If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don’t express your disregard for the essence of the culture. It’s a form of aggression.
Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.
I’ve found childbirth to be so unique in its ability to completely humble you while also completely empowering you. It reduces you to your essence and strips you of every pretense. It reminds you that you are no better than all the women who have come before you, but also no worse.
The essence of a government health care system – for people who have never lived under it and don’t know – is waiting, waiting, waiting. You wait for everything. You wait for years for operations that are routine in America.
The true essence of comedy is a baby seal hunt.
Opening up closed markets to competition and protecting consumers from monopoly-style profits is the essence of pro-business politics on the modernising right as much as the left.
The Internet is a limitless library at your fingertips. It’s a great place to start with the acquisition of knowledge. My process is to go to a place when I’m writing about it. Nothing captures the essence, feeling and flavor of a place better than when I’m actually there and doing the writing.
Just because a group does not take its decisions by voting does not mean they have no understanding of the essence of democracy.
The right of election is the very essence of the constitution.
Vulnerability is the essence of romance. It’s the art of being uncalculated, the willingness to look foolish, the courage to say, ‘This is me, and I’m interested in you enough to show you my flaws with the hope that you may embrace me for all that I am but, more important, all that I am not.’
In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.
My approach to Pennywise was, on one hand, I wanted to stay true to the essence of the character but at the same time make it an edgier character that is basically unpredictable and people won’t expect everything he comes up with.
Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today – but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.
The essence of play is that the sequence of actions is fluid and scattered.
Ramadan is, in its essence, a month of humanist spirituality.
A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.
In essence, the tragedy of the Warsaw Rising resulted from a systemic breakdown of the Grand Alliance.
The essence of comedy, drama, and horror is surprise. I have an uncanny ability to surprise people because they look at my face, and they don’t know where I’m going.
I don’t care if it’s a Cole Porter song, or George Gershwin, or Lennon/McCartney, or Elton John, or you know, whoever, Bob Dylan. Great songs are great songs, and they stand the test of time, and they can be interpreted and recorded with many points of view, but yet still retain the essence of what makes them good songs.
Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.
It makes sense for social scientists to become more involved in policy because many of society’s most challenging problems are, in essence, behavioral.
‘Suena’ is what the essence of the Olympics are about. There are the best athletes in the world up on one stage. The love and admiration and respect for each other is amazing to see.
I learned a lot about Ottoman court, and it was very Shakespearian in essence. Stories like the one in ‘Hamlet’ did happen several times in the 500 years of Ottoman history.
Fantasy allows you bend the world and the situation to more clearly focus on the moral aspects of what’s happening. In fantasy you can distill life down to the essence of your story.
When progressives talk about equity, they mean equal outcomes, not opportunities. They want a government that’s so powerful, it owns everything and chooses how wealth is distributed to ensure equal outcomes. That in essence is socialism.
Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.
‘All Def’ is unlike any other comedy show or set because ‘All Def’ goes back to the essence of how urban comedy started. We give it a ‘stoop appeal.’ A stoop appeal is important for us because it’s where pretty much all black comics started doing their standup: cracking jokes on the stoop, in the hood.
In essence, the Thai people are not materialistic at all. They’re not in the least driven by the kind of ambition that drives us. The more I got to know them, and the more time I spent with them, the more I understood that this was a totally legitimate attitude to life, and why not?
Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.
All the major problems of the world today are global in essence, and they cannot be solved unless through some kind of global cooperation. It’s not just climate change, which is, like, the most obvious example people give. I think more in terms of technological disruption.
We are visual creatures. When you doodle an image that captures the essence of an idea, you not only remember it, but you also help other people understand and act on it – which is generally the point of meetings in the first place.
No one except Hollywood stars and very rich Texans wore Indian jewelry. And there was a plethora of dozens if not hundreds of athletic teams that in essence were insulting us, from grade schools to college. That’s all changed.
A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.
The essence of America – that which really unites us – is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion – it is an idea – and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things.
One of the inevitable aspects of debates about euthanasia is the reluctance on the part of advocates to confront the essence of what they propose.
Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
You see a lot of bands and a lot of artists making that mistake: They become successful for doing something, and then they change everything. They change the people; they change the approach. And then, all of a sudden, almost the essence of what you do is gone.
And there is a difference between the essence of a Sacrament and its use.
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.
Zero-tolerance on drinking and driving – meaning no drinking at all before driving – is a collective punishment that, in essence, only affects responsible adults who follow the law.
The first essence of journalism is to know what you want to know, the second, is to find out who will tell you.
The essence of conservative ideology is its being anchored in the divine order of things.
The essence of football was blocking, tackling, and execution based on timing, rhythm and deception.
Hip hop is the strongest form of protest there is, and it doesn’t always have to be a violent protest. It can be romantic, also. When you listen to Kanye West’s ‘Street Lights’ for example, there’s romance, there’s pain – you feel the essence. I get the same thing from Drake and 2 Chainz.
I don’t see a benefit in accepting every single little morsel of work that comes along because I think, in essence, what you’re doing is you’re raping yourself really.
Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it’s my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.
I remember the first time that my Nana introduced me to Eartha Kitt. Seeing a fierce Black woman on screen being unapologetically confident – just her essence that she had was so captivating.
To get a sense of a person, to get their essence, it’s not just about details. It is about something you can’t really describe.
Our invisibility is the essence of our oppression. And until we eliminate that invisibility, people are going to be able to perpetuate the lies and myths about gay people.
For me it was really important to get the essence out of the music for the story and not, sort of, press the music into the service of the whimsical telling of it.
Paul’s the writer. Yeah, I wrote a little of that stuff, but that’s just technically true. In spirit, and in essence of the truth, it doesn’t matter. So I don’t know, maybe I’m being foolish for not being technical. Yeah, I wrote a certain portion of the things.
