Ciphers Quotes - Page 2

• A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man.

  Frederic Chopin

  Heart, Men, Long

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• Time has an undertaking establishment on every block and drives his coffin nails faster than the steam riveters rivet or the stenographers type or the tickers tick out fours and eights and dollar signs and ciphers.

  John Dos Passos

  Death, Time, Block

  John Dos Passos (1934). “Three Plays: The Garbage Man, Airways, Inc., Fortune Heights”

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• I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, All all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems. Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward and outward and forever outward.

  Walt Whitman

  Night, Space, Forever

  Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.73, NYU Press

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• History is a living horse laughing at a wooden horse. History is a wind blowing where it listeth. History is no sure thing to bet on. History is a box of tricks with a lost key. History is a labyrinth of doors with sliding panels, a book of ciphers with the code in a cave of the Saragossa sea. History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it.

  Carl Sandburg

  Horse, Book, Doors

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• Twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. If you go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers. You develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you’re about to surrender, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly.

  Paolo Giordano

  Destiny, Numbers, Space

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• It is not an arbitrary "decree of God," but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and effect. By this veil, which curtains events, it instructs the children of men to live in to-day.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Men, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.63, Coyote Canyon Press

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• It may come as a surprise to many that there are ciphers (coded messages indicated by a letter or group of letters) in the Bible. Some are hidden; some, when revealed, are a key part of the narrative itself

  Chuck Missler

  Keys, Messages, Groups

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• The spiritual quality of earth: eternally pregnant and containing in its fertility the unwritten cipher of cosmic lore.

  Lady Frieda Harris

  Spiritual, Quality, Earth

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• Women from earliest times have been used as conveniences of communication with unseen, inaccessible powers, but always in the sense that such exposing of self to dangerous mysteries, such destruction of the understanding as was required to become the slave of unseen powers, did not matter because the communicant was only a woman, in herself an undetermined cipher - a nothing.

  Laura Riding

  Communication, Self, Understanding

  "The Idea of God". "Essays from 'Epilogue' 1935-1937". Book by Laura Riding, Robert Graves, and Mark Jacobs, 2001.

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• It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.

  Anita Diament

  Daughter, Mother, Children

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• Today at school I will learn to read at once; then tomorrow I will begin to write, and the day after tomorrow to cipher. Then with my acquirements I will earn a great deal of money, and with the first money I have in my pocket I will immediately buy for my papa a beautiful new cloth coat. But what am I saying? Cloth, indeed! It shall be all made of gold and silver, and it shall have diamond buttons. That poor man really deserves it; for to buy me books and to have me taught he has remained in his shirt sleeves... And in this cold! It is only fathers who are capable of such sacrifices!

  Carlo Collodi

  Beautiful, Father, Book

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• It's no accident that Op. 111 attracts literary attention. Though it's music, it doesn't quite behave like it. It seems to be charged with meaning, to communicate in symbols, ciphers, clues.

  Jeremy Denk

  Attention, Clue, Communicate

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• The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.

  Michael Caine

  Class, People, Guy

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• I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Mother, Father, Writing

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• Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper circling round Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd. Yet was he kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declar'd how much he knew, 'Twas certain he could write and cipher too.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Morning, Laughter, Writing

  Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted VILLage”

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• In my mind, New York was the place where they had the underground rap shows and I could get in on some ciphers and just rap. This whole fantasy world I had created in my head about New York just from listening to the music my whole life, like, I'ma go up there and do that. But when I came up here, there was none of that, that scene was dead.

  J. Cole

  New York, Rap, Listening

  "J. Cole Talks Roc Nation, Meeting Jay-Z & 'The Warm Up' Mixtape". Interview with Damien Scott, www.complex.com. May 2, 2009.

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• An enormous amount of scientific language is metaphorical. We talk about a genetic code, where code originally meant a cipher; we talk about the solar system model of the atom as though the atom were like a sun and moon and planets.

  Steven Pinker

  Moon, Atoms, Sun

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• A man can't retire his experience.

  Bernard Baruch

  Retirement, Experience, Retiring

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• All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid stages to the level of sheer morons. Everyone knows that this is true of government, but we often forget that it is equally true of private undertakings. In the average great bank, or railroad, or other corporation the burden of management lies upon a small group. The rest are ciphers.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Smart, Lying

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.121, Knopf

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• Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what Orwell called the official truth. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as functionaires, functionaries, not journalists.

  John Pilger

  Lying, Grieving, Journalist

  "Interview with John Pliger" by David Barsamian, progressive.org. July 16, 2007.

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• I've never been the straight rapper that is going to stand in a cipher and battle all day. I started off battle rapping, but to me, making songs became more important than freestyles... I've met many rappers who can freestyle but can't make a record.

  Queen Latifah

  Song, Rap, Battle

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• He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Age, Tasks

  Francis Bacon (2015). “Bacon's Essays: Top Essays”, p.69, 谷月社

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• I applaud strong government, but not overweening government sustained by cronies, ciphers and a personality cult.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Strong, Government, Personality

  "Thatcher warns of 'dictatorship'". www.cnn.com. June 1, 2001.

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• Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars . . . Beethoven embraced the universe with the power of his spirit . . . I do not climb so high. A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man.

  Frederic Chopin

  Stars, Heart, Men

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