Amateur Quotes - page 3

The British arrived with no intention of conquest: the East India Company had set up trading posts on the western seaboard, and its officers were called on by the native sultans to help with the putting down of rapacious river barons. The parallel with India is exact, and Stamford Raffles is a perfect analogue of Robert Clive. First came trade, then the amateur protective army, finally the flag.... (Anthony Burgess)
I was a shit when I met you. I still am in lots of ways. But because of you I've had to give up trying to be a dedicated, full-time shit. I couldn't make it, hadn't the strength of character. Which is a pity in a way, because when you fall back into the ranks of the failed shits or amateur shits or incidental shits you start taking on responsibility for other people. View quote
Kingsley Amis
The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest. View quote
Anne Tyler
We did exactly what everybody in the country did, watching it. You entered this state of sort of denials. You think, well, it must have been a tragic accident by an amateur pilot. And then you see the next plane coming. View quote
Diane Sawyer
The plot is so tired that even this reviewer, who in infancy was let drop by a nurse with the result that she has ever since been mystified by amateur coin tricks, was able to guess the identity of the murderer from the middle of the book. View quote
Dorothy Parker
The general or amateur student should also get a taste of demonstrative reasoning... he should acquire a standard with which he can compare alleged evidence of all sorts aimed at him in modern life. View quote
George Pólya
Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur. View quote
Alvin Toffler
The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full. The time was 05:03:12 UTC. Later it would be designated A+0.0.0, or simply Zero. An amateur astronomer in Utah was the first person on Earth to realize that something unusual was happening. Moments earlier, he had noticed a blur flourishing in the vicinity of the Reiner Gamma formation, near the moon's equator. He assumed it was a dust cloud thrown up by a meteor strike. He pulled out his phone and blogged the event. View quote
Neal Stephenson
Before the start of the '76 Olympics, I'd had 160 amateur fights. I won 155 and lost five. View quote
Sugar Ray Leonard
I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur. View quote
Edmund Hillary
As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur. (Woodrow Wilson)
A work upon the plan originally contemplated by the Author seems still to be required, to initiate the young and uninstructed in the study of those MEDALS 0F CREATION-those electrotypes of nature-the mineralized remains of the plants and animals which successively flourished in the earlier ages of our planet, in periods incalculably remote, and long antecedent to all human history and tradition. With this conviction the present volumes are offered... as a guide for the Student and the Amateur Collector of fossil remains; for the intelligent Observer who may desire to possess a general knowledge of the subject, without intending to pursue Geology as a science; and for the Tourist who may wish, in the course of his travels, to employ profitably a leisure hour in quest of those interesting memorials of the ancient physical revolutions of our globe, which he will find everywhere presented to his observation. View quote
Gideon Mantell
No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth. View quote
Isaac Asimov
There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well. View quote
Agatha Christie
The illustrations were woodcuts, executed with that crude haste to see the finished product that marks the amateur. True pornography is given us by vastly patient professionals. View quote
Thomas Pynchon
The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work. View quote
Steven Pressfield
The amateur tweets. The pro works. View quote
Steven Pressfield
I'm not going to talk like I know about politics, because I'm a total amateur, but maybe I can be a spokesperson for people who aren't normally interested in politics. View quote
Björk
Consider for instance, the facts that Jose Canseco was picked in the fifteenth round of the amateur draft, Roger Clemens the twelfth, Ryne Sandberg the twentieth, and Nolan Ryan the tenth. View quote
Andrew Zimbalist
When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur. View quote
Will Rogers
The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own. (Lytton Strachey)
It is particularly displeasing to hear professional critics using the term "layman" to describe people who are amateurs and patrons of those arts with which they are themselves professionally concerned. The fact that the critic gets money for knowing something, and giving public expression to his opinion, does not entitle him to consider the amateur, who may be as well informed and as sensitive as himself, an outsider. View quote
Robertson Davies
You politicians remain professional because the voters remain amateur. View quote
Katharine Hepburn
I threw the javelin in high school, but that's only part of the reason for my good arm. I got my good arm from my mother. Today she's 73, yet she can throw a ball from second base to home plate with something on it. Last year, when they opened the amateur winter league in Puerto Rico, she threw out the first ball from a box seat to home plate. She had something on it, too. She's in good health. View quote
Roberto Clemente
One naturally regrets not being an expert or one of those insiders who thoroughly understand. It's hell to be an amateur. A little reflection calms your sorrow, however. The experts in their own little speedboat, the rest of us floating with the rest of mankind in a great barge - that is the picture. View quote
Saul Bellow