Creation Quotes - Page 32

• For better or worse, man is the tool-using animal, and as such he has become the lord of creation. When he is lord also of himself, he will deserve his self-chosen title homo sapiens.

  William Ralph Inge

  Animal, Men, Self

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• The paintings by dead men who were poor most of their lives are the most valuable pieces in my collection. And if an artist wants to really jack up the prices of his creations, may I suggest this: suicide.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Suicide, Artist, Men

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.53, Dial Press

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• Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true Wit or good Sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore often seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Fashion, Laughter, Silly

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.145, OUP Oxford

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• Plots are no more exhausted than men are. Every man is a new creation, and combinations are simply endless.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Men, Plot, Fiction

  Charles Dudley Warner (1872). “Back-log studies and My summer in a garden”, p.87

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• On certain mornings, as we turn a corner,
  an exquisite dew falls on our heart
  and then vanishes.
  But the freshness lingers, and this, always,
  is what the heart needs.
  The earth must have risen in just such a light
  the morning the world was born.

  Albert Camus

  Morning, Fall, Heart

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• It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower -- and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Wise, Spring, Flower

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1852). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.10

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• Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Age, Musician, Philosopher

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994). “The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley”, p.227, Wordsworth Editions

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• Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Rivers, Rolling, Decay

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1853). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete in One Volume”, p.317

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• The history of creation is but a succession of battles between amateurs of genius-inspired heretics- and orthodox professionals.

  Jacques Barzun

  Battle, Genius, Inspired

  Jacques Barzun (1984). “Critical Questions: On Music and Letters, Culture and Biography, 1940-1980”, p.35, University of Chicago Press

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• Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important.

  Lin Yutang

  Art, Thinking, Play

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• An idol tells people exactly what to believe, God presents them with choices they have to make for themselves. The difference is far from insignificant; before the idol men remain dependent children, before God they are burdened and at the same time liberated to participate in the decisions of endless creation.

  Arthur Miller

  God, Children, Believe

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• Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the mysteries of prehistoric creations.

  Pierre Loti

  Fossils, Study, Mystery

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• And we, inhabitants of the great coral of the Cosmos, believe the atom (which still we cannot see) to be full matter, whereas, it too, like everything else, is but an embroidery of voids in the Void, and we give the name of being, dense and even eternal, to that dance of inconsistencies, that infinite extension that is identified with absolute Nothingness and that spins from its own non-being the illusion of everything.

  Umberto Eco

  Believe, Names, Giving

  Umberto Eco (2006). “The Island of the Day Before”, p.487, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Though man is the only beast that can write, he has small reason to be proud of it. When he utters something that is wise it is nothing that the river horse does not know, and most of his creations are the result of accident.

  Edward Dahlberg

  Wise, Horse, Writing

  Edward Dahlberg (1972). “The sorrows of Priapus: consisting of The sorrows of Priapus and The carnal myth”, Not Avail

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• The child is not a prisoner of its inheritance; it holds its inheritance as a new creation which its future actions will unfold.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Children, Inheritance, Action

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• The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Writing, Class, Cities

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• There is no creation without tradition. No one creates from nothing.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Tradition

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• How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation -- for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Mean, Men, Dumb

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• ...that horrible moment of suspense when the artist shows one of his creations to strange eyes for the first time.

  Irving Stone

  Art, Eye, Suspense

  Irving Stone (1981). “Irving Stone, three complete novels”, Random House Value Publishing

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• I cannot be grasped in the here and now,
  For my dwelling place is much among the dead,
  As the yet unborn,
  Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual,
  But still not close enough.

  Paul Klee

  Death, Heart, Dwelling Place

  Paul Klee (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of Paul Klee (Illustrated)”, p.116, Delphi Classics

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• Empathy is not merely the basic principle of artistic creation. It is also the only path by which one can reach the truth about life and society.

  Kafu Nagai

  Compassion, Empathy, Principles

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• In fact, it seems that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial 'Fiat lux' Let there be light uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of the chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore, there is a Creator, God exists!

  Pope Pius XII

  Space, Light, Creator God

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• Creation was given to people as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into people's souls. Sun and moon, night and day, rain, sea, the crops, the flowering tree, all these things were transparent. They spoke to people not of themselves but only of Him who made them. Nature was symbolic. But the progressive degradation of humans led them further and further from this truth. Nature became opaque.

  Thomas Merton

  Nature, Rain, Moon

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• Each of us has a purpose for living beyond our own survival and pleasure. Every individual is like a thread in a beautiful tapestry with a vital contribution to make, not only to the sustenance of life as we know it, but in the creation and development of more beneficial expressions of life.

  John Templeton

  Beautiful, Expression, Survival

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• The mystery of creation was always between two, in an awareness that there was always both a 'thou'and and 'I'.

  Laurens van der Post

  Two, Connections, Mystery

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