#fatal

A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is. ↗

— Pauline Kael

#anxiety #fatal #judgment #mistake #much

Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence. ↗

— David Viscott

#believe #fatalism #inclined #most #people

Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts. ↗

— John Wooden

#counts #failure #fatal #final #never

From Orient Point The art of living isn't hard to muster: Enjoy the hour, not what it might portend. When someone makes you promises, don't trust her unless they're in the here and now, and just her willing largesse free-handed to a friend. The art of living isn't hard to muster: groom the old dog, her coat gets back its luster; take brisk walks so you're hungry at the end. When someone makes you promises, don't trust her to know she can afford what they will cost her to keep until they're kept. Till then, pretend the art of living isn't hard to muster. Cooking, eating and drinking are a cluster of pleasures. Next time, don't go round the bend when someone makes you promises. Don't trust her past where you'd trust yourself, and don't adjust her words to mean more to you than she'd intend. The art of living isn't hard to muster. You never had her, so you haven't lost her like spare house keys. Whatever she opens, when someone makes you promises, don't. Trust your art; go on living: that's not hard to muster. ↗

— Marilyn Hacker

#fatalism #grief #loss #love #mourning

Local color has a fatal tendency to remain local; but it is also true that the universal often borders on the void. ↗

— Hervey Allen

#borders #color #fatal #local #often

As the bartender struck a match to light her cigarette, she put her hand on his wrist to steady it. Travis saw him jump, draw back. He held his wrist, blew on it, looked at her reproachfully. Travis said: 'Why, you scratched him, Sarah.' 'Did I?' And as she turned and looked at him, he saw her hand twitch a little, and drew still further away from her. 'What - what's got into you?' he faltered. There was some kind of tension spreading all around the horseshoe-shaped bar, emanating from her. All the cordiality, the sociability, was leaving it. Cheery conversations even at the far ends of it faltered and died, and the speakers looked around them as though wondering what was putting them so on edge. A heavy leaden pall of restless silence descended, as when a cloud goes over the sun. One or two people even turned and moved away reluctantly, as though they hadn't intended to but didn't like it at the bar any more. The gaunt-faced woman in red and black was the center of all eyes, but the looks sent her were not the admiring looks of men for a well-dressed woman; they were the blinking petrified looks a blacksnake would get in a poultry yard. Even the barman felt it. He dropped and smashed a glass, a thing he hadn't done since he'd been working on the ship. Even the canary felt it, and stood shivering pitifully on its perch, emitting an occasional cheep as though for help. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") ↗

— Cornell Woolrich

#femme-fatale #uneasy #men

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal. ↗

— Samuel Butler

#god #his #own #satisfied #work

Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess. ↗

— Walter Savage Landor

#calms #consequences #excess #fatal #heats

It is common knowledge that smoking is considered one of the nation's leading causes of preventable death, but it's less widely known that cigarettes are also the leading cause of fatal fires. ↗

— Ed Markey

#cause #causes #cigarettes #common #common knowledge

I now bid farewell to the country of my birth - of my passions - of my death; a country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies - whose factions I sought to quell - whose intelligence I prompted to a lofty aim - whose freedom has been my fatal dream. ↗

— Thomas Francis Meagher

#been #bid #birth #country #death