Distinguishing Quotes

#1. The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

#2. RIDICULE, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them.

Ambrose Bierce

#3. As long as there are rich people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves from the poor.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#4. The sick person becomes very adept at distinguishing between compassion and pity. Compassion is someone else's suffering flaring in your own nerves. Pity is a projection of, a lament for, the self. All those people weeping in the mirror of your misery? Their tears are real, but they are not for you.

Christian Wiman

#5. If there be such a distinguishing excellency in divine things, tis rational to suppose that there may be such a thing as seeing it.

Jonathan Edwards

#6. The critic's first labor is the task of distinguishing between men, as history and their works display them, and the ideals which one and another have conspired to urge upon his acceptance.

Edmund Clarence Stedman

#7. Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.

Mary Shelley

#8. Ecofeminism is a good term for distinguishing a feminism that is ecological from the kind of feminisms that have become extremely technocratic. I would even call them very patriarchal.

Vandana Shiva

#9. I've got the Jewish guilt and the Irish shame and it's a hell of a job distinguishing which is which.

Kevin Kline

#10. Contentment is one of the most distinguishing traits of the godly person, because a godly person has his heart focused on God rather than on possessions or position or power.

Jerry Bridges

#11. Someday I hope to Love everyone - including my kids, husband, family, and friends - so very, very much more, and with so much depth, that there is no distinguishing Love from itself.

Kelly Corbet

#12. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.

Michael Crichton

#13. It should be quite clear, then, that there are no criteria to be laid down in general for distinguishing the real from the not real.

J.L. Austin

#14. However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.

Rollo May

#15. There is one further distinguishing characteristic of man which is very specific indeed and about which there can be no dispute, and that is the faculty of self-improvement - a faculty which, with the help of circumstance, progressively develops all our other faculties.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#16. If God eliminated evil by programming us to perform only good acts, we would lose this distinguishing mark - the ability to make choices. We would no longer be free moral agents. We would be reduced to the status of robots.

Billy Graham

#17. There always comes a point beyond which lying becomes counterproductive. This point is reached when the audience to which the lies are addressed is forced to disregard altogether the distinguishing line between truth and falsehood in order to be able to survive.

Hannah Arendt

#18. But as his years advanced Lewis had seen less and less purpose in distinguishing between fact and fiction.

Clive Barker

#19. The objective and merit of Einstein's theory is to identify those physical magnitudes which are absolute, i.e. common for all Inertial Frames, distinguishing them from those which are a mere perspective, only shared by those observers in repose within a given Inertial Frame.

Felix Alba-Juez

#20. I have said that one of the distinguishing characteristics of a great man is that his active intervention makes what seemed highly improbable in fact happen.

Isaiah Berlin

#21. The distinguishing characteristic of the techno-thriller is technical detail.

Edward M. Lerner

#22. The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity, and lust. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey.

William Ellery Channing

#23. The highest point of Christian experience is to press forward. It is a distinguishing trait in the character of every good man that he grows in grace. Grace in the heart as certainly improves and advances, as a tree thrives in a kindly and well watered soil.

Gardiner Spring

#24. Two characteristic marks have above all others been recognized as distinguishing that which has soul in it from that which has not - movement and sensation.

Aristotle.

#25. One must break with one's past to embrace one's future. It is never an easy thing to do. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics between survivors and victims. Letting go of what was, to survive what is. (Page 106)

Karen Marie Moning

#26. For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death.

James Frey

#27. The proper criterion for distinguishing "right" from "wrong" is not mysterious.It is embodied in the principles that advance the cause of the oppressed and exploited over the cause of those who live by oppression and exploitation.

Dhoruba Bin Wahad

#28. I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.

Nora Ephron

#29. Personal faintness, and an overpowering personal candour, were the distinguishing features of Mrs Billickin's organization. She came languishing out from her own exclusive back parlour, with the air of having been expressly brought-to for the purpose, from an accumulation of several swoons.

Charles Dickens

#30. Laws fixed, certain, and uniform, are said to be the distinguishing traits of civilized from savage communities. In these last, seldom are any laws, unless it be the arbitrary and uncertain will of the strongest.

Levi Woodbury

#31. The distinguishing mark of true adventures, is that it is often no fun at all while they are actually happening.

Kim Stanley

#32. Although men cannot become absolutely equal unless they be entirely free, and consequently equality, pushed to its furthest extent, may be confounded with freedom, yet there is good reason for distinguishing the one from the other.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#33. Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Ambrose Bierce

#34. People who are empathic definitely will have some difficulties distinguishing their own feelings from other people's feelings and they tend to take on other people's energies quite easily.

Doreen Virtue

#35. The longer she spent in America, the better she had become at distinguishing, sometimes from looks and gait, but mostly from bearing and demeanor, that fine-grained mark that culture stamps on people. (Chapter 17)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#36. If you look at eggs, you will see that each one is almost round but not quite ... Nature's way of distinguishing eggs from large golf balls.

Robert Benchley

#37. A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.

Alexandre Dumas

#38. I know that one of the distinguishing things was I looked like I could hold a gun, even though I'd never held one before and I'm physically able to do the martial arts and all that stuff.

Yvonne Strahovski

#39. A subplot is a distinguishing characteristic of the novel; the short story, for example, does not need subplots.

Darin Strauss

#40. I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters

Joan Didion

#41. I hate the word practice. Practice breeds inurement. Instead of discovering, of distinguishing traits that are deeply hidden or merely veiled, one ends seeing nothing anymore. One ceases to be aware.

Wanda Landowska

#42. Yet another thing Canadians and Europeans have in common is an obsession with the United States, and with distinguishing themselves from it, often by crude stereotyping.

Timothy Garton Ash

#43. Sometimes, Ms. Lane," he said, "one must break with one's past to embrace one's future. It is never an easy thing to do. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics between survivors and victims. Letting go of what was, to survive what is.

Karen Marie Moning

#44. The blood of the lamb applied over the doorpost on the night of Israel's deliverance from Egypt distinguished the obedient from the disobedient. Just so today the applied blood of the Lamb of God is the distinguishing mark of God's called out ones, the church ...

Billy Graham

#45. It is the distinguishing glory of Christianity not to rest satisfied with superficial appearances, but to rectify the motives, and purify the heart.

William Wilberforce

#46. The distinguishing mark of man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.

George Orwell

#47. Unlike societies that employed baroque procedures for distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate children, the Mongols accepted all children as equal. No child could be born without the consent of the Eternal Blue Sky. No earthly law or custom could presume to declare the child illegitimate.

Jack Weatherford

#48. As it is, we could not call mine a beautiful puss, but it does the job well enough, distinguishing the front of my head from the back.

Sue Grafton

#49. Distinguishing the first true birds from their feathered dinosaur relations has become increasingly difficult. If we define birds as warm-blooded, feathered, bipedal animals that lay eggs, then many coelurosaurs are birds, so we have to take another approach.

Brian Switek

#50. The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.

Blaise Pascal

#51. Traditional ways of distinguishing populations are irrelevant in terms of genetic code.

Craig Venter

#52. American ladies are known abroad for two distinguishing traits (besides, possibly, their beauty and self-reliance), and these are their ill-health and their extravagant devotion to dress.

Abba Louisa Goold Woolson

#53. Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge.

Nate Silver

#54. I need a teacher quite as much as Helen. I know the education of this child will be the distinguishing event of my life, if I have the brains and perseverance to accomplish it.

Anne Sullivan

#55. Honour's a sacred tie, the law of kings,
The noble mind's distinguishing perfection
That aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her
And imitates her actions where she is not:
It is not to be sported with.

Joseph Addison

#56. Surprise is a major factor in distinguishing an answer to prayer from a projection of my own mental processes. When I can't believe I made up the answer myself, I have to look around to see where it came from.

Pat Schneider

#57. Wisdom, which is the habit of distinguishing appearance from reality.)

Peter Kreeft

#58. Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.

Diogenes

#59. Not everyone can come and post on Forbes; it's a very distinguishing factor for us. We vet the folks who come on board.

Michael Perlis

#60. Perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others as well. It is such vision that attracts the psychic energy of other people, and makes them willing to work beyond the call of duty for the organization.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#61. There is no common standard for education about diagnosis. Distinguishing between bipolar depression and major depressive disorder, for example, can be difficult, and mistakes are common. Misdiagnosis can be lethal. Medications that work well for some forms of depression induce agitation in others.

Kay Redfield Jamison

#62. Circumstances give in reality to every political principle, its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

David Trimble

#63. the public entertainment of any period distinguishing the period as clearly as its so-called politics,

John Irving

#64. Vulgarism in language is the distinguishing characteristic of bad company, and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that. Proverbial expressions, and trite sayings, are the flowers of the rhetoric of vulgar man.

Lord Chesterfield

#65. Truth and sincerity have a certain distinguishing native lustre about them which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame, that cannot be painted.

Benjamin Franklin

#66. I'm not a network executive, but it seems to be a time when networks take more of a gamble with higher-concept shows. And so, it's fun to be on something that's original, that's finding viewership, that's finding a great audience, and really distinguishing itself. Summer's a great place to do that.

James Wolk

#67. People who do not succeed have one distinguishing trait in common. They know all the reasons for failure, and have what they believe to be air-tight alibis to explain away their own lack of achievement.

Napoleon Hill

#68. The most distinguishing element of my novels is that I try as hard as I can - within the context of a popular commercial thriller - to make them feel authentic. Drawing on real locations and real events is part of that authenticity.

Alex Berenson

#69. Folk music is not so much a body of art as it is a process, an attitude, and a way of life; its distinguishing features lie not within the songs themselves, but in the relations of those songs to a folk culture.

Sam Hinton

#70. Religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons. First, it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil.

Mabel Collins

#71. I had trouble distinguishing art from life. I don't now, and I feel much better!

Donald Fagen

#72. One of the most difficult tasks of visioneering is distinguishing between good ideas and God ideas.

Andy Stanley

#73. In a government whose distinguishing characteristic should be a diffusion and equalization of its benefits and burdens the advantage of individuals will be augmented at the expense of the community at large.

Martin Van Buren

#74. I see how the mammoth planet that terrifies me seems like a haven to him, a place where he can disappear into its great space, never distinguishing himself, and never being held responsible for his actions.

Veronica Roth

#75. One of the distinguishing features of anything that aspires to the name of science is the reproducibility of experimental results.

Matthew Stewart

#76. For me, the most important and distinguishing property of new media is interactivity. But how many people can actually create interactive games, animations, or simulations? Not very many. So, in my mind, very few people are truly literate with new media.

Mitchel Resnick

#77. Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing
characteristic.

Oscar Wilde

#78. Black met black on the distant horizon, the stars alone distinguishing sky from lake. On the sand below, Silver Beach glittered at the water's edge while on the north side of the river the lighthouse's beacon signaled safe harbor.

Erin Farwell

#79. Sometimes I have a hard time distinguishing between faith and hope.

Mary Szybist

#80. We have a media that presents every politician as being as bad as the next. There is no distinguishing between one good idea or another; no explanation of why constitutional change should be uppermost in the minds of the people I represent.

David Blunkett

#81. As I have heard it put, a critical thinker is good at distinguishing gold from bullshit

Howard Margolis

#82. The reason there was no name for such distant relatives was because sane people would have no interest in distinguishing them from anyone else. "Once

Greg Egan

#83. The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.

John Ruskin

#84. It is critical, therefore, in every new generation and setting to find ways to communicate the gospel clearly and strikingly, distinguishing it from its opposites and counterfeits.

Timothy Keller

#85. Laziness, I am afraid, was Charles's distinguishing trait.

John Fowles

#86. The strongest distinguishing characteristic of humans is their power of denial.

Deborah Harkness

#87. Is this the curse of modernity, to live in a world without judgment, without perspective, no context for understanding or distinguishing what is real and what is imagined, what is manipulated and what is by chance beautiful, what is shadow and what is flesh?

Terry Tempest Williams

#88. Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#89. Foresight has been a distinguishing characteristic of all truly great political, religious, and social betterment leaders.

John Mott

#90. The prosecutor have a problem distinguishing from megabits and megabytes.

Peter Sunde

#91. Jesus declared that we should have one distinguishing mark: not political correctness or moral superiority, but love.

Philip Yancey

#92. Every species, human and subhuman, has some distinguishing mark, so that you can tell a man from a beast, or a dog from a cow.

Mahatma Gandhi

#93. My distinguishing feature is the gap between my teeth. I had to wear a brace because my teeth used to stick out like guns from a fortress.

Jane Birkin

#94. Equality and justice, the two great distinguishing characteristics of democracy, follow inevitably from the conception of men, all men, as rational and spiritual beings.

Robert M. Hutchins

#95. I'm going to teach you the art of distinguishing between day and night. Always look at a window, and failing that look into the eyes of a man. If you see a face, any face, then you can be sure that night has succeeded day. For, believe me, night has a face." Then,

Elie Wiesel

#96. I wanted to separate color from race. Distinguishing color - light, black, in-between - as the marker for race is really an error.

Toni Morrison

#97. Nowhere in the Bible, however, do we find God distinguishing between levels of sin. God doesn't share our rating system. To him, all sin is equally evil, and all sinners are equally lovable.

Judah Smith

#98. Faith that saves has one distinguishing quality: saving faith is a faith that produces obedience; it is a faith that brings about a way of life.

Billy Graham

#99. From what I can tell, the chief distinguishing factor between children and adults is that children hear everything while appearing not to and adults hear nothing while pretending to listen.

Stephen McCauley

#100. Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.

Otto Weininger