Diverted Quotes

#1. Next to the ministry I know of no more noble profession than the law. The object aimed at is justice, equal and exact, and if it does not reach that end at once it is because the stream is diverted by selfishness or checked by ignorance. Its principles ennoble and its practice elevates.

William Jennings Bryan

#2. Every bit of capital, therefore, which is given to a shiftless and inefficient member of society, who makes no return for it, is diverted from a reproductive use; but

William Graham Sumner

#3. If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.

Blaise Pascal

#4. Virtue is nothing but an act of loving that which is to be beloved, and that act is prudence, from whence not to be removed by constraint is fortitude; not to be allured by enticements is temperance; not to be diverted by pride is justice.

Francis Quarles

#5. Both were diverted by life's young fumblings,
both saddened by the wisdom of time

Vladimir Nabokov

#6. When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted by what you wish to believe, but look only and surely at what are the facts.

Bertrand Russell

#7. The games enthralled the public and diverted their attentions from the Halo wars. And - unlike the arts - they could not be used as vehicles for subversion. For gamers like myself it was a near-utopian state of affairs. We were pampered and courted by the houses and made immensely rich.

Alastair Reynolds

#8. Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.

Bertrand Russell

#9. Slow down, take time, allow yourself to be wildly diverted from your plan. People are the soul of the place; don't forget to meet them and enjoy their company as you explore a place.

David DuChemin

#10. The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.

Emile Durkheim

#11. Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

Anita Brookner

#12. The important thing is never to let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries; to continue steadfastly on one's way without
letting oneself be either defeated by failure or diverted by applause.

Gustav Mahler

#13. The pretty fellows you speak of, I own entertain me sometimes, but is it impossible to be diverted with what one despises? I can laugh at a puppet show, at the same time I know there is nothing in it worth my attention or regard.

Mary Wortley Montagu

#14. Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn't matter what they were about. It didn't matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack - if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous.

Adam Johnson

#15. If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible.

Wilhelm Reich

#16. No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.

Kathe Kollwitz

#17. Learning chiefly in mathematical sciences can so swallow up and fix one's thought, as to possess it entirely for some time; but when that amusement is over, nature will return, and be where it was, being rather diverted than overcome by such speculations.

Gilbert Burnet

#18. We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all-that the wealth of individuals and of state is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization.

Margaret Sanger

#19. But the more an organization succeeds and prospers, the more it is likely to be diverted from its original ideals, principles and purposes.

Robert Shea

#20. Be careful to not haul around in our lives so many nice but unnecessary things that we are distracted and diverted from the things that truly matter most.

David A. Bednar

#21. For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy making arm of the government.

Harry S. Truman

#22. Women didn't want to watch other women on television because they were jealous of their husbands' diverted attention.

Jessica Savitch

#23. Money was evil, beauty vain, and both were transitory. Ambition was pride, desire for gain was avarice, desire of the flesh was lust, desire for honor, even for knowledge and beauty, was vainglory. Insofar as these diverted man from seeking the life of the spirit, they were sinful.

Barbara W. Tuchman

#24. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.

Bertrand Russell

#25. As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

Noam Chomsky

#26. Too often, attention is diverted from the needs of populations, insufficient emphasis is placed on work in the fields, and the goods of the earth are not given adequate protection. As a result, economic imbalance is produced, and the inalienable rights and dignity of every human person are ignored.

Pope Benedict XVI

#27. If the modern Protestant churches must maintain her place of relevance in the society, we would need to review where we missed it and how we have diverted from the teachings of the Protestants.

Sunday Adelaja

#28. Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

Samuel Johnson

#29. Media: Keep the adult public attention diverted away from the real social issues, and captivated by matters of no real importance.

Milton William Cooper

#30. Encourage your own curiosity; pursue the problems based on that. Don't get diverted by trying to do things for your own advancement. In other words, don't be lured into responding to incentives.

James Mirrlees

#31. Time spent in a casino is time given to death, a foretaste of the hour when one's flesh will be diverted to the purposes of the worm and not of the will.

Rebecca West

#32. Americans became so thoroughly democratic that much of the period's political activity, beginning with the Constitution, was diverted to finding means and devices to tame that democracy.

Gordon S. Wood

#33. Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

Samuel Johnson

#34. The eye is diverted from the real business, it is caught by the spectacular action that means nothing
nothing at all.

Agatha Christie

#35. Thanks to their decreased brainpower, people aren't diverted from the main business of life by the hobgoblins of opinion anymore.

Kurt Vonnegut

#36. When I start a new novel and find myself diverted by domestic activities, many of which I genuinely enjoy, I panic that I will never write another word.

Christina Baker Kline

#37. Most of the world's major waterways have been diverted or dammed or otherwise manipulated - in the United States, only two per cent of rivers run unimpeded - and people now use half the world's readily accessible freshwater runoff.

Elizabeth Kolbert

#38. Caravaggio was constantly diverted by the human element during burglaries. Breaking into a house during Christmas, he would become annoyed if the Advent calendar had not been opened up to the date to which it should have been.

Michael Ondaatje

#39. It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities - life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked.

Patrick Kavanagh

#40. Wherever you are or whatever your job, don't be confused or diverted by false priorities. We have only one mission to perform-that is to fight and win. And, we must do it better than anyone else in the world.

Leslie E. Brown

#41. Once severe depression has a hold, it is unshakeable until it has run its course or that course has been diverted by treatment.

Sally Brampton

#42. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

Abraham Lincoln

#43. Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.

Samuel Richardson

#44. I wouldn't say there isn't a direct path to a successful career. There are people who knew exactly what they wanted to do from a very young age, weren't going to be diverted, and then they just went out and achieved it.

Clayton M Christensen

#45. Personal matters have diverted attention away from the important work Sesame Street is doing, and I cannot allow it to go on any longer. I am deeply sorry to be leaving and am looking forward to resolving these personal matters privately.

Kevin Clash

#46. Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power and should not be at all your concerns.

Epictetus

#47. I don't know how you were diverted You were perverted too. I don't know how you were inverted No one alerted you.

George Harrison

#48. I am excessively diverted.

Jane Austen

#49. Human activity is having a major impact on the planet. We consume or have diverted a large proportion of the productivity of the land and oceans. Our hunger for land crowds out fellow species. Our waste products pollute the waters, warm the atmosphere and acidify the oceans.

Ian Goldin

#50. diverted him from the maternal side. If he did happen just now to be at home my solicitude would of course seem officious; for in his many wanderings - I believed

Henry James

#51. One discovers that destiny can be diverted, that one does not have to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities. Once the deforming mirror has been smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness. There is a possibility of joy.

Anais Nin

#52. When you decide to follow a certain path, you should follow it to the end and not be diverted from it for personal reasons.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#53. Thank God for my ADD. I would have killed myself along time ago, but I got bored of it when something else diverted me.

Jason Hartnett

#54. Asceticism in most cases is either the result of a sordid imagination or of passion diverted from its natural course, and experience has shown that when the protection of public morals is entrusted to its votaries, the consequences are usually appalling.

Rudolf Rocker

#55. Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.

J.B. Priestley

#56. Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, 12everybody will be wanting to manufacture law,

Frederic Bastiat

#57. You don't know what it means to live the life that you could have lived, if an event over which you have no control, an unforeseeable circumstance, had not distracted and diverted you, and at times crushed you, as has happened to me.

Luigi Pirandello

#58. Reason, on the contrary, assures us, that as in so great a number, a fit representative would be most likely to be found, so the choice would be less likely to be diverted from him, by the intrigues of the ambitious, or the bribes of the rich.

James Madison

#59. So many people are diverted to doing what people want photographed - fashion models, buildings, mountains - they get to thinking those photographs are good.

Rondal Partridge

#60. Through art they confuse us and blind us to our enslavement. Art adorns our prison walls, keeps us silent and diverted and indifferent.

Jim Morrison

#61. He who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.

John Calvin

#62. When in doubt, you face the possibility of deception.. when you are decieved, you face the possibility of diversion... when you are diverted, you face the possibility of disobedience...and these are the D's to every man's Defeat.

Hope D. Blackwell

#63. I feel like I need just to keep trying to make the work for the right reasons. I think part of that is working with really good people, and just trying to make strong truthful work. And not being diverted from that.

Cate Shortland

#64. The mind ought sometimes to be diverted that it may return to better thinking.

Phaedrus

#65. The mark of a certain kind of genius is the ability and energy to keep returning to the same task relentlessly, imaginatively, curiously, for a lifetime. Never give up and go on to something else; never get distracted and be diverted to something else.

Eugene H. Peterson

#66. As a digital technology writer, I have had more than one former student and colleague tell me about digital switchers they have serviced through which calls and data are diverted to government servers or the big data algorithms they've written to be used on our e-mails by intelligence agencies.

Douglas Rushkoff

#67. All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy. This couldn't be it. It had been diverted elsewhere, to somebody else, and he'd been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead

Lev Grossman

#68. The great attraction of fashion is that it diverted attention from the insoluble problems of beauty and provided an easy way
which money could buy ... to a simply stated, easily reproduced ideal of beauty, however temporary that ideal.

Theodore Zeldin

#69. As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose
that it may violate property instead of protecting it
then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.

Frederic Bastiat

#70. Pure love of God is our nature, but we are so much diverted, so much distracted by the externals that we've forgotten that it's our essence.

Radhanath Swami

#71. Don't try to talk anyone out of concentrating his hatred on Ayn Rand or any other dead person. It can't harm the dead. Diverted to a living person, it might actually do harm.

John McCarthy

#72. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.

Samuel Johnson

#73. Ah, but I'm not a gentleman," said the Marquis. "I have it on the best of authority that I am only a
nobleman."
"Good gracious, Vidal, who in the world dared to say such a thing?" cried his cousin, instantly
diverted.
"Mary," replied his lordship, pouring himself out a glass of wine.

Georgette Heyer

#74. The demons diverted its sights from me and swooped down on the yappy mutt.
Dogs aren't my thing.
I hate dogs. And if this one was dumb enough to sacrifice itself for me, hallelujah. I kept running.
After I reversed course.
Stupid dog.

A&E Kirk

#75. A lot of issues need to be swept under the carpet
and poof, along comes SARS. Whether or not its appearance was coordinated, up front, to coincide with these scandals and tragedies in Iraq, one thing is for sure. SARS has been used as a smokescreen to keep the global public diverted and in fear.

Jon Rappoport

#76. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision making.

Noam Chomsky

#77. Stop staring at me this instant! the sorceress shouted at Geralt. She writhed like a snake in her bonds in a vain attempt to conceal her naked charms. Geralt obediently diverted his eyes. Dandelion didn't.

Andrzej Sapkowski

#78. I just don't know the art of making friends with girls. And that's the reason why I've never had a single girl as a friend. Also, I'm so engrossed in cricket that I've never found an opportunity to interact with girls very closely. In a way, it's better, as my mind doesn't get diverted!

Harbhajan Singh

#79. Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.

Madame De Stael

#80. I hate raising money. It diverts you from what your real task is: to be a representative. You're diverted into preservation when you really want to spend your time and energy making a better state and a better country - which is the reason you ran in the first place.

Shelley Moore Capito

#81. It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency.

Emma Goldman

#82. The intellect must not be kept at consistent tension, but diverted by pastimes ... The mind must have relaxation, and will rise stronger and keener after recreation.

Seneca The Younger