Elements Quotes - Page 21

• By all odds, earliest man, so naked to the elements and to deadly enemies, should have existed in a state of constant shock. We find him instead the only lighthearted being in a deadly serious universe.... He alone, with childish carelessness, tinkered and played, and exerted himself more in the pursuit of superfluities than of necessities. Yet the tinkering and playing, and the fascination with the nonessential, were a chief source of the inventiveness which enabled man to prevail over better-equipped and more-purposeful animals.

  Eric Hoffer

  Animal, Men, Odds

  11 Copy quote

• Pain has an element of blank

  Emily Dickinson

  Pain, Blank

  Emily Dickinson (2006). “Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete”, p.18, Lulu.com

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.

  Herman Melville

  May, Digestion, Aliens

  Herman Melville (2006). “Selected Poems (Melville, Herman)”, p.137, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cold is our element and winter's air
  Brings voices as of lions coming down.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Air, Voice

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.134, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every lover's lament has an element of boasting.

  Mason Cooley

  Love, Boast, Lament

  4 Copy quote

• In lecturing on cookery, as on housebuilding, I divide the subject into, not four, but five grand elements: first, Bread; second,Butter; third, Meat; fourth, Vegetables; and fifth, Tea--by which I mean, generically, all sorts of warm, comfortable drinks served out in teacups, whether they be called tea, coffee, chocolate, broma, or what not. I affirm that, if these five departments are all perfect, the great ends of domestic cookery are answered, so far as the comfort and well-being of life are concerned.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Coffee, Mean, Vegetables

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (2008). “House and Home Papers”, p.230, Applewood Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Mean, Adventure, Ideas

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The criminal element now calculates that crime really does pay.

  Ronald Reagan

  Success, Law, Criminals

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan)., Ronald Reagan, United States. Office of the Federal Register (1982). “Ronald Reagan”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.

  Marcel Proust

  Real, Character, Joy

  4 Copy quote

• True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of varietyis but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Real, Flower

  4 Copy quote

• When I was small child, all that belonged to conservative society was fashionable, and no republicans were welcome in the smartersalons. People living in such a milieu could imagine that the impossibility of ever inviting an "opportunist", much less a "radical", was a thing that would last forever, like gas lamps and horse-drawn omnibuses. But similar to kaleidoscopes turning from time to time, society successively places in various ways elements which were thought to be immutable and creates a new composition.

  Marcel Proust

  Fashion, Horse, Children

  13 Copy quote

• A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others,thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.

  Jacques Barzun

  Lines, May, Three

  Jacques Barzun (1989). “The Culture We Deserve”, p.89, Wesleyan University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Row after row with strict impunity
  The headstones yield their names to the element,
  The wind whirrs without recollection.

  Allen Tate

  Wind, Names, Yield

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.20, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The creative element in the mind of man . . . emerges in as mysterious a fashion as those elementary particles which leap into momentary existence in great cyclotrons, only to vanish again like infinitesimal ghosts.

  Loren Eiseley

  Fashion, Men, Creative

  7 Copy quote

• In verse one can take any damn constant one likes, one can alliterate, or assone, or rhyme, or quant, or smack, only one MUST leave the other elements irregular.

  Ezra Pound

  Poetry, Likes, Damn

  17 Copy quote

• Believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself, or, more accurately, liberating oneself, or, more accurately, being indestructible, or, more accurately, being.

  Franz Kafka

  Believe, Mean, Liberty

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out ofa finite set of elements. All natural languages in their spoken or written form are languages in this sense.

  Noam Chomsky

  Language, Infinite, Natural

  Noam Chomsky (2002). “Syntactic Structures”, p.13, Walter de Gruyter

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Out of the element of participation follows the certainty of faith; out of the element of separation follows the doubt in faith. And each is essential for the nature of faith. Sometimes certainty conquers doubt, but it cannot eliminate doubt. The conquered of today may become the conqueror of tomorrow. Sometimes doubt conquers faith, but it still contains faith. Otherwise it would be indifference.

  Paul Tillich

  Faith, Doubt, Essentials

  Paul Tillich (1958). “Dynamics of faith”

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality. It happens in the center of the personal life and includes all its elements. Faith is the most centered act of the human mind. It is not a movement of a special section or a special function of man's total being. They all are united in the act of faith.

  Paul Tillich

  Faith, Personality, Mind

  "Dynamics of Faith". Book by Paul Tillich, 1957.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some dreams truly are 'impossible dreams.' However, many aren't. Knowing the difference is often one of the first steps to finding your element, because if you can see the chances of making a dream come true, you can also likely see the necessary next steps you need to take toward achieving it.

  Ken Robinson

  Motivational, Dream, Passion

  Ken Robinson Ph.D., Lou Aronica (2009). “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything”, p.127, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's not what happens to us that makes the difference in our lives. What makes the difference is our attitude towards what happens. The idea of luck is a powerful way of illustrating the importance of our basic attitudes in affecting whether or not we find our Element.

  Ken Robinson

  Motivational, Powerful, Attitude

  Ken Robinson, Lou Aronica (2009). “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything”, p.111, Penguin UK

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the strongest signs of being in the zone is a sense of freedom and of authenticity.  When we are doing something that we love and are naturally good at, we are much more likely to feel centered in our true sense of self - to be who we feel we truly are.  When we are in our Element, we feel we are doing what we are meant to be doing and being who we're meant to be.

  Ken Robinson

  Motivational, Passion, Self

  11 Copy quote

• Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Past, Ideas, Feelings

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”, Harvard University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• That one who does not get fun and enjoyment out of every day in which he lives, needs to reorganize his life. And the sooner the better, for pure enjoyment throughout life has more to do with one's happiness and efficiency than almost any other single element.

  George Matthew Adams

  Fun, Doe, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• I think it is a wise course for laborers to unite to defend their interests.... I think the employer who declines to deal with organized labor and to recognize it as a proper element in the settlement of wage controversies is behind the times.... Of course, when organized labor permits itself to sympathize with violent methods or undue duress, it is not entitled to our sympathy.

  William Howard Taft

  Wise, Thinking, Organized Labor

  16 Copy quote