Fathoming Famous Quotes & Sayings

Keep the extent of your abilities unknown.The wise man does not allow his knowledge and abilities to be sounded to the bottom, if he desires to be honored at all. He allows you to know them but not to comprehend them. No one must know the extent of his abilities, lest he be disappointed. No one ever has an opportunity of fathoming him entirely. For guesses and doubts about the extent of his talents arouse more veneration than accurate knowledge of them, be they ever so great. — Baltasar Gracian

How long's your vacation?"
A year. Maybe longer."
A year? What did you do? Win the lottery?"
Most americans we met on the road, or at least the ones without nose rings, had a hard time fathoming the idea of a year's travel. Australians and Germans would nod in "of course" approval. Our country men would fixate on language barriers or some hideous tropical disease. They'd talk about the nightmare scenario - a Third World appendectomy and not being able to tell the doctor to use clean needles. — Franz Wisner

Dor shook his head. Such mysteries were beyond his fathoming. All he could do was ... what he could do. — Piers Anthony

Flags are blossoming now where little else is blossoming
and I am bent on fathoming what it means to love my country.
The history of this earth and the bones within it?
Minerals, traces, rumors I am made from, morsel, minuscule
fibre, one woman
like and unlike so many, fooled as to her destiny, the scope of
her task?
One citizen like and unlike so many, touched and untouched in passing ...
A patriot is not a weapon. A patriot us one who wrestles for the
soul of her country
as she wrestles for her own being, for the soul of his country ... — Adrienne Rich

In an interview, I lose control even of what I am, for it is the interviewer who edits me, finally, into what he thinks I am, and never have I been happy with someone else's version of my life after that person has spent an entire two or three hours fathoming it. — Mark Helprin

It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge. — Mark Twain

press-ganged', 'taking the wind out of your sails', 'shot across the bows', 'loose cannon', 'shipshape', 'batten down the hatches' belong more obviously to the sea. Others such as 'close quarters', 'cut and run', 'fathoming' something, 'broad in the beam' and the 'cut of your jib' take a moment — Ben Wilson

To prevent the enemy from fathoming one's intentions is of the first importance. — Sun Tzu

Descartes gave sight to the blind. These saw the errors of antiquity and of the sciences. The path he struck out is since become boundless [ ... ] In fathoming this abyss no bottom has been found. We are now to examine what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it. — Voltaire

For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation. — Alain De Botton

But I still don't have knowledge, interpreting the surprises that others don't know about, that will drive a new narrative. You have to work and think and stress and fret to surmise the surprises by first fathoming the pulse. — George Gilder

Like the sea itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-replenishing abundance of creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming. — Carl Jung