Top 87 Tenths Quotes
#2. Fidelity is seven-tenths of business success.
James Parton
#3. You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.
Henry David Thoreau
#4. Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.
Thomas Carlyle
#6. Shut it, Flynn. Just ... oh God, you've been impossible to evict, because possession is nine-tenths of the law. You're inside me. A part of me. But you pulled me close with one hand and crushed my heart with the other, and I can't go through that again.
Kate Meader
#7. I do not wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries; that what used to be called the submerged tenth can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their le.
Winston Churchill
#8. [N]ine-tenths of the people who are in the Home Service don't want to go abroad. They are people who live in Washington and have gotten acquainted with the jungle of this town and know their way around.
Charles E. Bohlen
#9. The average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.
H.L. Mencken
#10. The trick to being a novelist is to act like an iceberg. Make it seem as if you're displaying only one-tenth of what you know, and the other nine-tenths isn't visible and never mind if that part is pure styrofoam!
Vikram Seth
#11. Nine-tenths of the world is entertained by scandalous rumors, which are never dissected until they are dead and, when pricked, collapse like an empty bladder.
Horace Greeley
#12. Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
Horace Walpole
#13. Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
Bertrand Russell
#14. Ella was vapid and worthless at least nine-tenths of the time, but when she got really mad, her face became sharp and purposeful. Almost vicious. Like if Barbie were suddenly possessed by Atilla the Hun.
Francine Pascal
#15. Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains; a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.
Aldo Leopold
#16. Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.
C.S. Lewis
#17. Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.
Robert Graves
#18. The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.
John Maynard Keynes
#19. The notion that artists flourish upon adversity and misunderstanding, that they are able to function to the utmost in an atmosphere of indifference or hostility - this notion is nine-tenths nonsense.
H.L. Mencken
#20. You have to stand every day three or four hours of visitors. Nine-tenths of them want something they ought not to have. If you keep dead-still they will run down in three or four minutes. If you even cough or smile they will start up all over again.
Calvin Coolidge
#21. Quarkbeasts, for all their fearsome looks, are obedient to a fault. They are nine-tenths velociraptor and kitchen blender and one-tenth Labrador. It was the Labrador tenth that I valued most.
Jasper Fforde
#22. He proposes, as a final solution to the question, the division of mankind into two unequal parts. One-tenth is to receive personal freedom and unlimited rights over the remaining nine-tenths.6
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#23. I always say perseverance is nine-tenths of any art - not that it's much help to be nine-tenths an artist, of course.
Peter S. Beagle
#25. Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It shook me in my habit - the habit of nine-tenths of the world - of believing that all was right about me, because I was used to it ...
Charles Dickens
#26. Creation has the truth written all over it - the age of the universe, the history of the world - but nine-tenths of mankind either don't know it or think it's a sham, because it isn't what their book or their prophet says, and it isn't cozy or manipulable enough.
Sheri S. Tepper
#27. A world where one tenth of the population gets to be extremely wealthy, and six tenths very poor, is not, in the long run, a stable place
Bill McKibben
#28. Nine-tenths of wisdom is appreciation. Go find somebody's hand and squeeze it, while there's time.
Dale Dauten
#29. Did I hate him, then? Indeed, I believe so. A love like that can grow to be nine-tenths hatred and still call itself love.
C.S. Lewis
#30. Nine-tenths of our measures for preventing vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the penalty.
William Graham Sumner
#31. Nine-tenths of all artistic creation derives its basic energy from the engine of repression and sublimation, and well beyond the strict Freudian definition of those terms.
John Fowles attended new College in Oxford. You might like to see my collection of Oxford trees at Rob's Bookshop.
John Fowles
#32. Nine-tenths of that which is attributed to sexuality is the work of our magnificent ability to imagine, which is no longer an instinct, but exactly the opposite: a creation.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
#33. In addition, human beings have, in the most recent few tenths of a percent of our existence, invented not only extra-genetic but also extrasomatic knowledge: information stored outside our bodies, of which writing is the most notable example.
Carl Sagan
#34. In 1889, I predict, the legislative stage of the Irish question will have arrived; and the union with England, which shall then have cursed Ireland for nine tenths of a century, will be repealed.
John Boyle O'Reilly
#35. Nine-tenths of our suffering is caused by others not thinking so much of us as we think they ought.
Mary Lyon
#36. Obsessions are nine tenths of my flaws.
Atticus
#37. In democratic South Africa, dispossession is nine-tenths of the law.
Ilana Mercer
#38. I admit it is better fun to punt than be punted, and that a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#39. Better far off to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen and to see well the rest; to see them not once, but again and often again; to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love them, till they have become a part of life and life's recollections.
Augustus Hare
#40. I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.
Henry James
#41. I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
Randall Jarrell
#43. The characteristic shared by people at the top of their profession is that, to get better, they crave criticism. Most people don't like criticism, but if you are trying to shave two tenths of a second at 800 metres, that is what you crave.
Sebastian Coe
#44. A Quarkbeast is a small hyena-shaped creature that is covered in leathery scales and often described as: 'One tenth Labrador, six-tenths velociraptor and three-tenths kitchen food blender.
Jasper Fforde
#45. Technology has certainly reduced performance differences among drivers. Whereas a talented driver could get a half-second out of every lap in the past, nowadays talent makes up for only about one or two tenths of a second. But the driver is still the key factor.
Michael Schumacher
#46. The fact that nine-tenths of all the smutty literature, artistic tripe and theatrical banalities, had to be charged to the account of people who formed scarcely one per cent. of the nation - that fact could not be gainsaid. It was there, and had to be admitted.
Adolf Hitler
#47. This general flattening of objects that rotate is why Earth's pole-to-pole diameter is smaller than its diameter at the equator. Not by much: three-tenths of one percent - about twenty-six miles.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#49. I have had a long, long life full of troubles, but there is one curious fact about them-nine-tenths of them never happened.
Andrew Carnegie
#50. Eliminating some 3600 post offices - mostly rural - will save the USPS less than seven tenths of one percent of their operating budget, but nationally, a number of tribal communities will be hit.
Winona LaDuke
#51. To persons uninstructed in natural history, their country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.
Thomas Huxley
#52. The fact is most computer roleplaying games that offer a zillion highly specialized skills end up with nine-tenths of a zillion skills that every player quickly realizes aren't worth the experience points to buy.
Warren Spector
#53. Sacrifice was nine tenths of parenting.
Zadie Smith
#54. Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories
H.L. Mencken
#55. Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.
John Lennon
#56. "vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture.
G.K. Chesterton
#57. Reality is merely one-tenth visible section of the iceberg that one sees above the surface of the ocean - art remaining nine-tenths of it that lies below the surface. That is why it is more near Truth than Reality itself. Art does not merely reflect Reality - it enlarges it.
Anita Desai
#58. Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.
Kin Hubbard
#60. I love what I do. I take great pride in what I do. And I can't do something halfway, three-quarters, nine-tenths. If I'm going to do something, I go all the way.
Tom Cruise
#62. The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.
H.L. Mencken
#63. Wales smiled sadly. "Dig, dig, clear every little detail, that's a detective's life. A crime is like an iceberg, one-tenth showing and nine-tenths hidden.
Ed Lacy
#64. Journalism is nine-tenths being in the right places at the right time.
Andrew Marr
#65. Most grown people are like icebergs, three-tenths showing, seven-tenths submerged - that is why a collision with one of them is unexpectedly hurtful ...
Rumer Godden
#66. Countless communities have virtually outlawed unstructured outdoor nature play, often because of the threat of lawsuits, but also because of a growing obsession with order. Many parents now believe outdoor play is verboten even when it is not; perception is nine-tenths of the law.
Richard Louv
#68. At one point he had covered more than seven tenths of the earth's surface.
Chris Cleave
#69. As a general rule, nine tenths of happiness may be said to rest on the state of health; when this is perfect, anything and everything may be a source of pleasure; in illness, on the other hand, nothing, no matter what its nature may be, is capable of affording any real enjoyment.
Edgar Saltus
#70. Female friendship was one-tenth prevention and nine-tenths cleanup.
Maggie Shipstead
#72. to offer one-tenth to God; but under the new covenant, ten-tenths are required.
Watchman Nee
#73. Your melancholy. Or depression. Along with nine-tenths of the afflictions I've studied, diagnosed, attempted to treat. Call them whatever you like, but they're just different names for loneliness. That's what lets the darkness in. That's what you have to fight.
Andrew Pyper
#74. Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.
Bertrand Russell
#75. The executive art is nine-tenths inducing those who have authority to use it in taking pertinent action
Chester Barnard
#76. That's the way it is: life includes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue, nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. For most of the time the Here and Now is neither now nor here.
Graham Swift
#77. Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
Benjamin Disraeli
#79. He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, false, and he is thereby apt to acquire a doubt of everything, including his own beliefs.
H.L. Mencken
#80. Nine-tenths of discipline is having the patience to do things right.
Pat Summitt
#81. An Arabic proverb: One insect is enough to fell a country. A Japanese proverb: Even an insect one-tenth of an inch long has five-tenths of a soul. My
Jenny Offill
#83. Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.
T.E. Lawrence
#84. On the periscope ... What a beautiful view. Cloud cover over Florida - three to four tenths near the eastern coast. Obscured up to Hatteras ... I can see [lake] Okeechobee. Identify Andros Island. Identify the reefs.
Alan Shepard
#85. Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.
Joseph Epstein
#86. Budget thy expenses that thou mayest have coins to pay for thy necessities, to pay for thy enjoyments, and to gratify thy worthwhile desires without spending more than nine-tenths of thy earnings.
George S. Clason
#87. During five literary generations every enlightened person had despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there.
George Orwell
