Absolutes Quotes - Page 19

• (He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute

  Bruce Sterling

  Men, Finals, Purpose

  Bruce Sterling (2014). “Schismatrix Plus”, p.224, Open Road Media

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• Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Levels, Relative, Values

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.178, Macmillan

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• Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day.

  Vera Nazarian

  Good Morning, Sleep, Adventure

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• Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?

  Jim Butcher

  Heart, Forever, Darkness

  Jim Butcher (2010). “The Dresden Files Collection 1-6”, p.256, Penguin

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• I know it's hard being a single mother baby, he said, but we're talking fundamentals here. Homemade cookies are one of the best parts of christmas. It's an absolute fundamental.

  Dean Koontz

  Mother, Baby, Talking

  Dean Koontz (2002). “Strangers”, p.209, Penguin

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• Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity.

  P. D. James

  Confusing, Identity, Senses

  P. D. James (1984). “Trilogy of Death: Three Complete Novels”, Scribner Book Company

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• You haven't yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior's way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability--to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt. All along I've shown you by example that a warrior's life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior's sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.

  Dan Millman

  Heart, Warrior, Cutting

  Dan Millman (2006). “Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book that Changes Lives”, p.178, H J Kramer

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• New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves... A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute meaningless.

  Henry Miller

  Jobs, New York, Thug

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• No matter what God's power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on our human level and limits himself.

  Jacques Ellul

  Levels, May, Matter

  Jacques Ellul (2011). “Anarchy and Christianity”, p.34, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Opportunity, Thinking

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• But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse

  Cormac McCarthy

  Misery, Humans

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.448, Pan Macmillan

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• This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone.

  Jack London

  Expression, Surrender, Masters

  Jack London, JACK LONDON (2015). “White Fang (Arcadia Classics)”, p.176, Jack London

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• There is no pretending," Jace said with absolute clarity. "I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then.

  Cassandra Clare

  Romantic, Love You, Forbidden Love

  Cassandra Clare (2009). “City of Glass”, p.331, Simon and Schuster

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• [Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

  Tim O'Brien

  War, Evil, Stories

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.66, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I began to wonder whether anything truly existed, whether reality wasn't an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses....If that were true, each of us was living in absolute isolation. The thought terrified me. I was consoled by the idea that I could take that gelatin and mold it to create anything I wanted...At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.

  Isabel Allende

  Reality, Ideas, Blood

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• I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it.

  J. R. Moehringer

  Hero, Black And White, Epic

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• The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters—there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void.... That’s why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Media, Squinting, Inability

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• The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Men

  "Confession". Book by Leo Tolstoy. Chapter 5, translated by David Patterson, 1983.

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• I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete — that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.

  J. D. Salinger

  Opposites, People, Sick

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• Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family,and note the absorption of the person by the persona, the individual by the role. Then multiply the family, and the authority, by some hundreds and see the effect upon a sea-captain, to say nothing of an absolute monarch.Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human; unless it so happens that he is immune to the poison.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Husband, Father, Men

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• Because they claim to be concerned with the welfare of whole societies, governments arrogate to themselves the right to pass off as mere abstract profit or loss the human unhappiness that their decisions provoke or their negligence permits. It is a duty of an international citizenship to always bring the testimony of people's suffering to the eyes and ears of governments, sufferings for which it's untrue that they are not responsible. The suffering of men must never be a mere silent residue of policy. It grounds an absolute right to stand up and speak to those who hold power.

  Michel Foucault

  Eye, Loss, Men

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• It is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see then we will act; in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will be and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.

  William Sloane Coffin

  Important, Leap Of Faith, Matter

  William Sloane Coffin (2004). “Credo”, p.7, Westminster John Knox Press

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• Even though the discples were not aware of it, the presence was with them while they were reviewing the scriptures together on the road. Henceforth, we will catch only a fleeting glimpse of it -- in the study of sacred writings, in other human beings, in liturgy, and in communion with strangers. But these moments remain us that our fellow men and women are themselves sacred; there is something about them taht is worthy of absolute reverence, is in the last resort mysterious, and we will always elude us.

  Karen Armstrong

  Writing, Men, Elude Us

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• Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Self, Order

  Thomas Merton (1972). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.180, New Directions Publishing

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• The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules. Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.

  Craig Ferguson

  Real, Mean, Love Is

  Craig Ferguson (2010). “Between the Bridge and the River: A Novel”, p.108, Chronicle Books

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