The more details, depth and thought you put into your ideas the more valuable they become.

Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.

Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.

I never understood how men could remember all those details about sports but, yet, were incapable of remembering where they set their car keys or wallet.

"Unhappy memories are persistent. They're specific, and it's the details that refuse to leave us alone. Though a happy memory may stay with you just as long as one that makes you miserable, what you remember softens over time. What you recall is simply that you were happy, not necessarily the individual moments that brought about your joy.

Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.

The best way to waste your life, is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate.

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes-forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching I could concentrate on the essential issues of programming rather than on details of language and notation.

It always makes me sad when I think of how I saw Wagner wasting his vitality not only by singing their parts to some of his artists but acting out the smallest details and of how few they were who were responsive to his wishes.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

What she did was to open our eyes to details of country life such as teaching us names of wild flowers and getting us to draw and paint and learn poetry.

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

Marriage is all about knowing the ins and outs and the intimate details and your wife is supposed to be the person you know best. But my brother and I think alike know everything about one another and when we get together we block everything else out. Nothing exists in our world except for us.

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

The director's job is full of all sorts of annoyances and details - like how many cars are on the street. Ugh. I don't want it. I like my gig. And I feel that for the next 30 years or so I can keep learning more about it.

I enjoy learning technical details.

He surprised me by his familiarity with details of movements and battles which I did not suppose had come to his knowledge. As he kept me talking for over half an hour I flattered myself that what I had to say interested him.

The function of the politician therefore is one of continuous watchfulness and activity and he must have intimate knowledge of details if he would work out grand results.

I am conscious of my inability to grasp in all its details and positive developments any very large portion of human knowledge.

The knives of jealousy are honed on details.

The average husband enjoys the total effect of his home but is usually unable to contribute any of the details of work and organisation that make it enjoyable.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.