Top 96 Quotes About Tentative
#1. [T]he nature of science is not that of a steady, linear progression toward the Truth, but rather a tortuous road, often characterized by dead ends and U-turns, and yet ultimately inching toward a better, if tentative, understanding of the natural world.
Massimo Pigliucci
#2. Enough , you hens!" Niobe exploded. "It's tentative!"
Lachesis snorted "As tentative as a pregnancy,girl!
Piers Anthony
#3. James Watt patented his steam engine on the eve of the American Revolution, consummating a relationship between coal and the new Promethean spirit of the age, and humanity made its first tentative steps into an industrial way of life that would, over the next two centuries, forever change the world.
Jeremy Rifkin
#4. She approached me with enough sex appeal to stampede a businessmen's lunch and tilted her head to finger a stray, but not very stray, tendril of softly glowing hair. Her smile was tentative, but could be persuaded to be nice.
Raymond Chandler
#5. The old scientific ideal of episteme - of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge - has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever.
Karl Popper
#6. Better to be tentative than to be recklessly sure- to be an apprentice at sixty, than to present oneself as a doctor at ten.
Michel De Montaigne
#7. It's the difference between a categorical "Get up" and a tentative "What about trying to get up?".
Jose Saramago
#8. Kiwi thought back to his first weeks, when insults had been impossible for him. One time he'd called Deemer a troglodyte but his delivery had been tentative and way, way too slow, as if the insult were a fork tenderly entering a steak.
Karen Russell
#9. Atheism, I began to realize, rested on a less-than-satisfactory evidential basis. The arguments that had once seemed bold, decisive, and conclusive increasingly turned out to be circular, tentative, and uncertain.
Alister E. McGrath
#10. Everything in life is tentative, so plan accordingly.
E.J. Valson
#11. REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired; Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.
Ambrose Bierce
#12. That our knowledge only illuminates a small corner of the Universe, that it is incomplete, approximate, tentative and merely probable need not concert us. It is genuine nevertheless. Physical science stands as one of the great achievements of the human spirit.
Arthur David Ritchie
#13. There's a time when it all comes together - what you long for and what you fear - and as tentative as you may feel, you're driven to continue. At that point, the need to forge ahead is the only option, and your direction is defined despite yourself.
Lorii Myers
#14. Unsatisfactory answers do not become satisfactory by being tentative.
C.S. Lewis
#15. Lion sounds that have not grown from the mouse may exude naked power ... but cannot convey any wisdom or understanding ... The initial steps on the path to courageous speech then are the first tentative steps into the parts of us that cannot speak.
David Whyte
#16. Good fiction is not defined by the masses, but by the tentative ear.
James D. Maxon
#17. The best thing we have is sleep, of course, and what is sleep except the putting aside of everything tentative for another interval of final and everlasting truth? Sleep isn't dying, but it is certainly keeping in tough with it.
William, Saroyan
#18. I don't think Im a very good actor. Everything is very tentative and at a certain point you click in and just feel the spirit move you. I can be possessed really well.
River Phoenix
#19. When you're aggressive behind the plate, calling a game, that's when you're at your best. You can't be tentative.
Jorge Posada
#20. This feeling, this tentative flutter in her belly - this was hers. This was sunlight on her face. It was the warmth she'd dreamed of. It was a curl of honest attraction, the first she'd experienced in years.
Courtney Milan
#21. It [moonlight] had a tentative grip on their shadows, as though the irregular shapes had been borrowed momentarily from the dark expanses left and right.
Scott Wyatt
#22. A library is that venerable place where men preserve the history of their experience, their tentative experiments, their discoveries, and their plans ... in books may be found the recipes for daily living - the prescriptions for the mind and the heart.
Georges Duhamel
#23. The rules or 'laws' of poetry are only tentative devices, an approximate scheme. There is no Sinaitic recipe for poetry, for the individual poem is the norm.
Louis MacNeice
#24. unreasonable.' She felt like saying it was barking mad but restrained herself. 'Aahh, not quite ready yet. Not quite evolved enough. But you're getting there, Judith. You have taken the first tentative steps. The fact that you came to me proves that. You'll be back.' Sheeva jumped up from the
Patricia Scanlan
#25. What makes some cognitive operations more demanding and effortful than others? What outcomes must we purchase in the currency of attention? What can System 2 do that System 1 cannot? We now have tentative answers to these questions.
Daniel Kahneman
#26. In the end, writing is not a full step toward self-healing, just a tiny, very tentative move in that direction.
Haruki Murakami
#29. Our kiss was electric and soft,
and tentative and certain,
terrifying and exactly right.
I felt the love rush from me to Gat and from Gat to me.
We were warm and shivering,
and young and ancient,
and alive.
I was thinking, It's true. We already love each other.
We already do.
E. Lockhart
#30. Running at night used to frighten me. Part of it was simply safety, the question of whether level ground would truly appear under each tentative footstep, and whether the temporary but complete blindness suffered while running toward headlights was, in fact, concealing death.
Don Kardong
#31. Maddox had been kissed there before. Polite little explorations, tentative tongue flicks, quick forays before the main event. But Ben made a meal out of his ass - a seven-course banquet of sensation and tongue fucking. Like literally, fucking, tongue delving deep. That was new, deliciously so. "God.
Annabeth Albert
#32. Something far more intimate than sexual intercourse. We'd told each other the truth. Oh, it had been tentative and framed with doubt, but we'd done it.
Skye Warren
#33. Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love, is a luxury that isn't necessary in a long-term relationship. Just as the first caress can lead to a change of heart, the first sentence, however tentative and awkward, can lead to a desire to go just a little further.
Julia Cameron
#34. The window glows. The slow sandy light of dawn permeates the room. Everything transient and aching; everything tentative. To be here, in this room, high in this house, out of the cellar, with her: it is like medicine.
Anthony Doerr
#35. I realized that in some unspoken, still tentative way, she and I were already becoming a family.
Barack Obama
#36. A good aim surveys the present state of experience of pupils, and forming a tentative plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view and yet modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence constantly growing as it is tested in action.
John Dewey
#37. The worst thing that could happen is that we hold back and play tentative because we "fear" disappointment. If we cannot accept the possibility we might fail, we most certainly are not prepared to succeed.
Mike Margolies
#38. My lips take control, and they're anything but tentative. Desperate for her to accept everything I offer, I realize I'm falling for Daisy in a way she better be ready for.
Bijou Hunter
#39. There was something stunned in the faces of the children, blinking and tentative. The slow, dark, dull submarine of the lives in which they were the human cargo had abruptly surfaced. Their blood was filled with a kind of crippling nitrogen of wonder.
Michael Chabon
#40. The door opened just a crack, and a silver of Nathan appeared. I gave him a tentative smile. He shut the door in my face.
Alicia Thompson
#41. Always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.
Mortimer J. Adler
#42. Genuine mental health would involve a balanced interplay of both modes of experience, a way of life in which one's identification with the ego is playful and tentative rather than absolute and mandatory, while the concern with material possessions is pragmatic rather than obsessive.
Fritjof Capra
#43. A swamp is where Gators live. We feel comfortable there, but we hope our opponents feel tentative. A swamp is hot and sticky and can be dangerous. Only Gators get out alive.
Steve Spurrier
#44. Kudra was amused by Alobar's tentative polka until her eyes fell upon the tumescent protrusion dancing with him. Disgusting she thought. An erection is just inappropriate. Then she realized with a shock that she was so wet that children could have sailed toy boats in her underpants.
Tom Robbins
#45. She continued to tentative finger her tight little puss with her one finger. She could feel her hymen and understood that that was what made her a virgin.
Anonymous
#46. Wherever you walk, stand or sit, do it with self-confidence and be firmly convinced: I am a singer! Being tentative is one of the deadly theatre sins.
Marita Knobel
#47. I made a tentative conclusion. It seemed from all of this that uppermost among human joys is the negative one of restoration: not going to the stars, but learning that one may stay where one is.
Peter De Vries
#48. In Attractions, don't be afraid to say "no". I was tentative at first because I didn't want to cause problems. However, you must get into people's faces in Attractions. You are actually trained to yell at guests if necessary.
Julianna Cavallo
#49. Right now people seem to be very tentative about the positive benefits of capitalism.
Jeb Bush
#50. Science advances through tentative answers to a series of more and more subtle questions which reach deeper and deeper into the essence of natural phenomena.
Louis Pasteur
#51. It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.
Bertrand Russell
#52. There's an art to life. Some people have talent for it. A boundless hope illuminates them. Where others are vague and tentative, they have only sharp, clear edges. Energy soars; lights burn brighter when they enter a room.
Kathleen Tessaro
#53. As surely as spring followed winter, new life followed death, fighting for its place on the earth. Let man do his worst, yet still the tentative shoots of faith and hope sprouted the ruins of shattered lives and broken dreams. Resurrection was real, after all.
J.M. Hochstetler
#54. I'd always dread this part of being a guest in the morning - the tentative yielding into the house's normal traffic.
Kaui Hart Hemmings
#55. Neal huffed. Frustrated. I hate that you thought I wouldn't call
I hate that everything is so tentative between us right now. When did everything get so tentative?
Rainbow Rowell
#56. Artists who have produced experimental innovations have been motivated by aesthetic criteria: they have aimed at presenting visual perceptions. Their goals are imprecise, so their procedure is tentative and incremental.
David Galenson
#57. He kissed her then. Not tentative. Not polite.
This was no first-kiss kiss. It was demanding. Dirty. And it went on and on. Deep, open-mouthed, head-twisting, tongue-fucking, rock'n'roll kissing.
Amy Andrews
#58. I can remember watching large, tentative, individual flakes of snow falling and blowing around aimlessly in the wind generated by the train through the window of the CTA commuter line from Lincoln Park back up to Libertyville, and thinking, 'This is my crude approximation of a human life.
David Foster Wallace
#59. soft. Her hand was so soft, like cat fur, like bird feathers, like...everything soft he could think of. Her thumb caressing the corner of his mouth and her lips when they first touched his were tentative.
Bonnie Dee
#60. From the psychological jousting between sisters in the early family arena emerge the first tentative boundaries of their personalities.
Elizabeth Fishel
#61. from CHAOS?
Trust the imagination - lines and shapes revealed - space and light instead of blackness. Silence being tentative, tender life of universe.
Jay Woodman
#62. You're wrong, Miss Midwinter. Though I may not have approved of everything you've done, it wasn't because I didn't admire you, but because I did."
She looked up then, a tentative smile brightening her face.
Julie Klassen
#63. I don't like people being cautious and tentative and choosing their words carefully around me because I'm a dwarf.
Peter Dinklage
#64. An end to timidity - the replacement of the philologically tentative by the lexicographically decisive. - on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester
#65. Dorian said, "So here we are." "The end of the road," Aelin said with a half smile. "No," Chaol said, his own smile faint, tentative. "The beginning of the next.
Sarah J. Maas
#66. Like world describers before me, those mapmakers in the seventeenth centure, I had laid down my first faintly drawn border. With that one tentative mark, my world expanded by a few freeing degrees.
Justina Chen
#67. Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints
Of tentative and half-soiled tints
Edith Sitwell
#68. See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet, The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering! See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back;
Ezra Pound
#69. I can't take the chance that she'll leave, and I feel that this moment is tentative, like a wild bird has just landed on my shoulder.
J. Lincoln Fenn
#70. Things felt strange and tentative between us, in a way they never had.
Morgan Matson
#71. he asked, in a more tentative tone, "What's the
John Le Carre
#72. GM is operating in an intensely competitive global environment and reaching this tentative agreement allows us to continue to build momentum in the market with the award-winning vehicles and components produced in Canada.
Al Green
#73. Emerged from the tentative ways, the obscurities and dazzle of youth, we
look straight in front of us, ready for what may come (the door opens,
the door keeps on opening). All is real; all is firm without shadow or
illusion. Beauty rides our brows.
Virginia Woolf
#74. He took a step toward her. She turned around, a tentative smile on her face. His beautiful Rose. He sank to his knees and raised his hands over his face. Thank you, God. You're so good to me.
Melanie Dickerson
#75. I cared nothing; my point of view in that instance, as in all others like it, was, that if the paper chose to send an outsider and an ignoramus to criticise works of art - especially the works of a new and tentative and experimental school - then, on the head of the paper let the just doom fall.
Arthur Machen
#76. Pride invites you to soar to heights of personal triumph, but the wind is stronger at those heights and the footing, tentative. Farther, then, is the fall.
R.A. Salvatore
#77. A fundie claimed "God invented science". All of science is tentative and approximate, also sometimes mistaken. Is that the best God can do?
Graham Kendall
#78. Certainty creates strength. Certainty gives one something upon which to learn. Uncertainty creates weakness. Uncertainty makes one tentative if not fearful, and tentative steps, even when in the right direction, may not overcome significant obstacles.
John M Barry
#79. The relationship between the films and the individual Commandments [is] a tentative one. The films should be influenced by the individual Commandments to the same degree that the Commandments influence our daily lives.
Krzysztof Kieslowski
#80. Science goes from question to question; big questions, and little, tentative answers. The questions as they age grow ever broader, the answers are seen to be more limited.
George Wald
#81. While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.
Colm Toibin
#82. I live from one tentative conclusion to the next, thinking each one is final. The only thing i know for sure is that I'am confused.
Hugh Prather
#83. A half-hearted spirit has no power. Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Average people enter into their endeavors headlong and without care.
Epictetus
#84. Part of the story of 'Ghosts of Ascalon' is how they got to that tentative truce where you can find humans and charr working together.
Jeff Grubb
#85. There is nothing as tentative as an old woman's touch; as loving or as horrible.
Anne Enright
#86. In the concrete jungle it's sink or swim: you can't be timid or tentative; you have to forge through, make your mark, enter the fray.
Belinda Jones
#87. For over two centuries (or so historians tell us), it was from the St. Petersburg salons that our country's culture advanced. From those great rooms overlooking the Fontanka Canal, new cuisines, fashions, and ideas all took their first tentative steps into Russian society.
Amor Towles
#88. It seems to me that the evidence ... is opposed to the view that the spirals are individual galaxies comparable with our own. In fact, there appears as yet no reason for modifying the tentative hypothesis that the spirals are not composed of typical stars at all, but are truly nebulous objects.
Harlow Shapley
#89. Watercolour painting is notoriously difficult - so much depends on directness and speed, and certainty of intention. Tentative or fumbling touches are disastrous, for they cannot be obliterated easily.
Walter J. Phillips
#90. She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for [him] was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself.
Arundhati Roy
#91. The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coins of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness.
Jerome Bruner
#92. All scholarship, like all science, is an ongoing, open-ended discussion in which all conclusions are tentative forever, the principal value and charm of the game being the discovery of the totally unexpected.
Hugh Nibley
#93. Wobbly as I was, I felt ready for anything-in a tentative, baby-steps kind of way.
Alyssa Goodnight
#94. Fiction, maybe art in general, is a tentative, uncertain enterprise; it's not science, it's an exploration, but you never find much in the way of answers.
Tim O'Brien
#95. We think that boxes take everything that's bad and they lock all that nasty stuff out, when in reality they take everything that we are and they lock all of those great things in.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#96. You're elegance in a misunderstood form. Crystal quartz in a world of platinum. Oh, my dizzy boy, there's a fire in you that I use to warm my hands on chilly mornings.
Taylor Rhodes
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