.
Josh Kaufman (The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business)
Best of all, Galignani’s, the English bookstore and reading room, a favorite gathering place, stood across the street from the hotel. There one could pass long, comfortable hours with a great array of English and even American newspapers. Parisians were as avid readers of newspapers as any people on earth. Some thirty-four daily papers were published in Paris, and many of these, too, were to be found spread across several large tables. The favorite English-language paper was Galignani’s own Messenger, with morning and evening editions Monday through Friday. For the newly arrived Americans, after more than a month with no news of any kind, these and the American papers were pure gold. Of the several circulating libraries in Paris, only Galignani’s carried books in English, and indispensable was Galignani’s New Paris Guide in English. Few Americans went without this thick little leather-bound volume, fully 839 pages of invaluable insights and information, plus maps.
David McCullough (The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris)
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. Thomas Paine. Paris, July, 1795.
Thomas Paine (Thomas Paine on Declaration of Rights, First Principles of Government, and the Constitution of 1795 (Illustrated))
But even though I loved being in water, I never enjoyed swim meets. It always seemed like they were imposing structure and stress on something that should have been freeing and fun. For example, going down a slide is awesome. But if you had to show up every day for slide practice at 7 A.M. and then compete against your best friend in slide competitions, while grown-ups screamed at you to slide better, until your friend won and you cried, slides would seem a lot less awesome. And yes, I cried after the 1994 breaststroke finals when the official said I lost even though technically I had a faster time. And yes, I was beaten by Steve Deppe. And yes, I just googled Steve Deppe and discovered he now runs a successful wealth management business in San Diego. And yes, his online corporate profile says, “As a former athlete, Steve continues to exercise daily, whether it’s lifting weights, running, swimming, or playing sports.” And yes, the fourth example he gave of “exercise” was “sports.” And yes, I just went out and bought goggles and a Speedo and went down to my local pool and didn’t leave until I “just went out and bought goggles and a Speedo and went down to my local pool and didn’t leave until I swam a hundred laps, hoping that would be more laps than Steve Deppe swam today. BUT REALLY, WHO EVEN CARES ANYMORE, RIGHT??? NOT ME!!! IT’S NOT A COMPETITION, EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT EVEN MARRIED YET AND STEVE IS ALREADY “THE PROUD FATHER OF HIS DAUGHTER, CAMRYN.” PLUS, HE’S “AN AVID SPORTS FAN, WHO NEVER MISSES HIS FAVORITE TV SHOW, SPORTSCENTER.” WE GET IT STEVE, YOU FUCKING LOVE SPORTS!” Anyway.
Colin Jost (A Very Punchable Face)
Sumire and I were a lot alike. Devouring books came as naturally to us as breathing. Every spare moment we’d settle down in some quiet corner, endlessly turning page after page. Japanese novels, foreign novels, new works, classics, avant-garde to best-seller—as long as there was something intellectually stimulating in a book, we’d read it. We’d hang out in libraries, spend whole days browsing in Kanda, the used-book-store mecca in Tokyo. I’d never run across anyone else who read so avidly—so deeply, so widely—as Sumire, and I’m sure she felt the same.
Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)
It was this motley band of modest peeps and plovers on the beach who reminded me of the human beings I loved best - the ones who didn't fit in. These birds may or may not have been capable of emotion, but the way they looked, beleaguered there, few in number, my outcast friends, was how I felt. I'd been told that it was bad to anthropomorphize, but I could no longer remember why. It was, in any case, anthropomorphic only to see yourself in other species, not to see them in yourself. To be hungry all the time, to be mad for sex, to not believe in global warming, to be shortsighted, to live without thought of your grandchildren, to spend half your life on personal grooming, to be perpetually on guard, to be compulsive, to be habit-bound, to be avid, to be unimpressed with humanity, to prefer your own kind: these were all ways of being like a bird. Later in the evening, in posh, necropolitan Naples, on a sidewalk outside a hotel whose elevator doors were decorated with huge blowups of cute children and the monosyllabic injunction SMILE, I spotted two disaffected teenagers, two little chicks, in full Goth plumage, and I wished that I could introduce them to the brownish-gray misfits on the beach.
Jonathan Franzen (The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History)
The last time I saw Collin was in 1917, at the foot of Mort-Homme. Before the great slaughter, Collin’d been an avid angler. On that day, he was standing at the hole, watching maggots swarm among blow flies on two boys that we couldn’t retrieve for burial without putting our own lives at risk. And there, at the loop hole, he thought of his bamboo rods, his flies and the new reel he hadn’t even tried out yet. Collin was imaging himself on the riverbank, wine cooling in the current his stash of worms in a little metal box and a maggot on his hook, writhing like… Holy shit. Were the corpses getting to him? Collin. The poor guy didn’t even have time to sort out his thoughts. In that split second, he was turned into a slab of bloody meat. A white hot hook drilled right through him and churned through his guts, which spilled out of a hole in his belly. He was cleared out of the first aid station. The major did triage. Stomach wounds weren’t worth the trouble. There were all going to die anyway, and besides, he wasn’t equipped to deal with them. Behind the aid station, next to a pile of wood crosses, there was a heap of body parts and shapeless, oozing human debris laid out on stretchers, stirred only be passing rats and clusters of large white maggots. But on their last run, the stretcher bearers carried him out after all… Old Collin was still alive. From the aid station to the ambulance and from the ambulance to the hospital, all he could remember was his fall into that pit, with maggots swarming over the open wound he had become from head to toe… Come to think of it, where was his head? And what about his feet? In the ambulance, the bumps were so awful and the pain so intense that it would have been a relief to pass out. But he didn’t. He was still alive, writhing on his hook. They carved up old Collin good. They fixed him as best they could, but his hands and legs were gone. So much for fishing. Later, they pinned a medal on him, right there in that putrid recovery room. And later still, they explained to him about gangrene and bandages packed with larvae that feed on death tissue. He owed them his life. From one amputation and operation to the next – thirty-eight in all – the docs finally got him “back on his feet”. But by then, the war was long over.
Jacques Tardi (Goddamn This War!)
Sidney was a tall, slender man in his early thirties. A lover of warm beer and hot jazz, a keen cricketer and an avid reader, he was known for his understated clerical elegance. His high forehead, aquiline nose and longish chin were softened by nut-brown eyes and a gentle smile, one that suggested he was always prepared to think the best of people.
James Runcie (Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death)
An avid collector of Old West memorabilia, Walter Brennan remained ensconced in a vision of the American frontier and the myth of bootstrap individualism. As early as 1962, he was deploring the image of America that Hollywood sent abroad with pictures such as West Side Story. “Why don’t we make more pictures like How the West Was Won, The Alamo, The Best Years of Our Lives, and The Westerner?” he asked journalist Jean Bosquet of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Brennan did not seem to realize that in his portrayal of Judge Roy Bean, a character whose mentality borders on a kind of homegrown fascism, he had conveyed the impression of a lawless West.
Carl Rollyson (A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan (Hollywood Legends))
youngest child entered first grade. During the next few years, she joined Romance Writers of America, learned a few things about writing a book, and decided the process was way more fun than analyzing financial statements. Melinda’s debut novel, She Can Run, was nominated for Best First Novel by the International Thriller Writers. Melinda’s bestselling books have garnered three Daphne du Maurier Award nominations and a Golden Leaf Award. When she isn’t writing, she is an avid martial artist: she holds a second-degree black belt in Kenpo karate and teaches women’s self-defense. She lives in a messy house with her husband, two teenagers, a couple
Melinda Leigh (Tracks of Her Tears (Rogue Winter, #1))
identify your employee adjectives, (2) recruit through proper advertising, (3) identify winning personalities, and (4) select your winners. Step One: Identify Your Employee Adjectives When you think of your favorite employees in the past, what comes to mind? A procedural element such as an organized workstation, neat paperwork, or promptness? No. What makes an employee memorable is her attitude and smile, the way she takes the time to make sure a customer is happy, the extra mile she goes to ensure orders are fulfilled and problems are solved. Her intrinsic qualities—her energy, sense of humor, eagerness, and contributions to the team—are the qualities you remember. Rather than relying on job descriptions that simply quantify various positions’ duties and correlating them with matching experience as a tool for identifying and hiring great employees, I use a more holistic approach. The first step in the process is selecting eight adjectives that best define the personality ideal for each job or role in your business. This is a critical step: it gives you new visions and goals for your own management objectives, new ways to measure employee success, and new ways to assess the performance of your own business. Create a “Job Candidate Profile” for every job position in your business. Each Job Candidate Profile should contain eight single- and multiple-word phrases of defining adjectives that clearly describe the perfect employee for each job position. Consider employee-to-customer personality traits, colleague-to-colleague traits, and employee-to-manager traits when making up the list. For example, an accounting manager might be described with adjectives such as “accurate,” “patient,” “detailed,” and “consistent.” A cocktail server for a nightclub or casual restaurant would likely be described with adjectives like “energetic,” “fun,” “music-loving,” “sports-loving,” “good-humored,” “sociable conversationalist,” “adventurous,” and so on. Obviously, the adjectives for front-of-house staff and back-of-house staff (normally unseen by guests) will be quite different. Below is one generic example of a Job Candidate Profile. Your lists should be tailored for your particular bar concept, audience, location, and style of business (high-end, casual, neighborhood, tourist, and so on). BARTENDER Energetic Extroverted/Conversational Very Likable (first impression) Hospitable, demonstrates a Great Service Attitude Sports Loving Cooperative, Team Player Quality Orientated Attentive, Good Listening Skills SAMPLE ADJECTIVES Amazing Ambitious Appealing Ardent Astounding Avid Awesome Buoyant Committed Courageous Creative Dazzling Dedicated Delightful Distinctive Diverse Dynamic Eager Energetic Engaging Entertaining Enthusiastic Entrepreneurial Exceptional Exciting Fervent Flexible Friendly Genuine High-Energy Imaginative Impressive Independent Ingenious Keen Lively Magnificent Motivating Outstanding Passionate Positive Proactive Remarkable Resourceful Responsive Spirited Supportive Upbeat Vibrant Warm Zealous Step Two: Recruit through Proper Advertising The next step is to develop print or online advertising copy that will attract the personalities you’ve just defined.
Jon Taffer (Raise the Bar: An Action-Based Method for Maximum Customer Reactions)
Let any man offer them some little thing of no real value, but which looks a little more like freedom, and they catch at it with avidity, and would sacrifice their best friends without hesitation and without regret.
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration)
He had a good healthy sense of meum, and as little of tuum as he could help. Brought up much in the open air in one of the best situated and healthiest villages in England, his little limbs had fair play, and in those days children’s brains were not overtasked as they now are; perhaps it was for this very reason that the boy showed an avidity to learn. At seven or eight years old he could read, write and sum better than any other boy of his age in the village. My
Samuel Butler (Complete Works of Samuel Butler)
The variety of political positions shared on Facebook in the 2016 Presidential Election was both entertaining and, sadly, destructive. I observed friends of a lifetime divide into different camps and sacrifice their friendships through argument and debate. As an avid reader and political junkie, I had to hold myself back from expressing my opinions or presenting factual evidence which would obliterate others’ claims. Why would I jump into the fray? All it would do is hurt the friendship. Rarely does arguing political positions change an opinion or belief.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Connection: 8 Ways to Enrich Rapport & Kinship for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #6))
In the years before Stanley Kubrick became Stanley Kubrick, the man had been a photographer by trade as well as an avid student of film. He had made two small feature films, almost completely by himself, with the second, Killer’s Kiss, being the more notable and successful. It was a small film but its tone and style, especially done on a self-financed shoestring budget, caught the eye of United Artists. The best thing to come from that film was that UA told Kubrick that when he came up with something else, they’d like to take a look at it. Alexander Singer, who later
Lionel White (The Snatchers / Clean Break (The Killing))
The platform’s recommendation systems were still in their infancy, but the dissonance between users’ vocal disapproval and avid usage led to an inescapable conclusion inside the company: regular people’s opinions about Facebook’s mechanics were best ignored. Users screamed “stop,” Facebook kept going, and everything would work out dandy.
Jeff Horwitz (Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets)
in Death, 2007 (In Death,
Avid Reader (J.D. Robb - Eve Dallas In Death Series updated 2017 in reading order with Summaries and Checklist: Eve Dallas In Death Series listed in best reading order ... Includes Echoes in Death & Secrets in Death)
Dinner? Oooh. I do so love a man who likes to eat.” She winked. He fought a blush. Him. A blush. What the hell? “Shouldn’t you return to your friends?” Before he did something crazy like invite her back to his place for dessert. “They can wait while I have dinner with my Pookie. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be rude on our first date.” “This is not a date.” “And yet, there’s you, me, and food!” She clapped as she exclaimed the last word, probably because the server arrived bearing a massive platter laden with a ridiculously large steak and all the fixings. Before he’d finished saying thank you to Claude for being so prompt with his meal, she’d sawed off a piece of his porterhouse and popped it in her mouth. As she chewed, eyes closed, she made happy noises. Noises that should not be allowed in public. Noise she should make only while he touched her. Noises that made him snap, “Do you mind? This is my supper.” “Sorry, Pookie. That was so rude of me. Here, have a bite.” The next piece of steak she cut she offered on the tines of her fork, a fork that had touched her lips. Refuse. We don’t share. We— He devoured it, the bite an absolute delight. Juicy, a slight hint of salt and garlic, butter-soft to chew. His turn to sigh. “Damn, that’s good.” “Make that noise again,” she growled. He glanced at her and noticed she stared at his mouth, avidly. Hungrily… It was both flattering and disturbing. He needed to stop this. Right now. “If you don’t mind, I would prefer to eat alone.” “Alone?” “Yes, alone. While I am complimented by your interest in me, I’m afraid you’re mistaken about everything else. We are not on a date. We are not mates. We are nothing. Zilch. Nada.” No point in sugarcoating it. Best to lay it all out now before she got any further with this crazy idea they belonged together. But we do belong to her. Leo ignored his inner feline as he waited for her outburst. Women never took rejection well. Either they resorted to tears and wailing, or they resorted to screaming and ranting. But honesty was best. However, Meena didn’t react as expected. Her lips stretched into a full grin, her eyes sparkled, and she leaned forward— pressing her breasts together, causing her neckline to droop and give him a peek at the shadowy valley they created. “Resistance is futile. But cute. Think of me later when you’re masturbating, I know I’ll be thinking of you.” With a last stolen bite of his dinner, she popped up from her seat and sashayed to the bar. Don’t look. Don’t look. Pfft. He was a cat. Of course he looked, and admired the hypnotic swish of her ass.
Eve Langlais (When an Omega Snaps (A Lion's Pride, #3))
...I stayed up all night reading [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions] with demented avidity to the final page, my empirical understanding of the world undone by Kuhn's argument that scientific theories are in essence evolutionarily selected stories, that is fictions that best fit the available facts—until the discovery of new facts forces a paradigm shift to a different and better fiction. More than that, he argues that scientist who embrace a new paradigm at an early stage—before sufficient evidence has been amassed to trigger a scientific revolution—do so not out of a sober consideration of the available facts, or at least not only that, but also with a subjective, irrational, from-the-gut leap of faith.
Kate Harris
Regarding books - specifically their life-enhancing capacity and their ability to build bridges between yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the inner and outer life, the real and the ideal, and the body and the mind - Hesse became an evangelist of a secular spirit, which nevertheless still had a transcendental spark in it, and which in his own finite existence touched upon a little piece of immortality, He was not concerned with reality but with the mystery of life, which consisted at one and the same time of nature and spirit. This inherent contradiction culminated, at best, in the growth of civilization, at worst in barbarism. It was necessary to look the danger of the self-destruction of the individual and of the while squarely in the face; such a danger was part and parcel of the claim to truth. That was why this could not be achieved simply through avid reading - the decisive factor was always real life.
Gunnar Decker (Hesse: The Wanderer and His Shadow)
In 1991, while looking forward to his retirement and planning to open a school for underprivileged children, he started writing down his memoirs. He had always written poetry and was an avid reader from his days as a student in Madras. The book he wrote began with his childhood days and ended somewhere after the launch of Agni. Called Wings of Fire,
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (The Righteous Life: The Very Best of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam)
Even the most avid technocrat must occasionally escape from virtual space, and what better place to do it than the kitchen, with all its dangerous knives and delicious aromas?
Ruth Reichl (The Best American Food Writing 2018)
McNamara, Bundy (who had been too powerful for Pusey at Harvard), Rostow, Arthur Schlesinger, Sargent Shriver. Did they need a Texan? Everyone who met Bill Moyers came away impressed—a Kennedy-style Texan, with perhaps too much of the Bible in him, but that would change. A general? They had Maxwell Taylor, a good general, soldier-statesman, an intellectual who read books avidly and had even written one. They said he had resigned in the Eisenhower years in protest against the archaic defense policies, but they were wrong—he had not resigned, he had retired after serving the full four years, and then he had written his book. But the book was so critical that it seemed as if he had resigned—a small but very important difference which went unnoticed at the time. Still, he was their general; if Harvard produced generals it would have produced Max Taylor
David Halberstam (The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library))
He followed the Denver teams, and was an avid Rockies fan. He thought baseball was a smart game, played more or less according to rules. Football, by contrast, seemed like chaos, with victory often being decided by penalties for breaking rules that were subjective and poorly administered. It was as if the government was in charge of football, with all of its bickering and clowning, while baseball was run by the best fourth-grade teacher you ever had, the one who ensured that everyone played by the rules or not at all, and if you weren’t polite, there were consequences. He wasn’t sure where basketball fit in.
Ted Clifton (Santa Fe Mojo (Vincent Malone #1))
A good father provides shelter—physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. If you’re a wise father who loves your children, you will shelter them. You will protect them. You will shield them. You will filter the world for them. You will do your best to know what and who is influencing them, even if it means inconvenience to you or feeling like you’re the only parent on the block who might care.
Brant Hansen (The Men We Need: God’s Purpose for the Manly Man, the Avid Indoorsman, or Any Man Willing to Show Up (Christian Book on Masculinity & Gift Idea for Father's Day or Graduation Gift for Him))
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, the avid naturalist and artist, was best known for painting North America’s birds, and compiling those pieces into a seminal ornithological tome. But he was also responsible for seeding a centuries-long falsehood about birds through some truly abysmal experiments involving vultures.
Ed Yong (An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us)