Incapable Quotes - Page 16

For if you know what you want, and will be content with it, you can be trusted. But if you do not know, your desires are limitless and no one can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.

Alan Watts

Desire, Want, Limitless

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.78, Souvenir Press

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It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.

Christopher Hitchens

Race, Judging, Racist

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I am in no doubt that if you use the term 'luv' in a letter or text message then you are incapable of truly understanding the emotion. Artists have not pored over heartache and unrequited sentimentality for years so that our generation could decide that four letters is simply one too many to express how we feel.

Jon Richardson

Artist, Our Generation, Years

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I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.

Arthur Rimbaud

Strong, Ideas, Suffering

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Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on His anvil into what frame He desires.

Anne Bradstreet

Men, Iron, Grace

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The word 'innocence' means a mind that is incapable of being hurt.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Hurt, Mean, Meditation Practice

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The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.

Albert Camus

Hero, Suffering, Exaltation

Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.49, Vintage

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You will be able to appreciate the influence of such an Engine on the future progress of science. I live in a country which is incapable of estimating it.

Charles Babbage

Country, Appreciation, Science

"Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer". Book by Anthony Hyman, 1982.

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Qhuinn gave in immediately, as he was categorically incapable of denying the female anything — most certainly not one of her hugs. They were even better than her lasagna.

J.R. Ward

Hug, Female, Lasagna

J.R. Ward (2013). “Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.588, Penguin

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You can't blame me. I mean that literally. You're incapable of blaming me. You're human. Being human is choosing freedom over imprisonment, autonomy over dependency, liberty over servitude. You can't blame me because you know (come on, man, you've always known) that the idea of spending eternity with nothing to do except praise God is utterly unappealing. You'd be catatonic after an hour. Heaven's a swiz because to get in you have to leave yourself outside. You can't blame me because -- now do please be honest with yourself for once -- you'd have left, too.

Glen Duncan

Mean, Men, Ideas

Glen Duncan (2002). “I, Lucifer”, p.89, Simon and Schuster

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It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.

Carl Jung

Distance, Men, Tragedy

Carl Gustav Jung (1959). “pt. 1. The archetypes and the collective unconscious”

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Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

Akira Kurosawa

Honesty, Talking, People

Akira Kurosawa, Donald Richie (1987). “Rashomon”, p.122, Rutgers University Press

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April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.

Franz Kafka

Thinking, People, April

Franz Kafka “1914-1923. Tr. by Martin Greenberg, with the co-operation of Hannah Arendt”

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He bombarded me with words, of all things, apparently clueless to the fact that the predawn hours rendered me incapable of coherent thought.

Darynda Jones

Clueless, Facts, Hours

Darynda Jones (2011). “First Grave on the Right”, p.2, Macmillan

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Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet.... If you really have to quote someone, quote a geographer; that way you won't give yourself away. (p 44)

Knut Hamsun

Giving, Ordinary, Way

Knut Hamsun (2011). “Mysteries”, p.33, Souvenir Press

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Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Adversity, Rights, Self

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For many, the regressive belief in superstitions and miracles is an escape from the hardships of life. Once trapped into irrationalism, they become more incapable of mastering reality. It is a vicious circle, like an addiction. They become vulnerable to exploitation by astrologers, godmen, dubious pseudo-psychologists, corrupt politicians and the whole mega-industry of irrationalism.

Sanal Edamaruku

Reality, Circles, Addiction

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You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong?

Jodi Picoult

Mean, Simple, Thinking

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No religion I ever encountered made any sense. None are consistent. Most gods are megalomaniacs and paranoid psychotics by their worshippers' description. I don't see how they could survive their own insanity. But it's not impossible that human beings are incapable of interpreting a power so much greater than themselves. Maybe religions are twisted and perverted shadows of truth. Maybe there are forces which shape the world. I myself have never understood why, in a universe so vast, a god would care about something so trivial as worship or human destiny.

Glen Cook

Destiny, Insanity, Shadow

"The White Rose". Book by Glen Cook, 1985.

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When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation & quite another to experience it. I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing.

Paulo Coelho

Dream, Inspiration, Warrior

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I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.

Richard Rorty

Wish, Able, Heidegger

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Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling... When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we every day experience.

Edmund Burke

Pain, Ideas, Giving

"A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful". Treatise by Edmund Burke, www.bartleby.com. 1757.

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The soul may not be destroyed. The soul goes on forever. Like the number pi, it is without cessation or conclusion. Like pi it is a constant. Pi is an irrational number, incapable of being made into a fraction, impossible to divide from itself. So, too, the soul is an irrational, indivisible equation that perfectly expresses one thing: you.

Joe Hill

Irrational Numbers, Forever, Soul

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The pair of them were staring at the computer screen like two dogs watching animal planet: very focused, but incapable of turning up the volume or changing the channel. -Manny and Butch

J.R. Ward

Dog, Animal, Two

J.R. Ward (2011). “Lover Unleashed: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.188, Penguin

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To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honor - the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.

Graham Greene

Love Is, Two, Honor

Graham Greene (1973). “The Collected Edition: The quiet American”

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