Absence Quotes - Page 32

• Orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the nature of organized systems in general or for those created by man in particular. Mere orderliness leads to increasing impoverishment and finally to the lowest possible level of structure, no longer clearly distinguishable from chaos, which is the absence of order. A counterprinciple is needed, to which orderliness is secondary. It must supply what is to be ordered.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Men, Order, Levels

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• Mythological subjects always new. Modern subjects difficult because of the absence of the nude and the wretchedness of modern costume.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Costumes, Modern, Difficult

  "Journal of Delacroix". Book by Hubert Wellington, translated by Lucy Norton, p.338, 1980.

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• Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless.

  Anthony Trollope

  Spring, Needs, Endless

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Last Chronicle of Barset (Unabridged): Victorian Classic from the prolific English novelist, known for The Palliser Novels, The Prime Minister, The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Can You Forgive Her? and Phineas Finn…”, p.543, e-artnow

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• The woe of mortality makes humans God-like. It is because we know that we must die that we are so busy making life. It is because we are aware of mortality that we preserve the past and create the future. Mortality is ours without asking--but immortality is something we must build ourselves. Immortality is not a mere absence of death; it is defiance and denial of death. It is 'meaningful' only because there is death, that implacable reality which is to be defied.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Meaningful, Past, Reality

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• You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love. I cannot live without it. I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, became a caricature. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode.

  Anita Brookner

  Love, Dream, Mean

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• Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition, and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.
  Equality of rights is a peculiar feature of democracies. These rights are properly divided into civil and political, though even these definitions are not to be taken as absolute, or as literally exact.

  James F. Cooper

  Military, Men, Law

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.

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• Truth indeed is sacred; but, as Pilate said, "What is truth?" Show us the undoubted infallible criterion of absolute truth, and we will hold it as a sacred inviolable thing. But in the absence of that infallible criterion, we have all an equal right to grope about in our search of it, and no body and no school nor clique must be allowed to set up a standard of orthodoxy which shall bar the freedom of scientific inquiry.

  William Stanley Jevons

  School, Body, Sacred

  "The Theory of Political Economy". Book by William Stanley Jevons, 1871.

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• I am spoken to not in words, which come to me quaint and veiled, but in signs, in conformations of face and hands, in postures of shoulders and feet, in nuances of tune and tone, in gaps and absences whose grammar has never been recorded.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Hands, Feet, Tunes

  J. M. Coetzee (2017). “In the Heart of the Country: A Novel”, p.10, Penguin

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• You know, when I was in college, there was a big debate: Do unions raise wages? Well, with regard to industrial unions, there were arguments back and forth -- international competition. It is now clear, I think, that whether or not you think unions raised wages 50 years ago, the absence of unions and their weakness that is inflicted by anti-union public policy depresses wages. The fact is that people who are not represented, in the service industries in particular, are the victims of policies which depress their wages.

  Barney Frank

  Depressing, College, Thinking

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• Why does a woman carry a gun? Because, under our system, every citizen has the latitude to act in the absence of police; the latitude to act reasonably, to act immediately, to act in defense of self, to act in defense of another, to act with lethal force, to act with her acquired training and to act not in anger but to respond in purpose. To exercise the protections of that latitude in public policy, public interest and practical safety, all that is demanded of her is that she act reasonably under the circumstances.

  John Longenecker

  Exercise, Gun, Self

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• Zeal is the chief source, or one of the chief sources of spiritual power. God employs living souls to communicate life. In all ages, men of zeal have produced great results. This qualification, in the absence of others, can accomplish wonders.

  Charles Hodge

  Spiritual, Men, Soul

  Charles Hodge (2004). “Conference Papers”, p.284, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• We have parts of our system which are overwhelmed by regulation. It wasn't the absence of regulation that was the problem. It was despite the presence of regulation you got huge risks built up.

  Timothy Geithner

  Risk, Regulation, Overwhelmed

  Timothy Geithner's speech at the House Financial Services Committee, March 26, 2009.

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• We know that Las Vegas is junk, but at the same time I think that exactly the same process and ultimately also, perhaps the same logic, attaches itself to or underlies our masterpieces. We live in an amazing era when in spite of an absence of masters there is an explosion of masterpieces.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Thinking, Vegas, Junk

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• In fall 1967, I was given leave of absence by the National Public Affairs Research Foundation to move to Redondo Beach, California, to work on a short-term research contract with TRW.

  Preston Manning

  Beach, Moving, Fall

  "The New Canada". Book by Preston Manning, 1992.

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• Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.

  Dan Simmons

  Leadership, Political, Age

  Dan Simmons (2014). “The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion”, p.607, Spectra

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• And death? I don't fear death. I dread the absence of it.

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Fear Of Death, Dread

  Robert Charles Wilson (2000). “The Perseids and Other Stories”, p.140, Macmillan

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• I believe the only reality is how we treat each other. The morality comes from the absence of any grander scheme, not from the presence of any grander scheme.

  Joss Whedon

  Believe, Reality, Morality

  YouTube Channel "baillou2"/"Joss Whedon: Atheist & Absurdist", www.youtube.com. March 28, 2010.

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• The absence of a monument can, in its own way, be something of a monument also.

  Roger Zelazny

  Way, Monument

  Roger Zelazny (2016). “This Immortal”, p.78, ibooks

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• Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Beautiful, People, Agitation

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.27, Random House

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• And then God gave me insight: this was winter. It would end, in time, but not by my own doing. My responsibility was simply to know the season, and match my actions and inactions to it. It was to learn the slow hard discipline of waiting. It was my season to believe in spite of-to believe in the absence of evidence or emotion, when there's nothing, no bud, no color, no light, no birdsong, to validate belief. It was my time to walk without sight.

  Mark Buchanan

  Believe, Responsibility, Winter

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• Boredom has to be the most life sapping, mental disease you can be afflicted with.The most accurate definition of boredom I have ever heard is this - Boredom is the absence of a creative idea. But there is a simple cure - begin to think immediately of a better way to do something. The creative juices are within you but you must turn on the tap. Those who are bored are not living; they are dying. When their heart stops beating, it will be a mere formality. The best way to do anything has never been thought of. Get on a creative improvement kick and jar others mentally into the same activity.

  Bob Proctor

  Heart, Simple, Thinking

  FaceBook post by Bob Proctor from Apr 28, 2012

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• The chief requisite for the making of a good chicken pie is chicken; no amount of culinary legerdemain can make up for the lack of chicken. In the same way, the chief requisite for the history of science is intimate scientific knowledge; no amount of philosophic legerdemain can make up for its absence.

  George Sarton

  Pie, Way, Culinary

  George Sarton (1918). “The Teaching of the History of Science”

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• Greek culture is pleasant to contemplate because of its great simplicity and naturalness, and because of the absence of gadgets, each of which is sooner or later a cause of servitude.

  George Sarton

  Simplicity, Greek, Culture

  George Sarton (1952). “Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• The orgy of thieving in Iraq has more to do with the character of the people than the absence of restraining troops. And to think that good, decent, law-abiding young British and American men and women laid down their lives to liberate this thieving mob.

  Robert Kilroy-Silk

  Character, Men, Thinking

  The Sunday Express, May 04, 2003.

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• This gathered worship, as Quakers call it, is not only absence of noise. Gathered worship springs from the reverent, silent expectation that God will come among the people. The silence deepens as we feel ourselves drawn beautifully to God and each other. Our hearts and souls burst with thanksgiving-a thanksgiving best expressed by silence. Silence growing from awe is the natural human response to hints of the Divine.

  J. Brent Bill

  Spring, Heart, People

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