Descent Quotes

• The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

  William H. Gass

  Writing, Expression, Movement

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• Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

  Immanuel Kant

  Self, Way, Hell

  "The Metaphysics of Morals". Book by Immanuel Kant, Ak 6:441, 1797.

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• The descent to Hades is the same from every place.

  Anaxagoras

  Death, Suicide, Hades

  "The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" by Diogenes Laërtius, (Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers), c. 200 A.D..

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• My life has been one long descent into respectability.

  Mandy Rice-Davies

  Long, Has Beens, Respectability

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Between the desire And the spasm, Between the potency And the existence, Between the essence And the descent, Falls the Shadow.

  T. S. Eliot

  Fall, Essence, Shadow

  T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.75, Faber & Faber

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• Whether we're conscious of it or not, our work and personal lives are made up of daily rituals, including when we eat our meals, how we shower or groom, or how we approach our daily descent into the digital world of email communication.

  Chip Conley

  Communication, Email, Meals

  "What’s Your Daily Offering?" by Chip Conley, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 29, 2011.

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• It is really laughable to see what different ideas are prominent in various naturalists' minds, when they speak of 'species'; in some, resemblance is everything and descent of little weight-in some, resemblance seems to go for nothing, and Creation the reigning idea-in some, descent is the key,-in some, sterility an unfailing test, with others it is not worth a farthing. It all comes, I believe, from trying to define the undefinable.

  Charles Darwin

  Believe, Science, Keys

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.10203, Delphi Classics

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• I'm of Nigerian descent, from the Yoruba tribe. Names are very significant in that culture. It basically states your purpose in life.

  Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

  Names, Culture, Purpose

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• For let us not underestimate the Christian: the Christian, false to the point of innocence, is far above the ape-regarding Christians, a well known theory of descent becomes a mere compliment.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Christian, Apes, Innocence

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• I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Facts, Ancestry, Ancestor

  W. S. Gilbert, Ian C. Bradley (2016). “The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan”, p.637, Oxford University Press

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• I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower from, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Law, Mind

  Charles Darwin (1883). “The Descent of Man and Seletion in Relation to Sex”, p.613, Рипол Классик

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• I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

  Mark Twain

  Science, Animal, Men

  Mark Twain (1973). “What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings”, p.81, Univ of California Press

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• My individual, psychological descent coincided, ironically, with my ascent into the public eye.

  Joni Mitchell

  Eye, Ascent, Psychological

  "Midnight and Cerulean: The Joni Mitchell Blues" by Kristen Bialik, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 29, 2012.

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• Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say, 'It is wrong for Black people to be anti-Semitic,' or 'It is wrong for America to discriminate against persons of African descent and made them slaves and based its wealth upon free labor,' it's crucial to say that.

  Henry Louis Gates

  America, People, Black

  "Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr". "The Tavis Smiley show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. March 19, 2008.

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• When we say Afro American, we include everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent. South America is America. Central America is America. South America has many people in it of African descent.

  Malcolm X

  America, People, Hemisphere

  Malcolm X (1992). “By any means necessary”, Pathfinder Pr

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• There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent.

  Charles Baudelaire

  God, Men, Two

  Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.73, Courier Corporation

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• I'm often mistaken for Spanish or Latin descent.

  Rita Ora

  Latin, Mistaken

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• Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Patriotism, Critique

  "Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. March 19, 2008.

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• Facilis decensus averni. The descent into hell is easy.

  Virgil

  Hell, Easy

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• When anyone seriously pursues an art - painting, poetry, sculpture, composing - over twenty or thirty years, the sustained discipline carries the artist down to the countryside of grief, and that descent, resisted so long proves invigorating. . . . As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.

  Robert Bly

  Art, Grief, Years

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• If you know the history of the whole concept of whiteness if you know the history of the whole concept of the white race, where it came from and for what reason you know that it was a trick, and it's worked brilliantly. You see, prior to the mid to late 1600s, in the colonies of what would become the United States, there was no such thing as the white race. Those of us of European descent did not refer to ourselves by that term really ever before then.

  Tim Wise

  White, Race, United States

  "The Pathology of Privilege: Racism". Speach produced by Media Education Foundation, 2008.

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• We see only the simple motion of descent, since that other circular one common to the Earth, the tower, and ourselves remains imperceptible. There remains perceptible to us only that of the stone, which is not shared by us; and, because of this, sense shows it as by a straight line, always parallel to the tower, which is built upright and perpendicular upon the terrestrial surface.

  Galileo Galilei

  Science, Simple, Towers

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• Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.

  Seneca the Younger

  Ancestry, Brag, Boast

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Family, Men, Care

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• I would say to you that Americans of Hispanic descent want desperately to give their children the chances they never had.

  Marco Rubio

  Children, Giving, Want

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