Abstraction Quotes - Page 14

• Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.

  Joseph Addison

  Dark, Night, Soul

  4 Copy quote

• It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Men, Design

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.25

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Home is where the heart is, we say, rubbing the flint of one abstraction against another.

  Diane Ackerman

  Home, Heart, Home Is Where The Heart Is

  Diane Ackerman (1999). “Deep Play”, Random House Incorporated

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Light is snow sifted / To an abstraction.

  May Sarton

  Light, Snow

  4 Copy quote

• Like many another romance, the romance of the family turns sour when the money runs out. If we really cared about families, we would not let 'born again' patriarchs send up moral abstractions as a smokescreen for the scandal of American family economics.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Running, Romance, Scandal

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm trying not to delve into my world of abstraction and self-indulgence. But I haven't. When I sit down and I try not to [be abstract], it comes out really forced and awkward.

  Spencer Krug

  Self, Awkward, Trying

  Source: pitchfork.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It [destroying Twin Towers] was a leap into another realm - the realm of crazy abstractions and mythological generalities, involving people who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. It's important not to fall into that trap and to try to respond with a metaphysical retaliation of some sort.

  Edward Said

  Crazy, Fall, People

  Source: www.progressive.org

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.

  Jose Saramago

  Struggle, Tire, Persons

  "All the Names" by Jose Saramago, tr. Margaret Jull Costam London: The Harvill Press, (p. 14), 1999.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Psychologically, the teaching of abstractions first is wrong. Indeed, a thorough understanding of the concrete must precede the abstract.

  Morris Kline

  Teaching, Thorough Understanding, Firsts

  11 Copy quote

• The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.

  William James

  Principles, Adequacy, Facts

  4 Copy quote

• I truly believe that to stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live among . . . then I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home . . . If we are not rooted deeply in place, making that commitment to dig in and stay put . . . then I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions. Then we enter a place of true desolation.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Believe, Home, Commitment

  4 Copy quote

• Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the universe has been unknown to us so far. We serve as well as we can to the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Punishment, Afterlife, Expectations

  5 Copy quote

• Lately I feel films are more and more like music. Music deals with abstractions and, like film, it involves time. It has many different movements, it has much contrast. And through music you learn that, in order to get a particular beautiful feeling, you have to have started far back, arranging certain things in a certain way. You can't just cut to it.

  David Lynch

  Beautiful, Cutting, Order

  21 Copy quote

• The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for. Everybody's life really consists of small things. Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favorite fantasy of the ego. The paradox is that the foundation for greatness is the honoring of small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Greatness, Ideas, Ego

  Eckhart Tolle (2009). “A New Earth: Create a Better Life”, p.187, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's a mystical quality of music, that music isn't really concrete, and it's communicating abstractions about imaginary worlds. At least, my music's like that. It's not real. It's unreal, it's all fabrication. To write a song about Obama would suddenly break the spell.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Song, Real, Writing

  Source: thequietus.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Ignorant, Excellence

  William Hazlitt (2005). “The Fight and Other Writings”, p.464, Penguin UK

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wouldn't say I'm a very technical [guitar] player. I'm more intuitive - it's always more about chasing an abstraction.

  Annie E. Clark

  Player, Guitar, Chasing

  Source: pitchfork.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I wrote about "being [abstraction]" I would be ignoring existential issues (such as death, limited-time, the arbitrary nature of the universe, the mystery of consciousness) that I feel affect me most in my life and think about most of the time. Another reason is that it doesn't seem specific or accurate, to me, to write about "being [abstraction]." I think there are some other reasons.

  Tao Lin

  Writing, Thinking, Issues

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I paint - I tend more to abstraction - but not as much as I would like to because of time. I would love to do sculpture - I've toyed with the idea of fitting in a sculpture course.

  Lily Cole

  Ideas, Sculpture, Paint

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Abstraction didn't have to be limited to a kind of rectilinear geometry or even a simple curve geometry. It could have a geometry that had a narrative impact. In other words, you could tell a story with the shapes. It wouldn't be a literal story, but the shapes and the interaction of the shapes and colors would give you a narrative sense. You could have a sense of an abstract piece flowing along and being part of an action or activity. That sort of turned me on.

  Frank Stella

  Simple, Impact, Curves

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Organizing time is exactly like organizing space. Just as a closet is a limited amount of space into which you must fit a certain number of objects, a schedule is a limited space into which you must fit a certain number of tasks. Each day and each week is simply a container, a storage unit with a definite capacity. The trick is to treat time not as an abstraction but as something solid that you can hold on to and move around.

  Julie Morgenstern

  Moving, Numbers, Space

  4 Copy quote

• I am no longer interested in seeing and knowing everything all at once in my work. Technically I select the area of focus and if it's possible I try to make an amalgamation of every shape and color in the picture so that it acquires a circular movement: from representation to abstraction, from life to death, and vice-versa.

  Olivo Barbieri

  Color, Knowing Everything, Focus

  7 Copy quote

• Mandelstam's style is not singular. He could be stately and traditional, ribald and funny, hectic, elegiac. He could handle abstractions and ideas as well as Pope or Browning but then be so musical that other poems approach pure sound.

  Christian Wiman

  Ideas, Musical, Style

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become more and more radical. Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind something.

  Andreas Gursky

  Art, Reality, Desire

  39 Copy quote

• If the photographer is to create works that will stand for his spirit in the same way as artists in other genres, he must first - having no ready-made, abstract components such as works and sounds - supply other means to abstraction instead.

  Yukio Mishima

  Mean, Artist, Firsts

  4 Copy quote