Depth Quotes - Page 26

• He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.

  Jack London

  Dog, Fighting, Law

  Jack London (2016). “Klondike Two Pack: The Call of the Wild and White Fang”, p.51, Lulu.com

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• In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.

  Sigmund Freud

  Heart, Men, Fellow Man

  Sigmund Freud (2014). “Freud Verbatim”, p.33, The Overlook Press

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• And wasn't my mind also like another crib in the depths of which I felt I remained ensconced, even in order to watch what was happening outside? When I saw an external object, my awareness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, lining it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever directly touching its substance; it would volatize in some way before I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body brought near a wet object never touches its moisture because it is always preceded by a zone of evaporation.

  Marcel Proust

  Spiritual, Order, Touching

  Marcel Proust (2003). “Swann's Way”, Viking Press

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• the depth of a person's character is not measured by his or her physical strength, but by the depth of his or her nobility.

  Frank Peretti

  Character, Physical Strength, Nobility

  Frank E. Peretti (2001). “No More Victims”, Thomas Nelson Incorporated

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• I have a head for heights it's true, but no stomach for the depths. Strange then to have plumbed so many.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Height, Strange, Stomach

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.17, Random House

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• only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Relationship, Alive, Sound

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• The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.

  Victor Hugo

  Gratitude, Men, Joy

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• Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Morning, Giving, Lasts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.90, Harvard University Press

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• We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to whither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops - which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.

  William Peter Blatty

  Life, Revenge, Circles

  "The Exorcist". Book by William Peter Blatty, 1971.

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• You can have your pick of pretty women. Why me? You're like the ocean, Pattyn. Pretty enough on the surface, but dive down into your depths, you'll find beauty most people never see. Lucky me. I fell in, headfirst.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Ocean, People, Pretty Woman

  Ellen Hopkins (2013). “Burned”, p.396, Simon and Schuster

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• Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.

  Doris Lessing

  Two, People, Needs

  Doris Lessing (1973). “The Grass is Singing”, p.67, Heinemann

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• she acquired the certainty of the expansion of time by depth of emotion, range and infinite multiplicity of experience.

  Anais Nin

  Expansion, Emotion, Infinite

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• We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

  Carl Sagan

  Inspirational, Motivational, Atheist

  "President Obama Quotes Carl Sagan at Rutgers: 'Embrace What is True Rather Than What Feels Good'" by Hemant Mehta, www.patheos.com. May 15, 2016.

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• The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters—there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void.... That’s why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Media, Squinting, Inability

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• I have come to think that life is a far more limited thing than those in the midst of its maelstorm realize. That light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment -
  perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and failed to grasp its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of one's life in hopeless depth of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look forward to anything. All that such a person holds in his hands is the withered corpse of what should have been.

  Haruki Murakami

  Loneliness, Twilight, Thinking

  "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Book by Haruki Murakami, August 25, 1995.

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• Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them--I look upon good novels--as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater breadth and depth and fewer constraints.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Heart, Mind, Looks

  Patrick O'Brian (2004). “Master and commander ; Post captain ; H.M.S. Surprise ; The Mauritius command”

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• To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors.

  Irving Stone

  Trying, Endeavor, Dangerous

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

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• The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Intelligent, People, Confusion

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• Once committed to fight, cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut. That is your duty, your purpose, your hunger. There is no rule more important, no commitment that overrides that one. Cut. Cut from the void, not from bewilderment. Cut the enemy as quickly and directly as possible. Cut decisively, resolutely. Cut into the enemy’s strength. Flow through the gaps in his guard. Cut him. Cut him down utterly. Don’t allow him a breath. Crush him. Cut him without mercy to the depths of his spirit." -Richard Rahl

  Terry Goodkind

  Crush, Commitment, Fighting

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• And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she'd felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist's gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Kindness, Loneliness, Eye

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.224, Random House

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• His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything -- for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment before the sun rose and the hospital staff came in. It was about touching that hair with the side of his fingertip, and knowing yet plumbing fearlessly the depths of her ocean eyes.

  Alice Sebold

  Mother, Ocean, Eye

  Alice Sebold (2014). “The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic”, p.198, Pan Macmillan

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• Nowadays, if a man living in a civilized country (ha!) hears cannon blasts in his sleep, he will, of course, mistake them for thunderclaps, gun salutes on the feast day of the local patron saint, or furniture being moved by the slime-buckets living upstairs, and go right on sleeping soundly. But the ringing of the telephone, the triumphal march of the cell phone, or the doorbell, no: Those are all sounds of summons in response to which the civilzed man (ha-ha!) has no choice but to surface from the depths of slumber and answer.

  Andrea Camilleri

  Country, Mistake, Sleep

  Andrea Camilleri (2009). “August Heat”, p.11, Penguin

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• Culture is an elevated expression of the inner voice which the different peoples of the Earth have heard in the depths of their being, a voice which conveys the vibrant compassion and wisdom of the cosmic life. For different cultures to engage in interaction is to catalyze each other's souls and foster mutual understanding.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Karma, Peace, Compassion

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• The institutions of human society treat us as parts of a machine. They assign us ranks and place considerable pressure upon us to fulfill defined roles. We need something to help us restore our lost and distorted humanity. Each of us has feelings that have been suppressed and have built up inside. There is a voiceless cry resting in the depths of our souls, waiting for expression. Art gives the soul's feelings voice and form.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Karma, Art, Peace

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• That swimming, sloping, elusive something about the dark-bluish tint of the iris which seemed still to retain the shadows it had absorbed of ancient, fabulous forests where there were more birds than tigers and more fruit than thorns, and where, in some dappled depth, man's mind had been born.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Swimming, Dark, Men

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1951). “Speak, Memory: A Memoir”

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