Grasping Quotes - Page 3

• The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War’s roots are in ignorance. Without understanding we can easily become frightened by life’s fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death. Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be satisfying.

  Jack Kornfield

  Running, Pain, Disappointment

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• Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? That is the question. Presumably it is not arbitrary question, "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing"- this is obviously the first of all questions. Of course it is not the first question in the chronological sense [...] And yet, we are each touched once, maybe even every now and then, by the concealed power of this question, without properly grasping what is happening to us. In great despair, for example, when all weight tends to dwindle away from things and the sense of things grows dark, the question looms.

  Martin Heidegger

  Dark, Despair, Example

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• When I return to the world, I will be a man. I will walk among you. I will lick my lips with my small, dexterous tongue. I will shake hands with other men, grasping firmly with my opposable thumbs. And I will teach all people that I know. And when I see a man or a woman or a child in trouble, I will extend my hand, both metaphorically and physically. I will offer my hand. To him. To her. To you. To the world. I will be a good citizen, a good partner in the endeaver of life that we all share.

  Garth Stein

  Children, Men, Hands

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• Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I'm at the end of my strength. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses of by Leopardi that Daniel Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to gird himself with courage.

  Roberto Bolano

  Writing, Hair, Bridges

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• As infants, our first victory comes in grasping some bit of the world, usually our mother's fingers. Later we discover that the world, and the things of the world, are grasping us, and have been all along.

  Stephen King

  Mother, Victory, World

  Stephen King (2008). “Just After Sunset: Stories”, p.220, Simon and Schuster

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• He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Stupid, Romance, Heartless

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.471, Diversion Books

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• [Wise men] have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.

  Charles Fort

  Wise, Art, Stars

  Charles Fort (2014). “LO!”, p.5, Lulu.com

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• If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Believe, Water, Wish

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• The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law.

  Emma Goldman

  Past, Average, Law

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.63, 谷月社

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• Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.

  Karl Popper

  Mean, Winning, Games

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.280, Routledge

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• We perceive and interpret the outer world through a set of incredibly fine internal receptors. But we are incapable, by ourselves, of grasping or tweezing out any permanent, sharable figment of it. Practically speaking, we ritually verify what is there, and are disposed to call it reality. But, with photographs, we have concrete proof that we have not been hallucinating all our lives.

  Max Kozloff

  Reality, World, Photograph

  Max Kozloff (1979). “Photography & Fascination: Essays”

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• The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means toward it.

  Doris Lessing

  Country, Mean, Knowing

  "The Golden Notebook (Free Women: 1)". Book by Doris Lessing, 1962.

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• Grasping the structure of a subject is understanding it in a way that permits many other things to be related to it meaningfully. To learn structure in short, is to learn how things are related.

  Jerome Bruner

  Understanding, Way, Structure

  Jerome S. BRUNER (2009). “The Process of Education, Revised Edition”, p.7, Harvard University Press

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• Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate 'me,' and in turn the sense of 'me' strengthens itself this way.

  Adyashanti

  Giving, Ego, Mind

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• The interests of Oregon for today and in the future must be protected from the grasping wastrels of the land. We must respect another truism - that unlimited and unregulated growth, leads inexorably to a lowered quality of life.

  Tom McCall

  Land, Oregon, Growth

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• How will we experience the world a month, a year, or five years from now? Will we be even angrier, more grasping and fearful, or will some shift have occurred? This depends entirely on the tendencies we reinforce today.

  Pema Chodron

  Motivational, Years, World

  Pema Chodron (2007). “No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva”, p.41, Shambhala Publications

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• The substitution of meaning accounts for the grasping of misers as well as the extravagance of spendthrifts. Karl Marx well understood this peculiar transformation of flesh into coin.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Flesh, Peculiar, Extravagance

  "Money And Class In America: Notes And Observations On Our Civil Religion" by Lewis H. Lapham, (Chapter 8, Holy Dread, p. 211), 1989.

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• Even if you have not awakened, if you realize that your perceptions and activities are all like dreams and you view them with detachment, not giving rise to grasping and rejecting discrimination, then this is virtually tantamount to awakening from the dream.

  Muso Soseki

  Dream, Views, Giving

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• In the case of complex personalities the matter stands thus: one of these can understand other men better than they can understand themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation and comprehension.

  Otto Weininger

  Character, Men, Opposites

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.110, Рипол Классик

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• Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as Garfield Gets Spayed, and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: In Search of Excellence, Finding Excellence, Grasping Hold of Excellence, Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It, etc.

  Dave Barry

  Book, Humorous, Night

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• We do not realize how deeply our starting assumptions affect the way we go about looking for and interpreting the data we collect. We should recognize that nonhuman organisms need not meet every new definition of human language, tool use, mind, or consciousness in order to have versions of their own that are worthy of serious study. We have set ourselves too much apart, grasping for definitions that will distinguish man from all other life on the planet. We must rejoin the great stream of life from whence we arose and strive to see within it the seeds of all we are and all we may become.

  Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

  Men, Order, Data

  Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Roger Lewin (1996). “Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind”, Wiley

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• The American Colossus was fiercely intent on appropriating and exploiting the riches of all continents - grasping with both hands, reaping where he had not sown, wasting what he thought would last forever. New railroads were opening new territory. The exploiters were pushing farther and farther into the wilderness. The man who could get his hands on the biggest slice of natural resources was the best citizen. Wealth and virtue were supposed to trot in double harness.

  Gifford Pinchot

  Men, Hands, Land

  Gifford Pinchot (1998). “Breaking New Ground”, p.23, Island Press

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• If worldviews or metanarratives can be compared to lenses, which of them brings things into the sharpest focus? This is not an irrational retreat from reason. Rather, it is about grasping a deeper order of things which is more easily accessed by the imagination than by reason.

  Alister E. McGrath

  Order, Imagination, Focus

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• We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.

  Charlie Munger

  Trying, Esoteric, Remember

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• The only cause of happiness is love. The only cause of suffering is self grasping.

  Garchen Rinpoche

  Self, Suffering, Causes

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