There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity

I found my interest lapse in both acting and racing.

Truly time should be measured by events, and not by the lapse of hours.

As for literature, thefts cannot harm it, while the lapse of ages augments its value

No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character.

I can forgive the body breaking down. It's a little tougher to forgive that mental lapse.

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse or omission.

Extremes produce reaction. Beware that our boasted civilization does not lapse into barbarism.

Don't attribute mishaps to a lapse in concentration - if you missed the note you don't know it.

But truths need to be repeated many times so that they don't, poor things, lapse into oblivion.

To lapse in fulness Is sorer than to lie for need, and falsehood Is worse in kings than beggars.

... lapses of memory are only attractive when you've encouraged them, not when they take you unawares.

Those who lapse from the Gospel to the Law are no better off than those who lapse from grace to idolatry.

Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.

Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors.

Then was ashamed of myself. I should be happy for what I'd been given. I hoped God hadn't noticed my lapse in appreciation.

There is no lapse in His character or inconsistency in His nature. Our God is everything he says He is… for now and all eternity.

There's no such thing as a minor lapse of awareness. You're either present with what is--right here, right now--or you're someplace else.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

There is no such thing as unconsciousness for it is not experienceable. We infer unconsciousness when there is a lapse in memory or communication.

Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal.

Change as change is mere flux and lapse; it insults intelligence. Genuinely to know is to grasp a permanent end that realizes itself through changes.

More apparent to Teamster members than any moral lapses were the tangible gains that had been steadily realized under Hoffa since his advent to power.

I think one remains the same person throughout, merely passing, as it were, i these lapses of time from one room to another, but all in the same house.

...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.

We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls.

If you're actually being paid to be miserable, and to be as miserable as you can be, that's a very fortunate thing, if you're prone to occasional lapses of spirit.

First I did animation films, when I was young, in time-lapse. And then in the '80s I went directly to video. The main reason for that was that I could control all the steps.

The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible.

It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the grave.

If I find myself half-carelessly taking lapses for granted, "Oh, that's what they always do." "Oh, of course she talks like that, he acts like that," then I know nothing of Calvary love.

The plant never lapses into mere arid functionalism; it fashions and shapes according to logic and suitability, and with its primeval force compels everything to attain the highest artistic form.

I have prepared myself to be at my peak in London. But in the Olympics, there are so many factors. You need to stay alert all the time, and a lapse of concentration, even for a second, will let you down.

When we bring back with us the objects most dear, and find those we left unchanged, we are tempted to doubt the lapse of time; but one link in the chain of affection broken, and every thing seems altered.

Because of various security lapses, some senators are calling for a probe of the security at the offices of the Department of Homeland Security. The investigation will be conducted by the Department of Irony.

I don't know what I can do about the aging. Yes, I am aging. Oh my God, I'm aging all the time. It's like those flowers that wilt in front of you in time-lapse films. But what can I possibly do? Look like a lunatic?

When a man is not deeply convicted of sin, it is a pretty sure sign that he has not truly repented. Experience has taught me that men who have very slight conviction of sin sooner or later lapse back into their old life.

I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.

The productions of a great genius, with many lapses and inadvertences, are infinitely preferable to the works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact, and conformable to all the rules of correct writing.

Society is older than government. But every persisting society implies the existence of government and laws; for a society without government and laws is at once overturned by its madmen and scoundrels and lapses into barbarism.

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.

No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate--like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history--until it degenerates into fables.

. . . women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.

arrears, n. My faithfulness was as unthinking as your lapse. Of all the things I though would go wrong, I never thought it would be that. "It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.

It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.

The very foundation of our science is only an inference; far the whole of it rests an the unprovable assumption that, all through the inferred lapse of time which the inferred performance of inferred geological processes involves, they have been going on in a manner consistent with the laws of nature as we know them now.

Many scholars have felt that the Heronian passage [on a pipe-organ moved by an anemourion-like wheel] can be disregarded because it is not confirmed by other writings. Heron presumably mentioned the anemourion in a moment of distraction, forgetting that it had not been invented yet. We know that he was given to such lapses.

If any person wants to see clearly just how much she has changed - whether for better or worse - let her revisit after some lapse of time any place where she has ones lived. She will meet her former self at every turn, with every familiar face, in every old recollection ... She will see how much she has gained in some respects, how much she has lost - irretrievably lost - in others.

When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect the rule you are breaking. If you have never heard of the rules you are breaking, you have no right to do so, and you are likely to come off like a buffoon or a barbarian. Breaking rules, using slang and archaic language can be effective, but it is just as likely to give you an audience busy with wincing.

Share This Page