Abyss Quotes - Page 11

• I wish there were shortcuts to wisdom and self-knowledge: cuter abysses or three-day spa wilderness experiences. Sadly, it doesn't work that way. I so resent this.

  Anne Lamott

  Wisdom, Self, Wish

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• The grand canyon which yawns between the writer's concept of what he wants to capture in words and what comes through is a cruel abyss.

  Fannie Hurst

  Want, Canyons, Grand Canyon

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• ... see well how it often befalls that to rise to the topmost degree would make it seem that the abyss is on high.

  Diane de Poitiers

  Degrees, Wells, Seems

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• In America, snobs who wouldn't be seen dead with a lottery ticket play the stock market. We like to gamble. Winning, we have closed our eyes, leapt across the yawning abyss, and landed knee-deep in daisies. Even losing has a certain gloomy glamour: the gods of chance are worthy opponents; we have engaged them in hand-to-hand combat and though we lost, at least we shrank not from the contest.

  Barbara Holland

  Eye, Winning, Yawning

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• I was watching souls going down into the abyss as thick and fast as snowflakes falling in the winter mist.

  Benedict Joseph Labre

  Fall, Winter, Soul

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• All roads lead to the earth; the abyss leads to God. Jump!

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Earth

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• Before me is the abyss. How can I leap across it? And if I do not leap, how shall I ever be able to reach God?

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Able, Leap, Ifs

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• Every consession gives rise to further concessions, we cannot back down, because behind us there is only an abyss, we must keep our promises and demand that they be kept.

  Vaclav Havel

  Giving, Promise, Demand

  "Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala". Book by Václav Havel, translated by Paul Wilson. Chapter 5: "The Politics of Hope", p. 110, 1990.

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• Nine million people - nine million people lost their jobs [in 2008]. Five million people lost their homes. And $13 trillion in family wealth was wiped out.Now, we have come back from that abyss. And it has not been easy.

  Hillary Clinton

  Jobs, Home, People

  Source: time.com

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• The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity , with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights ... It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides.

  William James

  Breathing, White, Rights

  "Essays in Radical Empiricism". Book by William James, Ch. 12 : Absolutism and Empiricism, 1912.

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• Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss.

  Max Muller

  Bridges, Arches, Pillars

  "Chips from a German Workshop, Volume I: Essays on the Science of Religion". Book by Max Müller, p. 45, 1867.

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• I wish more of the web had stayed nonprofit. But the advertising model took over and I think has delivered us to where we are, along with the development of content, which is designed to do nothing else but make you click on it or share it. And I think it's kind of a low goal for content, and I think that's taken us to our current abyss.

  Tim Wu

  Taken, Thinking, Goal

  Source: www.npr.org

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• There are African leaders who have the dangerous habit of leading their people into an abyss. In Rwanda we've had presidents who killed. The one million people who died here were, to a certain extent, victims of their leader, President Juvénal Habyarimana, who died in a plane crash before the genocide began. He contributed to all that. The man who took over from him was running around ordering people to kill. If this president came back and landed in my hands, I would have him arrested and tried. Unfortunately, he died a natural death.

  Paul Kagame

  Running, Men, Hands

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What is in me dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the heighth of this great Argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.

  John Milton

  God, Heart, Dark

  John Milton (2013). “Paradise Lost Simplified!: Includes Modern Translation, Study Guide, Historical Context, Biography, and Character Index”, p.9, BookCaps Study Guides

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• The damned are in the abyss of Hell, as within a woeful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments, in all their senses and members, because as they have employed all their senses and their members in sinning, so shall they suffer in each of them the punishment due to sin.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Punishment, Cities, Suffering

  "Introduction to the Devout Life". Book by Saint Francis de Sales, Pt. 2, ch. 15, 1609.

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• We are a great capitalist society, that works most of the time. We do need to take better care of our people and fix the access, cost, and quality of healthcare. But we need to act intelligently. We needed the intervention of government to keep the economy from falling into an abyss, but we must now encourage the creation of business - not burden it.

  James A. Champy

  Fall, People, Quality

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• There's something so scary about trying out new material and being completely comfortable jumping into the abyss with a comedic idea.

  Judd Apatow

  Jumping, Ideas, Scary

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. March 1, 2011.

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• As a child walking over a slippery and dangerous path cries out, "Father, I am falling!" and has but a moment to catch his father's hand, so every believer sees hours when only the hand of Jesus comes between him and the abysses of destruction.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  Jesus, Children, Father

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 89, 1895.

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• I must admit to a personal lack of sympathy with women who have themselves photographed in black stockings, garter belts and boots, with bare breasts, bananas, and coy, come-hither glances.... A woman using her own face and body has a right to do what she will with them, but it is a subtle abyss that separates men's use of women for sexual titillation from women's use of women to expose that insult.

  Lucy R. Lippard

  Men, Black, Use

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• The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts. This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Heart, Men, Anchors

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.80, Stanford University Press

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• For every seeing soul, there are two absorbing facts - I, and the abyss.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Two, Soul, Facts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph H. Orth, Glen M. Johnson (1994). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.314, University of Missouri Press

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• I think we all try to figure out ways to ignore the fact that life is about suffering. In the modern world, that's what we're surrounded with. We have all these little tools, such as phones and the Internet, to help us forget about suffering. Whenever you are tired, you don't have to really sit in the abyss of what it means to be alive. We always find ways to avoid it. When a ship sinks, you are sitting in it. There is no way to avoid.

  Matt de la Pena

  Tired, Mean, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Ah, what balance is needed at
  the edges of such an abyss.
  I am left alone on the surface
  of a turning planet. What
  to do but, like Michelangelo's
  Adam, put my hand
  out into unknown space,
  hoping for the reciprocating touch?

  R. S. Thomas

  Hands, Space, Balance

  "Between Here and Now" by R. S. Thomas, ("Threshold", p. 110), 1981.

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• Hark! o'er the dread abyss the sea-bird screams-- The rocks resound--again the lightning gleams!

  John Ramsay

  Rocks, Sea, Bird

  John Ramsay (1836). “Poems”, p.9

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• The literary game is the abyss of human society itself: interactive, playful and tragic. We can't live alone. For me, Robinson [Crusoe] is either a false myth or else he represents the denial of human society. We can't play by ourselves. In literature, it's even more complicated, because one has to play with an indeterminate number of players simultaneously and every game is different. The other player can abandon your game at any time...to go play chess.

  Dumitru Tepeneag

  Player, Games, Numbers

  Source: therumpus.net

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