Finite Quotes - Page 20

• Nothing finite is true, is interesting, is worthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all that is exclusive repels me.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Interesting, Attention, Worthy

  "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel". Book by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Mary Augusta Ward, 1882.

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• I dare not think that any supercelestial heaven, or whatsoever else ... was increate and eternal. And as for the place of God before the world created, the finite wisdom of mortal men hath no perception of it; neither can it limit the seat of infinite power, no more than infinite power itself can be limited; for his place is in himself, whom no magnitude else can contain.

  Walter Raleigh

  Men, Thinking, Heaven

  Walter Raleigh (1736). “The History of the World in Five Books”, p.5

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• A miracle is a supernatural event, whose antecedent forces are beyond our finite vision, whose design is the display of almighty power for the accomplishment of almighty purposes, and whose immediate result, as regards man, is his recognition of God as the Supreme Ruler of all things, and of His will as the only supreme law.

  Abbott Eliot Kittredge

  Men, Law, Design

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• With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Air, House, Inspire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.180, Bantam Classics

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• Mathematics has been called the science of the infinite. Indeed, the mathematician invents finite constructions by which questions are decided that by their very nature refer to the infinite. This is his glory.

  Hermann Weyl

  Infinite, Glory, Construction

  Hermann Weyl (1968). “Gesammelte Abhandlungen”

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• When you're trying to get laid, everything's great, but once you've been with someone eight years and the future is not finite, you have time to sit and really examine every little thing that irritates you.

  Richard Linklater

  Eight, Years, Trying

  "The 'Before Midnight' Team: Reunion of the Year 2013". Interview with Lauren Bans, www.gq.com. December 5, 2013.

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• I actually think the creative process is finite, and I'm wondering whether I've retched everything up. Because it's like vomiting or shitting.

  Andy Partridge

  Thinking, Creative, Vomiting

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The ways of Providence cannot be reasoned out by the finite mind ... I cannot fathom them, yet seeking to know them is the most satisfying thing in all the world.

  Selma Lagerlöf

  God, Mind, World

  Selma Lagerlöf (2016). “Jerusalem”, p.62, Library of Alexandria

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• Don't make it sound like that. Like some ordinary sort of grief. It's not like that. They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite. Over. This is a fresh wound every day.

  Cassandra Clare

  Grief, Sound, Ordinary

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.601, Simon and Schuster

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• An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy... If I try self-consciously to become a person, I will never be one. The most real people, those who are able to forget their selfish selves, who have true compassion, are usually the most distinct individuals

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Laughter, Selfish, Real

  "A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals, Book 1)". Book by Madeleine L'Engle (Section 1.10), 1972.

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• The level of sacrifice in the world of dancing is incredibly intense, that work ethic if nothing else - get up, go to class, rehearsal, performance, get up, go to class - that's your life, and it's like that for a finite time, usually.

  Anne-Marie Duff

  Sacrifice, Class, Dancing

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• Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes... Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas.

  Arshile Gorky

  Art, Eye, Men

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• Take the so-called standard of living. What do most people mean by "living"? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives.

  e. e. cummings

  Mean, People, Wife

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• We are accustomed to repeating the cliché, and to believing, that 'our most precious resource is our children.' But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. The true scarcity we face is practicing adults, of people who know how marginal, how fragile, how finite their lives and their stories and their ambitions really are but who find value in this knowledge, even a sense of strange comfort, because they know their condition is universal, is shared.

  Michael Chabon

  Children, Believe, Ambition

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• What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is ‘overruled’ already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In short, they mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business.

  William James

  Holiday, Mean, Responsibility

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• In the end mortals always expired before faeries. They were such finite creatures. Their first heartbeat and breath were but a blink from death. To add the weight of nourishing his insatiable court in a time of peace was to hasten that unconscionably.

  Melissa Marr

  Add, Weight, Firsts

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• Not all possibilities are open to us. The world is finite; our hopes spill over its rim.

  Salman Rushdie

  World, Possibility, Spills

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Laughter, Laughing, Giving

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• Good design is not about form following function. It is function with cultural content. By adding "cultural content" to the concept of "form follows function," objects cease to be finite or predictable. Maybe the right way to interpret the dictum is to first acknowledge that the function needs to be clearly understood before the form is considered.

  Carl Magnusson

  Inspiration, Design, Way

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• Does there exist an Infinity outside ourselves? Is that infinity One, immanent and permanent, necessarily having substance, since He is infinite and if He lacked matter He would be limited, necessarily possessing intelligence since He is infinite and, lacking intelligence, He would be in that sense finite. Does this Infinity inspire in us the idea of essense, while to ourselves we can only attribute the idea of existence? In order words, is He not the whole of which we are but the part?

  Victor Hugo

  Order, Ideas, Inspire

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• I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called 'culture' - and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Strong, Art, Believe

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.1, Zondervan

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• Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Exercise, Sea, Infinite

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

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• I am often tempted to think of success in terms that are defined by others: records sold, popularity gained, album reviews, etc. These are impossible demands, however, and they can never be satisfied. Letting finite others define our worth is a horrible way to live. Only the Infinite Other [God] has the authority to do this.

  Jon Foreman

  Thinking, Albums, Way To Live

  Source: www.timothywillard.com

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• If we forgive God for his crime against us, which is to have made us finite creatures, He will forgive our crime against him, which is that we are finite creatures.

  Simone Weil

  God, Forgiving, Crime

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• Our purity of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we maybe use that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature.

  John Ruskin

  Taste, Causes, Purity

  John Ruskin (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.87, Courier Corporation

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