Descent Quotes - Page 2

• In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth.

  C. Wright Mills

  World, Hierarchy, Publicity

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Power Elite”, p.73, Oxford University Press

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• After 1980, you never heard reference to space again. Surface, the most convincing evidence of the descent into materialism, became the focus of design. Space disappeared.

  Arthur Erickson

  Convincing Evidence, Space, Focus

  Speech to McGill University School of Architecture, www.arthurerickson.com. October 21, 2000.

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• Though born in Nova Scotia, I am of almost pure New England descent.

  Simon Newcomb

  England, Nova Scotia, Novas

  Simon Newcomb (1903). “The reminiscences of an astronomer”, Harper and Brothers

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• My parents were both from extremely different backgrounds. My father's Italian, my mother was of Swedish descent. They're both first-generation Americans.

  Susan Lucci

  Mother, Father, Italian

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• I'm of Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese descent, and was raised on Hawaii.

  Tia Carrere

  Chinese, Hawaii, Filipino

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Deconstructing the concept of race not only conflicts with people's tendency to classify and build family histories according to common descent but also ignores the work of biologists studying non-human species.

  J. Philippe Rushton

  Race, People, Common

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• Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!! The devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather.

  Charles Darwin

  Passion, Evil, Grandfather

  Charles Darwin (2010). “Evolutionary Writings: including the Autobiographies”, p.33, OUP Oxford

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• A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.

  William James

  Pain, Spring, Loss

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.140, Courier Corporation

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• Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan's egg.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Swans, Ugly Duckling, Eggs

  Hans Christian Andersen (2016). “Best Fairy Tales”, p.129, Pan Macmillan

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• For what we cannot accomplish, what is denied to love, what we have lost in the anticipation a descent follows, endless and indestructible.

  William Carlos Williams

  Anticipation, Lost, Endless

  1948 Paterson, bk.2,'Sunday in the Park',1.

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• It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one...the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

  Mark Twain

  Animal, Men, Favors

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• Night was falling. Birds were singing. Birds were, it occurred to me to say, enacting a frantic celebration of day's end. They were manifesting as the earth's bright-colored nerve endings, the sun's descent urging them into activity, filling them individually with life nectar, the life nectar then being passed into the world, out of each beak, in the form of that bird's distinctive song, which was, in turn, an accident of beak shape, throat shape, breast configuration, brain chemistry: some birds blessed in voice, others cursed; some squeaking, others rapturous.

  George Saunders

  Song, Blessed, Fall

  George Saunders (2013). “Tenth of December: Stories”, p.57, Random House

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• If your descent is from heroic sires, Show in your life a remnant of their fires.

  Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

  Life, Fire, Ancestry

  "Satires (Satire 5)". Book by Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux, 1716.

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• Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Character, Birth Place, Principles

  Theodore Roosevelt (2015). “Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century”, p.36, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he was dying in a foreign land, "The descent to Hades is the same from every place.

  Diogenes Laertius

  Men, Grieving, Land

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• The descent is often as much (or more of) a challenge as the climb.

  Steve House

  Challenges, Climbs

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

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• At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Race, Savages

  Charles Darwin (2016). “The Descent of Man (Diversion Classics)”, p.218, Diversion Books

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• I was born and raised in New York City, Manhattan, uptown.

  Ana Ortiz

  New York, Cities, Uptown

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• Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.

  Joseph Conrad

  Laughter, Lying, Exaggeration Is

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Napoleonic Novels: The Rover & Suspense: From the Renowned Author of The Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.400, e-artnow

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• At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Race, Doubt

  Charles Darwin (2008). “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex”, p.201, Princeton University Press

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• His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

  James Joyce

  Life, Fall, Snow

  Dubliners "The Dead" (1914)

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• And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.

  J. K. Rowling

  Heart, Men, Hair

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• The descent into matter must be complete before the ascent to spirit can commence.

  Dion Fortune

  Ascent, Matter, Spirit

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• Tanya Ward Goodman, writing with a big heart, clear eyes, and a light touch, allows us a privileged glimpse into the shabby, enchanted world of traveling carnivals, roadside attractions, and a beloved, eccentric father’s descent into Alzheimers. Just as her dad animated the handcarved, miniature western world of Tinkertown from coat hangers, inner tubes and old sewing machine motors, Tanya Ward Goodman has fashioned her complex and often hilarious memories into a beguiling, wry, and moving work of art.

  Michelle Huneven

  Art, Dad, Memories

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• The Infinite alone exists and is Real; the finite is passing and false. The Original Whim in the Beyond caused the apparent descent of the Infinite into the realm of the seeming finite. This is the Divine Mystery and Divine Game in which Infinite Consciousness for ever plays on all levels of finite consciousness.

  Meher Baba

  Real, Games, Play

  "The Everything and the Nothing". Book by Meher Baba, 1963.

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