Abyss Quotes - Page 6

• Poetry...the deepest abyss of infinity.

  Sally-Ann Roberts

  Poetry, Infinity

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• Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled!

  Charles Dickens

  Teacher, Spring, Ignorance

  Charles Dickens (1844). “The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, His Relatives, Friends and Enemies: Comprising All His Wills and His Ways, with an Historical Record of what He Did, and what He Didn't ...”, p.245

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• The secret to success, to parenting, to life, is to not count up the cost. Don't focus on all the steps it will take. Don't stare into the abyss at the giant leap it will take. That view will keep you from taking the next small step.

  Regina Brett

  Parenting, Views, Focus

  Regina Brett (2010). “Life's Little Detours: 50 Lessons to Find and Hold onto Happiness”, p.11, Hachette UK

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• He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.

  Simone Weil

  Life, Men, Giving

  Simone Weil (2005). “War and the Iliad”, New York Review of Books

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• He unwittingly takes a false step and plunges into the abyss.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Inspiration, Steps

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• All things are sold: the very light of heaven is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love, the smallest and most despicable things that lurk in the abysses of the deep, all objects of our life, even life itself, and the poor pittance which the laws allow of liberty, the fellowship of man, those duties which his heart of human love should urge him to perform instinctively, are bought and sold as in a public mart of not disguising selfishness, that sets on each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Love, Money, Heart

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1853). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete in One Volume”, p.27

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• Love can become devotion. Love is the first step; only then can devotion flower. But for us even love is a faraway reality, sex is the only real thing. Love has two possibilities: either it falls into sex and becomes a bodily thing, or it rises into devotion and becomes a thing of the spirit. Love is just in between. Just below it is the abyss of sex, and beyond it is the open sky - the infinite sky of devotion.

  Rajneesh

  Sex, Real, Flower

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• Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.

  Blaise Pascal

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Desire

  "Pensées" by Blaise Pascal, (Ch. 72), 1669.

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• I thought, 'There are a lot of poets who have the courage to look into the abyss, but there are very few who have the courage to look happiness in the face and write about it,' which is what I wanted to be able to do.

  Kenneth Koch

  Writing, Looks, Able

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• Far must thy researches go
  Wouldst thou learn the world to know;
  Thou must tempt the dark abyss
  Wouldst thou prove what Being is;
  Naught but firmness gains the prize,
  Naught but fullness makes us wise,
  Buried deep truth e'er lies.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Wise, Lying, Knowledge

  Friedrich Schiller, “The Proverbs Of Confucius”

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• We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Philosophy, Fall, Men

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• But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.

  Anne Lamott

  Grief, Home, Voice

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• It is neither easy nor agreeable to dredge this abyss of viciousness, and yet I think it must be done, because what could be perpetrated yesterday could be attempted again tomorrow, could overwhelm us and our children. One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one's mind: this is a temptation one must resist. In fact, the existence of the death squads had a meaning, a message: 'We, the master race, are your destroyers, but you are no better than we are; if we so wish, and we do so wish, we can destroy not only your bodies, but also your souls, just as we have destroyed ours.

  Primo Levi

  Children, Thinking, Race

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• Now from his breast into the eyes the ache of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea. Few men can keep alive through a big serf to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind: and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

  Homer

  Beach, Husband, Eye

  Homer, Robert Fitzgerald (1963). “The Odyssey”, Anchor

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• And I, infinitesima­l being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, I felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.

  Pablo Neruda

  Stars, Heart, Wind

  Pablo Neruda (1990). “Selected Poems”, p.459, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands. The people who praise us; how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region it takes place. The whole earth a point in space - and most of it uninhabited.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Bothering You, Endless Time, Hands

  Marcus Aurelius (2002). “Meditations: A New Translation”, p.38, Modern Library

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• For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. Such are the autumn people.

  Ray Bradbury

  Stars, Fall, Eye

  "Something Wicked This Way Comes". Book by Ray Bradbury. Chapter 38, 1962.

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• There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Running, Men, Despair

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2011). “Why We Can't Wait”, p.60, Beacon Press

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• The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider. He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Dark, White, Fire

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.346, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Spring, Heart, Love Is

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• It was a sunny day, I was carrying a child in a white dress to be christened. The path to the church led up a steep slope, but I held the child in my arms firmly and without faltering. Then suddenly my footing gave way ... I had enough time to put the child down before plunging into the abyss. The child is our idea. In spite of all obstacles it will prevail.

  Sophie Scholl

  Children, Ideas, White

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• Again and Again, however, we know the language of love, and the little churchyard with its lamenting names and the staggeringly secret abyss in which others find their end: again and again the two of us go out under the ancient trees, make our bed again and again between the flowers, face to face with the skies

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Flower, Language Of Love, Sky

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)”, p.189, Scholastic Inc.

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• Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to feel our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again and again to the ancient constellations that shone on my childhood, comforting myself with the inherited confidence that, some day, this relapse will appear only an interval in the eternal rhythm of progress onward and upward.

  Stefan Zweig

  Heart, Onward And Upward, Childhood

  Stefan Zweig, Wes Anderson (2014). “The Society of the Crossed Keys”, p.20, Pushkin Press

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• When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.

  Antonio Porchia

  Order, Solitude, Needs

  "Voices". Book by Antonio Porchia, 1943.

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• People keep themselves at a tolerable height above an infernal abyss toward which they gravitate only by putting out all their strength and lovingly helping one another. They are tied together by ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around an individual loosen and he drops somewhat lower than the others into empty space; ghastly when the ropes break and he falls. That's why we should cling to the others.

  Franz Kafka

  Fall, Space, People

  Franz Kafka (2013). “Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors”, Schocken

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