Descending Quotes - Page 4

• Fundamentalists believe that we don't believe in anything. In their view of the world, they are in possession of absolute certainties, while we are descending into decadence. We will be able to triumph over terrorism not by waging war on it, but through a conscious, fearless way of life.

  Salman Rushdie

  War, Believe, Views

  "'Terror Is Glamour'". Spiegel Interview, www.spiegel.de. August 28, 2006.

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• Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has noprescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Men, Events

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1369, Delphi Classics

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• He that contemns a shrew to the degree of not descending to words with her does worse than beat her.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Anger, Degrees, Doe

  Sir Roger L'Estrange (1738). “Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: With Morals and Reflections”, p.455

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• There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of human life,--now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Travel, Feet

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.103, Rowman & Littlefield

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• The sun of her [Great Britain] glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the Channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution, whose issue is not given human foresight to scan.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Philosophy, Issues, Horizon

  Thomas Jefferson (1832). “Notes on the State of Virginia”, p.69

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• My left descending septal branch artery decided to close without consultation with any of my other organs. It happened on Saint Patrick's Day, 1978.

  George Carlin

  Saint, Branches, Arteries

  Source: reprints.longform.org

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• On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.

  Aldo Leopold

  Sky, Wings, New Day

  Aldo Leopold (1968). “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”, p.91, Oxford University Press

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• There will be hoards of vampire bats descending on Beverly Hills.... We'll see if they can find any real flesh to puncture. I don't know.

  Lucy Lawless

  Real, Vampire, Beverly Hills

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• We once discussed which were the cleanest troops in the trenches, taken by nationalities. We agreed on a descending-order like this: English and German Protestants; Northern Irish, Welsh and Canadians; Irish and German Catholics; Scots; Mohammedan Indians; Algerians; Portugese; Belgians; French. We put the Belgians and French there for spite; they could not have been dirtier than the Algerians and the Portugese.

  Robert Graves

  War, Taken, Order

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• One writes such a story [The Lord of the Rings] not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much personal selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one's personal compost-heap; and my mold is evidently made largely of linguistic matter.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Writing, Mean, Dark

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• The Superior Man has nothing to compete for. But if he must compete, he does it in an archery match, wherein he ascends to his position, bowing in deference. Descending, he drinks the ritual cup.

  Confucius

  Character, Men, Archery

  "The Analects". Book by Confucius,

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• Whoever considers the Attributes of Allaah to be like the attributes of the creation, such that the Istawaa of Allaah is like the ascending of the creation, or His Descending (Nuzool) is like the descending of the creation or other than that, then he is a deviated innovator.

  Ibn Taymiyyah

  Ascending, Creation, Attributes

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• Breast feeding activists plan to descend on Washington for a public breast feeding demonstration. Also descending on Washington, thousands of men saying, 'What? I'm looking at the baby.'

  Conan O'Brien

  Baby, Men, Feeding

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• A man descending is propelled by inertia; the only initiative left him is whether or not he decides to enjoy the passing scene.

  Guy Vanderhaeghe

  Men, Initiative, Scene

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• Again the pressure pushes me in the chair, shuts my eyes. I notice the dark red tongues of the flame outside the windows. I'm trying to memorize, fix all the feelings, the peculiarities of this descending, to tell those, who will be conquering space after me.

  Valentina Tereshkova

  Eye, Dark, Space

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• Most of the movies about the future show aliens descending from outer space determined to blow up the world, and somehow they always begin or end with Washington D.C.

  Hillary Clinton

  Blow, Space, World

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• The great and amorous sky curved over the earth, and lay upon her as a pure lover. The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven for both man and animal, for both thick and strong, germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud and brought forth the buds in the orchards. And it is I who empowered these moist espousals, I the great Aphrodite.

  Aeschylus

  Strong, Rain, Animal

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• Religion today is not transforming people; rather it is being transformed by the people. It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to society's own level, and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  People, Victory, Levels

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• However, as words become particularized, and as men begin - in however small a way - to use them in personal, arbitrary ways, so their transformation into art begins. It was words of this kind that, descending on me like a swarm of winged insects, seized on my individuality and sought to shut me up within it. Nevertheless, despite the enemy's depredations upon my person, I turned their universality - at once a weapon and a weakness - back on them, and to some extent succeeded in using words to universalize to my own individuality.

  Yukio Mishima

  Art, Men, Individuality

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• Oh God, Mae," said Jamie in a hollow voice, descending the stairs. "I will never drink again. I'm only seeing in black and white. My arms feel all floppy, like flightless wings. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I looked like a very sad penguin.

  Sarah Rees Brennan

  Black And White, Mirrors, Wings

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• It must be that I am dreaming, and that I shall awaken in a moment to see that awful knife descending toward my heart- kiss me, dear, just once before I lose my dream forever." -Jane-

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Dream, Heart, Kissing

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• There are those who do not hold that there is any innate goodness to mankind. To them I say, had you lived my life, you would not believe it. I have known the depths to which mortals are capable of descending, and I have seen the heights. I have seen how kindness and compassion may grow in the unlikeliest of places, as the mountain flower forces its way through the stern rock.

  Jacqueline Carey

  Kindness, Believe, Flower

  Jacqueline Carey (2016). “Kushiel’s Legacy: (Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, Kushiel's Avatar)”, p.496, Macmillan

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• When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings forth with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man's seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman's sexual organs contract and all parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.

  Hildegard of Bingen

  Strong, Men, Making Love

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• I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which lead to a dark gulf.

  Winston Churchill

  Dark, Islands, Fame

  Winston Churchill (2013). “Never Give In!: Winston Churchill's Speeches”, p.146, A&C Black

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• Scientific, like spiritual truth, has ever from the beginning been descending from heaven to man.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Spiritual, Truth, Men

  Benjamin Disraeli (1875). “Collected Edition of the Novels and Tales”, p.17

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