Abyss Quotes - Page 15

• For as long as I am alive, I will not rest in my desire to lead my people out of an abyss of corruption and poverty.

  Fawzia Koofi

  Long, People, Desire

  "Will Fawzia Koofi Be Afghanistan's First Female President?" by Fawzia Koofi, www.thedailybeast.com. January 6, 2012.

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• Is it not better to intimate our astonishment as we pass through this world if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yeast of the abyss? I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Hands, World

  "Emerson: The Mind on Fire". Book by Robert D. Richardson, p. 122, March 6, 1995.

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• Dead voices, lost sounds, forgotten noises, vibrations lockstepping into the abyss and now too distant ever to be recaptured!...What sort of arrows would be able to transfix such birds?

  Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

  Voice, Arrows, Bird

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• Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men. Every valuable thing that has been added to the store of man's possessions has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by them when they had the power. They have fought every new truth ever heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their hands.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Hands, Progress

  "Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun". "The Impossible Mencken" by H. L. Mencken, June 29, 1925.

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• If you feel uncomfortable on stage, you can very easily descend into a sort of abyss, convinced you're the worst actor ever, that you're a disgrace to the profession, that you're a disgrace to yourself. It's an awful feeling.

  Stephen Dillane

  Feelings, Actors, Awful

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I see many black males grasping for some thread of hope. There are so many destructive practices, glimpses into a psychic abyss. That must be very frightening.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Psychics, Practice, Black

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• Oh you who have been removed from God in his solitude by the abyss of time, how can you expect to reach him without dying?

  Mansur Al-Hallaj

  Death, Solitude, Dying

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• Shut your eyes, wait, think of nothing. Now, open them ... one sees nothing but a great coloured undulation. What then? An irradiation and glory of colour. This is what a picture should give us ... an abyss in which the eye is lost, a secret germination, a coloured state of grace ... loose conciousness. Descend with the painter into the dim tangled roots of things, and rise again from them in colours, be steeped in the light of them.

  Paul Cezanne

  Eye, Thinking, Light

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• I have seen a place-its name is Eternal Hatred It is built in the deepest abyss of the stones of mortal sin. Pride was the first stone-this was seen in Lucifer.

  Mechthild of Magdeburg

  Pride, Names, Hatred

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• God is infinite and without end, but the soul's desire is an abyss which cannot be filled except by a Good which is infinite; and the more ardently the soul longeth after God, the more she wills to long after him; for God is a Good without drawback, and a well of living water without bottom, and the soul is made in the image of God, and therefore it is created to know and love God.

  Johannes Tauler

  God, Long, Water

  Gottesfreund (im Oberland.), Rulman Merswin, Johannes Tauler (1857). “The history and life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler of Strasbourg: with twenty-five of his sermons (Temp. 1340)”, p.293

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• [For men] to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.

  John Ruskin

  Men, Long, Political

  John Ruskin (2012). “Selections From the Works of John Ruskin”, p.215, tredition

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• Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence, --the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all.

  Emma Goldman

  Struggle, Mean, Men

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.25, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• I've been to unpretty places with the roles I've played, and I'm attracted to reckless abandon. I like being taken to the edge of my own abyss.

  Rhys Ifans

  Taken, Roles, Reckless

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• And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Passion, Reflection, Effort

  Edgar Allan Poe (2013). “Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination - Illustrated By Arthur Rackham”, p.15, Read Books Ltd

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• As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

  Maurice Maeterlinck

  Dark, Thinking, Glasses

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• Nothing can throw thee into the infernal abyss so much as this detested word - heed well! - this mine and thine.

  Angelus Silesius

  Thee, Wells, Mines

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• I thought this must be obvious to everyone else, as it seemed obvious to me; and that, if once it became apparent that we were on the edge, all the Great Powers would call a halt and recoil from the abyss.

  Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon

  Halt, Obvious, Recoil

  "Twenty-Five Years: 1892-1916". Book by Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, 1925.

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• The Way is empty, yet inexhaustible, like an abyss!

  Laozi

  Taoism, Way, Empty

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• What poetry is asking us to accept can be difficult. Our proximity to our mortality, the fragility of our existence, how close we live in every moment to nameless abysses, and the way language itself is beautifully, tragically, thrillingly insufficient...these are some of the engines that drive the poem. It's natural to want to turn away from these things. But we have to face them, as best we can, at least sometimes. Poetry can help us in that nearly impossible work.

  Matthew Zapruder

  Helping, Impossible, Language

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many
  proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many
  magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the
  Christians; so many sages philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their
  deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their
  own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then
  ever before from applause.

  Tertullian

  Christian, Expression, Flames

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• Do you fear death? Do you fear that dark abyss? All your deeds laid bare. All your sins punished. I can offer you...an escape.

  Davy Jones

  Dark, Deeds, Sin

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• When you gaze long into the Abyss of Sustainability, the Abyss of Sustainability also gazes into you.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Long, Sustainability

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• Through small apertures we glimpse abysses whose sombre depths turn us faint. And yet over the whole there hovers an extraordinary tenderness.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Life, Glimpse, Aperture

  "The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857".

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• We are stratified creatures, creatures full of abysses, with a soul of inconstant quicksilver, with a mind whose color and shape change as in a kaleidoscope that is constantly shaken.

  Pascal Mercier

  Color, Soul, Mind

  Pascal Mercier (2008). “Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel”, p.334, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

  Dodie Smith

  Long, Insanity, May

  Dodie Smith (2017). “I Capture the Castle: Young Adult Edition”, p.345, St. Martin's Griffin

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