In Inverse Proportion Quotes

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My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
Michael J. Fox
I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It strikes me that the power or capability of a man in getting rich is in inverse proportion to his reflective powers and in direct proportion to his impudence.
Paul Spencer Sochaczewski (An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles: Campfire Conversations with Alfred Russell Wallace)
Researchers from Britain's Keele University have found that swearing after an injury may help alleviate pain. Evidently, the pain that you feel is inversely proportional to the number of middle names you give Jesus.
Stephen Colbert
Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions, inside the walls of a hospital... Doubt is like dye. Once is spreads into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.
Jodi Picoult (Lone Wolf)
One of the biggest problems with people who think that they are smart is that they believe that the number of times they admit that they are wrong is inversely proportional to their intellectual level.
Daniel Willey
I seem to grow more acutely conscious of the swift passage of time as I grow older. When I was small, days and hours were long and spacious, and there was play and acres of leisure, and many children's books to read. I remember that as I was writing a poem on "Snow" when I was eight. I said aloud, "I wish I could have the ability to write down the feelings I have now while I'm still little, because when I grow up I will know how to write, but I will have forgotten what being little feels like." And so it is that childlike sensitivity to new experiences and sensations seems to diminish in an inverse proportion to growth of technical ability. As we become polished, so do we become hardened and guilty of accepting eating, sleeping, seeing, and hearing too easily and lazily, without question. We become blunt and callous and blissfully passive as each day adds another drop to the stagnant well of our years.
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
Girls possess sexual tact in inverse proportion to their standard of education.
John Fowles (The Magus)
Quantitatively speaking, 'conversation' is inversely proportional to economic standing. If you are traveling in a bus, your fellow passengers will get into a conversation with you very quickly and without any reservation. If you are traveling by first class on a train, people will be more reserved. If you are traveling by air, then the likely hood of getting into a conversation is quite small. If you are in first class on an international flight then you may travel 24 hours without exchanging a single word with the person sitting next to you.
Sudha Murty (Wise and Otherwise)
The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it.” – Chloe Traeger
Jill Shalvis (Head Over Heels (Lucky Harbor, #3))
Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions.
Jodi Picoult (Lone Wolf)
The chances of seeing an idea through to completion are inversely proportional to the time you’ve spent talking about it beforehand.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint
I sometimes think that the size of our happiness is inversely proportional to the size of our house.
Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)
In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectation.
Michael J. Fox (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned)
There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.
Annie Dillard (The Writing Life)
Like other women who sought equality, the amount of trouble I cause is inversely proportional to my physical size.
Cassandra Duffy
Most of his problems stemmed from the fact that people seemed to think size and intelligence were inversely proportional.
V.E. Schwab (Vicious (Villains, #1))
All my life I have been the sort of person in whom people confide. And all my life I have been flattered by this role - grateful for the frisson of importance that comes with receiving important information. In recent years, however, I have noticed that my gratification is becoming diluted by a certain weary indignation. They tell me because they regard me as safe. All of them, they make their disclosures to me in the same spirit that they might tell a castrato or a priest - with a sense that I am so outside the loop, so remote from the doings of the great world, as to be defused of any possible threat. The number of secrets I receive is in inverse proportion to the number of secrets anyone expects me to have of my own. And this is the real source of my dismay. Being told secrets is not - never has been - a sign that I belong or that I matter. It is quite the opposite: confirmation of my irrelevance.
Zoë Heller (What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal])
The elegance of a mathematical theorem is directly proportional to the number of independent ideas one can see in the theorem and inversely proportional to the effort it takes to see them.
George Pólya (Mathematical Discovery on Understanding, Learning, and Teaching Problem Solving, Volume I)
This by the way is known as Werther’s Axiom, whereby quote The Intensity of a desire D is inversely proportional to the ease of D’s gratification. Known also as Romance.
David Foster Wallace (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men)
The number of secrets I receive is in inverse proportion to the number of secrets anyone expects me to have of my own. And this is the real source of my dismay. Being told secrets is not - never has been - a sign that I belong or that I matter. It is quite the opposite: confirmation of my irrelevance.
Zoë Heller (What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal])
Proverbs for Paranoids: 1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures. 2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master. 3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. 4. You hide, they seek. 5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
Deluded or not, it's still a lucky way to live. Even though it's temporary. It may well be that the lower-ranked little kids at E.T.A. are proportionally happier than the higher-ranked kids, since we (who are mostly not small children) know it's more invigorating to want than to have, it seems. Though maybe this is just the inverse of the same delusion.
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
Being in a hurry is inversely proportional to quality of
Héctor García (Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life)
The Humanity of men and women is inversely proportional to their Numbers. A Crowd is no more human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind. A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals.
Aldous Huxley
It may well be that an analysis of figures would reveal a law - the duration of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding. Or, to put it another way, any union celebrated with personalized toasting flutes is doomed.
Michael Foley (The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy)
Pour lui, il y avait deux bénédictions dans la vie : les livres et les amis, qu'il fallait posséder en proportions inverses. Des livres en grand nombre mais seulement une poignée d'amis.
Elif Shafak (The Architect's Apprentice)
The effectiveness of your persona is inversely proportional to what people know about you.
Brenna Yovanoff (Places No One Knows)
The degree of our intellectual growth is inversely proportional to the number of people with whom we are still close friends.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I sometimes think that the size of our happiness is inversely proportional to the size of our house.’ She
Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)
The Sufis have said: ‘The importance of something is in inverse proportion to its attractiveness.
Idries Shah (Seeker After Truth: A Handbook)
The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
Ann Beattie
The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.
Eric Hoffer (Reflections on the Human Condition)
Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available
Gregory Benford (Timescape)
Without trust, communication breaks. Here’s why: In any human interaction the required amount of community is inversely proportional to the level of trust.
Ben Horowitz (What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture)
There's a superstition among falconers that a hawk's ability is inversely proportional to the ferocity of its name. Call a hawk Tiddles and it will be a formidable hunter; call it Spitfire or Slayer and it will probably refuse to fly at all.
Helen Macdonald (H is for Hawk)
There is a certain degree and tone of light which tends to disturb the equilibrium of the senses, and to promote dangerously the tenderer moods; added to movement, it drives the emotions to rankness, the reason becoming sleepy and unperceiving in inverse proportion; and this light fell now upon these two from the disc of the moon. All the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but Eustacia most of all.
Thomas Hardy (The Return of the Native)
The degree of the pain will be proportional to the price you will be able to charge (more on this in the Value Equation chapter). When they hear the solution to their pain, and inversely, what their life would look like without this pain, they should be drawn to your solution. I have a saying I use to train sales teams “The pain is the pitch.” If you can articulate the pain a prospect is feeling accurately, they will almost always buy what you are offering. A prospect must have a painful problem for us to solve and charge money for our solution.
Alex Hormozi ($100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No (Acquisition.com $100M Series Book 1))
the degree of insult is inversely proportional to the size of the entity causing it.
Shubha Vilas (Rise of the Sun Prince (Ramayana: The Game of Life, #1))
The size of our happiness is inversely proportional to the size of our house.
Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)
He’s a man; the sum on his pay check is inversely proportional to his intellect.
Ronald Simonar (Posttraumatic)
the Law of Controversy: Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.
Gregory Benford (Timescape: A Novel)
Happiness, as a rule, is inversely proportional to intellect.
Sunil Raina
The distance between your Dreams and Reality is inversely proportional to your Efforts.
Vineet Raj Kapoor
Man's ability to think rationally when self-interest was at stake was inversely proportional to intelligence. - Aune
Jo Nesbø (The Devil's Star (Harry Hole, #5))
How attractive a man is is inversely proportional to how needy he is. The more needy in his life, the less attractive and vice-versa.
Mark Manson (Models: Attract Women Through Honesty)
Proverbs for Paranoids, 2: The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)
Proverbs for Paranoids, 2: The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.
Thomas Pynchon
my veneration of her grew in inverse proportion to my self-respect
André Gide (The Immoralist)
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. —Michael J. Fox
Colleen Saidman Yee (Yoga for Life: A Journey to Inner Peace and Freedom)
I wish I could have the ability to write down the feelings I have now while I'm still little, because when I grow up I will know how to write, but I will have forgotten what being little feels like." And so it is that childlike sensitivity to new experiences and sensations seems to diminish in an inverse proportion to the growth of technical ability. As we become polished, so do we become hardened and guilty of accepting eating, sleeping, seeing, and hearing too easily and lazily, without question. We become blunt and callous and blissfully passive as each day adds another drop to the stagnant well of our years.
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
the moral is perhaps that intellect and being well-read have no innate value to a contented or useful life. The number of hardbacks on your bedside table is in inverse proportion to the number of arched backs in your bed.
A.A. Gill
The efficiency of a hierarchy is inversely proportional to its Maturity Quotient, M.Q.    MQ = No. of employees at level of incompetence × 100 Total no. of employees in hierarchy    Obviously, when MQ reaches 100, no useful work will be accomplished at all.
Laurence J. Peter (The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong)
A society’s self-reliance is usually in inverse proportion to its reverence for the state. In some inexplicable way, the Adivasi of the deep forest showed his disdain for the sahib by wearing less; the threshold of shame increased as one neared the towns where he showed less of himself.
Madhu Ramnath (Woodsmoke and Leafcups: Autobiographical Footnotes to the Anthropology of the Durwa People)
I seem to grow more acutely conscious of the swift passage of time as I grow older. When I was small, days and hours were long and spacious, and there was play and acres of leisure, and many children's books to read. I remember that as I was writing a poem on "Snow" when I was eight. I said aloud, "I wish I could have the ability to write down the feelings I have now while I'm still little, because when I grow up I will know how to write, but I will have forgotten what being little feels like." And so it is that childlike sensitivity to new experiences and sensations seems to diminish in an inverse proportion to the growth of technical ability. As we become polished, so do we become hardened and guilty of accepting eating, sleeping, seeing, and hearing too easily and lazily, without question. We become blunt and callous and blissfully passive as each day adds another drop to the stagnant well of our years.
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
...that’s where love is revealed: in abandoning the outcome, casting the self aside, inviting the consequences that will come. Even if the love we offer to others is not received – which may be the definition of loneliness – that doesn’t mean it ceases to exist, because real love ignores the cost, braves the darkness, lights the way. The true measure of the love within the human heart is inversely proportional to the price one is willing to pay to express it.
Jenna Brooks
In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the Method of approximating series & the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Binomial into such a series. The same year in May I found the method of Tangents of Gregory & Slusius, & in November had the direct method of fluxions & the next year in January had the Theory of Colours & in May following I had entrance into ye inverse method of fluxions. And the same year I began to think of gravity extending to ye orb of the Moon & (having found out how to estimate the force with wch [a] globe revolving within a sphere presses the surface of the sphere) from Kepler's rule of the periodic times of the Planets being in sesquialterate proportion of their distances from the center of their Orbs, I deduced that the forces wch keep the Planets in their Orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about wch they revolve: & thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her Orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, & found them answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two plague years of 1665-1666. For in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention & minded Mathematicks & Philosophy more then than at any time since.
Isaac Newton
Once again, it seemed, I was discovering the truth of the rule, a rule I'd never explicitly formulated to myself, but whose veracity I'd quite often sensed in a vague sort of way, which was that the chances of seeing an idea through to completion are inversely proportional to the time you've spent talking about it beforehand.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint (Television)
It is in vain that mirrors are banished from the convent, women are conscious of their faces; now, girls who are conscious of their beauty do not easily become nuns; the vocation being voluntary in inverse proportion to their good looks, more is to be hoped from the ugly than from the pretty. Hence a lively taste for plain girls.
Victor Hugo (Complete Works of Victor Hugo)
Cuteness and kindness are often inversely proportional in people.
Daria Snadowsky (Anatomy of a Single Girl (Anatomy, #2))
The idea that athleticism was suddenly inversely proportional to intellect was never a cause of bigotry, but rather a result of it.
David Epstein (The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance)
The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable)
You can predict which features in any new technology will be used and which won't. The use of a feature is inversely proportional to the amount of interaction needed to control
Alan Cooper (The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity)
Intelligence and the need to follow are inversely proportional; the more intelligence the less is the need.
Omar Cherif
Patience is inversely proportional to the distance from the front of the queue.
John Day
Learning and hunger both are inversely proportional to each other. The more excited you are about learning, the less hunger you feel.
Shivam Chaudhary (An Intellectual ( Part 1 ))
Freedom isn't a static point. It's a moving point on a spectrum from absolute to none at all, and is usually inversely proportional to safety.
M.L. Baldauf
I will not say that the average forethought of a community is inversely proportional to the rate of interest, though this is a view that might be upheld.
Bertrand Russell (In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays)
Intelligence is inversely proportional (contrary) to tongue, more the intelligence, less you speak and less the intelligence, more you speak.
Shahid Iqbal
The degree to which something qualifies as bullshit is inversely proportional to the degree to which the claim is based on truth, genuine evidence, and/or established knowledge.
John V. Petrocelli (The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit)
And so it is that childlike sensitivity to new experiences and sensations seems to diminish in an inverse proportion to the growth of technical ability.
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
The index of punditry in a society is inversely proportional to its intellectual solvency... When people choose overheated opinions over cold facts, the social order reverts to moronocracy.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Labyrinth of the Spirits)
people who aren’t marginalized love appointing themselves the authenticity police of those who are, often with a passion and confidence that’s inversely proportional to their actual knowledge.
Sarah Kurchak (I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir)
In their articles and on the air, political journalists loved including local color (meat on a stick at the state fair, polka bands, caucuses held in a gun shop or grain elevator) in inverse proportions to how much they'd disdain such spectacles in their actual lives, off the job. A reporter had once told me that if she was getting dinner on her own on the road, she would choose a restaurant by googling the zip code and kale salad.
Curtis Sittenfeld (Rodham)
What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others? And I’m not referring to the false servitude that high-ranking state-employed flunkeys exhibit so proudly, as if it were a badge of virtue: the façade of humility they wear is nothing more than vanity and disdain. Cloaked every morning in the ostentatious modesty of the high-ranking civil servant, Etienne de Broglie convinced me long ago of the pride of his caste. Inversely, privilege brings with it true obligations. If you belong to the closed inner sanctum of the elite, you must serve in equal proportion to the glory and ease of material existence you derive from belonging to that inner sanctum.
Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
That her will and wishes had opposed my own just a little more. This by the way is known as Werther's Axiom, whereby quote the intensity of a desire D is inversely proportional to the ease of D's gratification. Known also as Romance.
David Foster Wallace (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men)
What is this law of gravitation? It is that every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force which for any two bodies is proportional to the mass of each and varies inversely as the square of the distance between them.
Richard P. Feynman (Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher)
What a sight! This infinitely proceeding division of society into the most manifold races opposed to one another by petty antipathies, uneasy consciences and brutal mediocrity, and which, precisely because of their reciprocal ambiguous and distrustful attitude, are all, without exception although with various formalities, treated by their rulers as conceded existences. And they must recognize and acknowledge as a concession of heaven the very fact that they are mastered, ruled, possessed! And on the other side are the rulers themselves, whose greatness is in inverse proportion to their number! Criticism dealing with this content is criticism in a hand-to-hand fight, and in such a fight the point is not whether the opponent is a noble, equal, interesting opponent, the point is to strike him. The point is not to let the Germans have a minute for self-deception and resignation. The actual pressure must be made more pressing by adding to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made more shameful by publicizing it.
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
But wait,” he said. “Let’s suppose it returns by advanced waves—reactions backward in time—so it comes back at the right time. We saw the effect varied inversely as the square of the distance, but suppose there are a lot of electrons, all over space: the number is proportional to the square of the distance. So maybe we can make it all compensate.
Richard P. Feynman (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character)
Sayre’s law, named after political scientist Wallace Sayre, offers that in any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake. A related concept is Parkinson’s law of triviality, named after naval historian Cyril Parkinson, which states that organizations tend to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.
Gabriel Weinberg (Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models)
When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man…. It is an odd fact that subjective certainty is inversely proportional to objective certainty. The less reason a man has to suppose himself in the right, the more vehemently he asserts that there is no doubt whatever that he is exactly right.
Skeptical Essays by Bertrand Russell
Lying there now he was all-in-all content. On the other hand-- and Brymmer had a headful of Other Hands (always reaching into the cookie jar and stealing all the Mallomars)--on that other hand, he was perfectly aware that contentment always existed in direct inverse proportion to his lack of expectation. Expecting nothing, Brymmer was content. It was only on the rare, blighted occasions when hope sprung, infernal, that Brymmer knew despair.
Walt Cody (Manhattan Roulette)
That’s just the way life is. It can be exquisite, cruel, frequently wacky, but above all utterly, utterly random. Those twin imposters in the bell-fringed jester hats, Justice and Fairness—they aren’t constants of the natural order like entropy or the periodic table. They’re completely alien notions to the way things happen out there in the human rain forest. Justice and Fairness are the things we’re supposed to contribute back to the world for giving us the gift of life—not birthrights we should expect and demand every second of the day. What do you say we drop the intellectual cowardice? There is no fate, and there is no safety net. I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. I believe in God. But he’s not a micromanager, so stop asking Him to drop the crisis in Rwanda and help you find your wallet. Life is a long, lonely journey down a day-in-day-out lard-trail of dropped tacos. Mop it up, not for yourself, but for the guy behind you who’s too busy trying not to drop his own tacos to make sure he doesn’t slip and fall on your mistakes. So don’t speed and weave in traffic; other people have babies in their cars. Don’t litter. Don’t begrudge the poor because they have a fucking food stamp. Don’t be rude to overwhelmed minimum-wage sales clerks, especially teenagers—they have that job because they don’t have a clue. You didn’t either at that age. Be understanding with them. Share your clues. Remember that your sense of humor is inversely proportional to your intolerance. Stop and think on Veterans Day. And don’t forget to vote. That is, unless you send money to TV preachers, have more than a passing interest in alien abduction or recentlypurchased a fish on a wall plaque that sings ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’ In that case, the polls are a scary place! Under every ballot box is a trapdoor chute to an extraterrestrial escape pod filled with dental tools and squeaking, masturbating little green men from the Devil Star. In conclusion, Class of Ninety-seven, keep your chins up, grab your mops and get in the game. You don’t have to make a pile of money or change society. Just clean up after yourselves without complaining. And, above all, please stop and appreciate the days when the tacos don’t fall, and give heartfelt thanks to whomever you pray to….
Tim Dorsey (Triggerfish Twist (Serge Storms, #4))
1. Trust. Without trust, communication breaks. More specifically: In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust. Consider the following: If I trust you completely, then I require no explanation or communication of your actions whatsoever, because I know that whatever you are doing is in my best interests. On the other hand, if I don’t trust you at all, then no amount of talking, explaining, or reasoning will have any effect on me, because I do not trust that you are telling me the truth. In a company context, this is a critical point. As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communication will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust. A CEO’s ability to build this trust over time is often the difference between companies that execute well and companies that are chaotic.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
The generalized theory of relativity has furnished still more remarkable results. This considers not only uniform but also accelerated motion. In particular, it is based on the impossibility of distinguishing an acceleration from the gravitation or other force which produces it. Three consequences of the theory may be mentioned of which two have been confirmed while the third is still on trial: (1) It gives a correct explanation of the residual motion of forty-three seconds of arc per century of the perihelion of Mercury. (2) It predicts the deviation which a ray of light from a star should experience on passing near a large gravitating body, the sun, namely, 1".7. On Newton's corpuscular theory this should be only half as great. As a result of the measurements of the photographs of the eclipse of 1921 the number found was much nearer to the prediction of Einstein, and was inversely proportional to the distance from the center of the sun, in further confirmation of the theory. (3) The theory predicts a displacement of the solar spectral lines, and it seems that this prediction is also verified.
Albert Abraham Michelson (Studies in Optics)
Following this rejection, and Sagan’s failure to secure tenure at Harvard, scientists developed a new term: the Sagan effect. One’s popularity with the general public was considered inversely proportional to the quantity and quality of one’s scientific work, a perception that, in Sagan’s case at least, was false. He published, on average, once monthly in peer-reviewed publications over the course of his thirty-nine-year career—a total of five hundred scientific papers. More recent research suggests that scientists who engage the public tend to be better academic performers as well.
Shawn Lawrence Otto (The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It)
Gilbert (1540–1603) published his great book on the magnet in 1600. Harvey (1578–1657) discovered the circulation of the blood, and published his discovery in 1628. Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) discovered spermatozoa, though another man, Stephen Hamm, had discovered them, apparently, a few months earlier; Leeuwenhoek also discovered protozoa or unicellular organisms, and even bacteria. Robert Boyle (1627–91) was, as children were taught when I was young, 'the father of chemistry and son of the Earl of Cork'; he is now chiefly remembered on account of 'Boyle's Law', that in a given quantity of gas at a given temperature, pressure is inversely proportional to volume.
Bertrand Russell (A History of Western Philosophy)
Umpires suffer from a tremendously low level of self-esteem, too, by virtue of the fact that they are umpires. As such, you should look to engage in light-hearted horseplay with them at all times. Negging him about the amount of sunscreen he’s wearing — which is always inversely proportional to his decision-making ability — is a good place to start. Like all of us, all they really want is to be loved. So your missus still doesn’t understand why you spend your whole weekend playing cricket? Imagine how an umpire’s girlfriend must feel. Seriously, imagine being an umpire’s girlfriend. He’d rather officiate a shit game of cricket than spend a gorgeous Saturday afternoon with you.
Sam Perry (The Grade Cricketer)
Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone;—but to spend the whole day thus would be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intellectual capacity. For
Arthur Schopenhauer (The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims)
Electromagnetism is the force that causes the interaction of electrically charged particles in our world, which takes place in an electrically charged field. Other than gravity, nothing affects our existence more than electromagnetism. Electric fields, electric currents, generators, motors, batteries, transformers, magnetic fields, magnets, and the magnetosphere that surrounds the Earth are all forms of electromagnetism. It’s the force responsible for holding electrons and protons together in atoms, so it’s a building block for molecules and all life as we know it. If there’s one constant relationship in paranormal research it’s the connection between EMF and spirits, either intelligent or residual. Almost every time paranormal activity happens, there is an increase in EMF, so it’s imperative that we understand how it works with spirits and their energy. The leading theory is that ghosts emit electromagnetic energy and cause spikes in electromagnetic fields (EMF). The common belief is that they gather energy in and send EMF out. So there is a directly proportional relationship between spirits and EMF and a simultaneous inversely proportional relationship between spirits and available energy.
Zak Bagans (Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew)
The ten rules of ikigai We’ll conclude this journey with ten rules we’ve distilled from the wisdom of the long-living residents of Ogimi: Stay active; don’t retire. Those who give up the things they love doing and do well lose their purpose in life. That’s why it’s so important to keep doing things of value, making progress, bringing beauty or utility to others, helping out, and shaping the world around you, even after your “official” professional activity has ended. Take it slow. Being in a hurry is inversely proportional to quality of life. As the old saying goes, “Walk slowly and you’ll go far.” When we leave urgency behind, life and time take on new meaning. Don’t fill your stomach. Less is more when it comes to eating for long life, too. According to the 80 percent rule, in order to stay healthier longer, we should eat a little less than our hunger demands instead of stuffing ourselves. Surround yourself with good friends. Friends are the best medicine, there for confiding worries over a good chat, sharing stories that brighten your day, getting advice, having fun, dreaming . . . in other words, living. Get in shape for your next birthday. Water moves; it is at its best when it flows fresh and doesn’t stagnate. The body you move through life in needs a bit of daily maintenance to keep it running for a long time. Plus, exercise releases hormones that make us feel happy. Smile. A cheerful attitude is not only relaxing—it also helps make friends. It’s good to recognize the things that aren’t so great, but we should never forget what a privilege it is to be in the here and now in a world so full of possibilities. Reconnect with nature. Though most people live in cities these days, human beings are made to be part of the natural world. We should return to it often to recharge our batteries. Give thanks. To your ancestors, to nature, which provides you with the air you breathe and the food you eat, to your friends and family, to everything that brightens your days and makes you feel lucky to be alive. Spend a moment every day giving thanks, and you’ll watch your stockpile of happiness grow. Live in the moment. Stop regretting the past and fearing the future. Today is all you have. Make the most of it. Make it worth remembering. Follow your ikigai. There is a passion inside you, a unique talent that gives meaning to your days and drives you to share the best of yourself until the very end. If you don’t know what your ikigai is yet, as Viktor Frankl says, your mission is to discover it.
Héctor García (Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life)
Besides, these box-checking Christians having such a majority is largely in our favor. Their ubiquity is inversely proportional to their efficacy.
Geoffrey Wood
A lady’s capacity for forgiveness tends to be in inverse proportion to the freshness of the transgression.
P.B. Ryan (Death on Beacon Hill (Nell Sweeney Mysteries, #3))
enthusiasm for Communism in theory was characteristically present in inverse proportion to direct experience of it in practice.
Anonymous
Someone once said that the spiritual significance of something is in inverse proportion to the publicity surrounding it. A publicized event, like a parade, is more spectacular than it is significant. And that is true even if the parade is a religious one. “When you give to the needy,” Jesus said, “do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Ken Gire (Windows of the Soul: Hearing God in the Everyday Moments of Your Life)
Love and Loneliness inversely proportional to each other. Love increases then loneliness decreases from this world.
Anonymous
It is easy to see that the farther the sun is away, of all the possible directions in which particles can come, a smaller proportion of the particles are being taken out. The sun will appear smaller – in fact inversely as the square of the distance. Therefore there will be an impulse on the earth towards the sun that varies inversely as the square of the distance. And this will be a result of large numbers of very simple operations, just hits, one after the other, from all directions. Therefore the strangeness of the mathematical relation will be very much reduced, because the fundamental operation is much simpler than calculating the inverse of the square of the distance. This design, with the particles bouncing, does the calculation.
Anonymous
Call it Westhusing’s Theorem: In a democracy, the health of the military professional ethic is inversely proportional to the presence of hired auxiliaries on the battlefield. The pursuit of mammon and the values to which military professionals profess devotion are fundamentally incompatible and irreconcilable. Where profit-and-loss statements govern, devotion to duty, honor, and country inevitably takes a hit.
Andrew J. Bacevich (Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (American Empire Project))
Worker density (say, workers per thousand square feet) is inversely proportional to dedicated space per person.
Tom DeMarco (Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams)