Chaos Quotes - Page 9

• Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Life, Artist, Giving

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Nay, had I pow'r, I should
  Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
  Uproar the universal peace, confound
  All unity on earth.

  William Shakespeare

  Sweet, Unity, Earth

  William Shakespeare (2000). “Macbeth”, p.158, Penguin

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• To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

  Hermann Hesse

  Faith, Mean, Order

  Hermann Hesse (2002). “The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel”, p.169, Macmillan

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• Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.

  Mao Zedong

  Heaven, Excellent, Situation

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• Burning every bridge that I cross to find some beautiful place to get lost.

  Elliott Smith

  Beautiful, Bridges, Burning

  Song: Let's Get Lost, Album: From a Basement on the Hill, 2004

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• I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

  Saul Bellow

  Art, Prayer, Eye

  In George Plimpton Writers at Work (1967) 3rd series, p. 190

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• But to practice leadership, you need to accept that you are in the business of generating chaos, confusion, and conflict

  Ronald A. Heifetz

  Practice, Confusion, Needs

  Ronald A. Heifetz, Marty Linsky, Alexander Grashow (2013). “The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World”, p.203, Harvard Business Press

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• I’m interested in what people do with the chaos in their lives and how they respond to it, and simultaneously what they do with what they feel like are limitations. If they push against these limitations, will they wind up in the realm of chaos, or will they push against limitations and wind up in the world of freedom?

  Philip Roth

  Wind, People, World

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Feb 20, 2012

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• Here's all I know: that the world is uncontrollable. Chaos reigns. That anything and everything might be possible. I won't subscribe to any rational system again. Nothing will bind me.

  Kenneth Oppel

  World, Anything And Everything, Might

  Kenneth Oppel (2012). “Such Wicked Intent: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein, Book Two”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

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• Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night.

  Horace Mann

  Inspirational, Night, Sky

  Horace Mann (1850). “A Few Thoughts for a Young Man: A Lecture, Delivered Before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, on Its 29th Anniversary”, p.72

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• My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. Truly yours, Albert Camus

  Albert Camus

  Summer, Wisdom, Hate

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• So we reach into the raging chaos, and we cling to it, and we tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.

  Anne Rice

  Home, Evil, World

  FaceBook post by Anne Rice from Feb 05, 2017

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• ..Yet if today has no meaning, the past was a Blank and the future is a Chaos.

  Henry Ford

  Past, Today, Blank

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• The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt McLaughlin (2010). “The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.13, North Atlantic Books

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• Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.

  Steven Erikson

  Allies, Poison, Needs

  "Midnight Tides". Book by Steven Erikson, 2004.

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• I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Believe, Ignorance, Carpe Diem

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• An artistic endeavour comes into the world naked, unnamed, and vulnerable. Every creative effort requires the artist to wrest something from nothingness, a purposive cosmos from an apparently indifferent chaos.

  Peter London

  Artist, Creative, Effort

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• He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable

  George Orwell

  Past, Sea, Monsters

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.128, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time.

  Otto Dix

  Inspirational, Motivational, Dream

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• If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Mean, Men, Law

  "United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. March 6, 1947.

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• I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night, Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to reascend.

  John Milton

  Dark, Night, Venture

  John Milton (1732). “Milton's Paradise Lost”

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• All new learning looks at first like chaos.

  Adrienne Rich

  Looks, Firsts

  Adrienne Rich (2011). “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010: Poems 2007–2010”, p.80, W. W. Norton & Company

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• You are never so low that you deserve to be lower.

  Joey Comeau

  Lows, Deserve

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• I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Vocabulary, Work Out, Silence

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.135, Northwestern University Press

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• Hopeless and helpless doth Egeon wend, But to procrastinate his liveless end.

  William Shakespeare

  Hopeless, Ends, Procrastinating

  William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Nicholas Rowe (1744). “The Works of Shakespear”, p.387

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