Certainty Quotes - Page 39

• What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

  Michael Cunningham

  Thinking, Two, People

  "Fictional character: Virginia Woolf". "The Hours", www.imdb.com. 2002.

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• I brought Hassan’s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty

  Khaled Hosseini

  Son, America, Hassan

  Khaled Hosseini (2010). “The Complete Khaled Hosseini: Digital box set”, p.162, A&C Black

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• People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person’s faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next.

  Sam Harris

  Strong, People, Desire

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.225, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect; they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Life Is, Fame, Boundaries

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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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• The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.

  Milan Kundera

  Horse, Men, Order

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1884.

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• What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be what it may, it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Sweet, Heart, Sunset

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (2008). “Uncle Toms Cabin: Life Among the Lowly: Easyread Large Edition”, p.95, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

  Milan Kundera

  Attitude, People, Stupidity

  "Siraaj: An Arab Tale". Book by Radwa Ashour and Barbara Romaine, 2007.

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• There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.

  Tao Lin

  Mistake, Loneliness, Long

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• Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Feelings, Doubt

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.124, Lulu.com

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• It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all.

  Graham Greene

  Animal, Thinking, People

  Graham Greene (1982). “The power and the glory”, Viking Pr

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• Sometimes we have the absolute certainty there's something inside us that's so hideous and monstrous that if we ever search it out we won't be able to stand looking at it. But it's when we're willing to come face to face with that demon that we face the angel.

  Hubert Selby, Jr.

  Angel, Able, Faces

  FaceBook post by Hubert Selby, Jr. from Jan 27, 2017

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• Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.

  Bertrand Russell

  Real, Thinking, Self

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.10, Lulu.com

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• These worst mornings with cold floors and hot windows and merciless light - the soul's certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.

  David Foster Wallace

  Fall, Sleep, Soul

  "Infinite Jest". Book by David Foster Wallace, February 1, 1996.

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• When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience- if only he had had them both at once- would surely have seen them both through.

  Ian Mcewan

  Girl, Self, His Love

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• The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions … and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the “divine irresponsibility” of the condemned man.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Suicide, Men, Fascination

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• One of the few certainties in life is that persons of certainty should certainly be avoided.

  Willy Russell

  Certainty In Life, Life Is, Should

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• The core of science is not a mathematical modeling--it is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrained by good evidence and good argument.

  Sam Harris

  Honesty, Intellectual, World

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• To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

  Isaac Newton

  Nature, Science, Men

  "Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton". Book by Richard S. Westfall, p. 643, 1704.

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• He had thought more than other men, and in matters of the intellect he had that calm objectivity, that certainty of thought and knowledge, such as only really intellectual men have, who have no axe to grind, who never wish to shine, or to talk others down, or to appear always in the right.

  Hermann Hesse

  Men, Objectivity, Shining

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.8, Macmillan

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• And yet we knew, for a certainty, that when first emissaries of Earth went walking among the planets, Earth's other sons would be dreaming not about such expeditions but about a piece of bread.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Dream, Son, Would Be

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• What I envy most about you and everyone else heading back to school is the certainty of it all. You’ve got a prescribed set of requirements to guide you through the next few years. Focus your energy on the completion of those assignments and you’ll succeed. Guaranteed. Where’s my syllabus to guide me through life?

  Megan McCafferty

  School, Years, Envy

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• Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing...Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation.

  Oswald Chambers

  Sadness, Mean, Expression

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• I'm a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black,...an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.

  Octavia Butler

  Ambition, Oil And Water, Feminist

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• This pause in time, within time ... When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is only possible with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one's own, one's certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship.

  Muriel Barbery

  Self, Serenity, Solitude

  "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". Book by Muriel Barbery, September, 2008.

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