Obscure Quotes - Page 4

• Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine, and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies,omens, oracles, judgments, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every pagewe soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous, and that, though this inclination may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated.

  David Hume

  Battle, Oracles, May

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• We ourselves are co-called non-linear dynamical systems... I don't feel quite so pathetic when I interrupt a project to check on some obscure web site or newsgroup or derive an iota of cheer by getting rid of pocketful of change.

  John Allen Paulos

  Cheer, Science, Mathematics

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• The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it.

  George Berkeley

  Eye, Long, Glimpse

  George Berkeley (1871). “Life and letters”, p.297

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• Intellectual comradeship requires that you think your thoughts through to the place where you can make the complex seem simple, the obscure quite clear.

  David Seabury

  Simple, Thinking, Simplicity

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• If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Literature, Moments, Holmes

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2012). “The Sherlock Holmes Archives (incl. The Truth About Sherlock Holmes)”, p.9, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way

  Steve Wozniak

  Real, Engineering, Focus

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• Without precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language.

  Ron Paul

  Reality, People, Perception

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• After wishing for years to be given-the-opportunity of filming some of the more 'mystical' occupations of our Times - some of the more obscure Public Figures which the average imagination turns into 'bogeymen'... viz.: Policemen, Doctors, Soldiers, Politicians, etc.: - I was at last permitted to ride in a Pittsburgh police car, camera in hand, the final several days of September 1970.

  Stan Brakhage

  Opportunity, Doctors, Average

  Stan Brakhage (1982). “Brakhage scrapbook: collected writings, 1964-1980”, Treacle Pr

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• The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Views

  'Four Dissertations' (1757) 'The Natural History of Religion' sect. 15

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• Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity of making things plain to uninstructed people, was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind.

  Thomas Huxley

  Mean, Science, People

  'Man's Place in Nature' (1894 ed.) preface

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• Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum. (Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.)

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Political, Public Opinion, Investing

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• The task is not primarily to have a story, but to penetrate the story, to discard the elements of it that are merely shell, or husk, that give apparent form to the story, but actually obscure the essence. In other words, the problem is to transcend the givens of a narrative.

  Deborah Eisenberg

  Essence, Giving, Tasks

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• Gilbert Jonas, painter, believed in his star.... His own faith was not, however, without its virtues because it consisted in admitting, in some obscure way, that he would obtain many things without deserving them.

  Albert Camus

  Faith, Stars, Luck

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• Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.

  Walter Pater

  Law, Mind, Association

  Walter Pater (2011). “The Works of Walter Pater”, p.12, Cambridge University Press

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• Many words will be written on the wind and the sand, or end up in some obscure digital vault. But the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then we can send the great chronicle of humanity out into the endless universe.

  Henning Mankell

  Wind, Humanity, Listening

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• Astronomy is useful because it raises us above ourselves; it is useful because it is grand; .... It shows us how small is man's body, how great his mind, since his intelligence can embrace the whole of this dazzling immensity, where his body is only an obscure point, and enjoy its silent harmony.

  Henri Poincare

  Men, Mind, Body

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.473, Modern Library

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• When you feel discouraged or simply lazy, as is bound to happen sometimes, remember the millions of people in the world who have not had your privilege. Remember the poor and obscure lives of those countless millions who suffer from every sort of deprivation and frequently find themselves the unwilling victim of wars, and a variety of cruelties, perpetuated by man on man. Is it not significant that the first bid for self realization, among the poor and downtrodden, is to assert their right to education?

  Jehan Sadat

  Graduation, War, Men

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• For I had rather die in the adventure ot noble achievements, then live in obscure and sluggish security.

  Margaret Cavendish

  Adventure, Achievement, Noble

  "Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader".

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• Death confronts us not unlike the historical battle scene that hangs on the wall of the classroom. It is our task to obscure or quite obliterate the picture by our deeds while we are still in this world.

  Franz Kafka

  Death, Wall, Historical

  Franz Kafka (1946). “The great wall of China: stories and reflections”

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• For my birthday my husband learned to cook and is cooking one day a week for me. But he only likes to do fancy dishes. So we end up with weird, obscure things in the refrigerator.

  Cheryl Hines

  Birthday, Husband, Cooking

  Interview with Rachael Ray, www.rachaelraymag.com. November 1, 2005.

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• In our culture of constant access and nonstop media, nothing feels more like a curse from God than time in the wilderness. To be obscure, to be off the beaten path, to be in the wilderness feels like abandonment. It seems more like exile than a vacation. To be so far off of everyone’s radar that the world might forget about us for a while? That’s almost akin to death…[But] far from being punishment, judgment, or a curse, the wilderness is a gift. It’s where we can experience the primal delight of being fully known and delighted in by God.

  Jonathan Martin

  Vacation, Media, Punishment

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• I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say. Rather than offering the balm of consolation, the Buddha encouraged us to peer deep and unflinchingly into the heart of the bewildering and painful experience that life can so often be.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Karma, Believe, Heart

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• Things are more beautiful when they're obscure.

  Veda Hille

  Love, Beautiful

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• Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Character, Hair

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.118, Courier Corporation

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• If we imagine an observer to approach our planet from outer space, and, pushing aside the belts of red-brown clouds which obscure our atmosphere, to gaze for a whole day on the surface of the earth as it rotates beneath him, the feature, beyond all others most likely to arrest his attention would be the wedge-like outlines of the continents as they narrow away to the South.

  Eduard Suess

  Science, Space, Clouds

  "The Face of the Earth: (Das Antlitz Der Erde)" by Eduard Suess, Clarendon Press, (p. 1), 1904.

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