Insensible Quotes - Page 3

• The literal record was not a hopelessly and imperfect fraction of truly insensible gradation within large populations but an accurate reflection of the actual process identified by evolutionists as the chief motor of biological change. The theory of punctuated equilibrium was, in its initial formulation, little more than this insight adumbrated.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Reflection, Population, Records

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• Lo! on a narrow neck of land,
  'Twixt two unbounded seas, I stand.
  Secure, insensible.

  Charles Wesley

  Life, Sea, Land

  Charles Wesley (2014). “Wesley's Hymns and the Methodist Sunday-School Hymn-Book”, p.93, Ravenio Books

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• It is a sure sign of a mind not balanced as it ought to be, when it is insensible to the pleasures of the domestic hearth, and to the little joys and endearments of a family.

  James Ellis

  Family, Joy, Mind

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• The half minute which we daily devote to the winding-up of our watches is an exertion of labour almost insensible; yet, by the aid of a few wheels, its effect is spread over the whole twenty-four hours.

  Charles Babbage

  Half, Four, Wheels

  Charles Babbage (1841). “On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures”, p.38

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• Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.

  Sigmund Freud

  Pain, Powerful, Disappointment

  Sigmund Freud, Peter (AFT) Gay, Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Civilization and Its Discontents”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• But I believe the words entered me and changed me and still work in me. The words eat me and sustain me. And when I'm dead and in a box in the dark dark ground, and all my various souls have died and I am nothing but insensible bones, something in the marrow will still feel yearning, desire persisting beyond flesh.

  Charles Frazier

  Believe, Dark, Soul

  Charles Frazier (2006). “Thirteen Moons: A Novel”, p.129, Random House

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• We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence

  Voltaire

  Intelligent, Ideas, Differences

  Voltaire (2015). “Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary”, p.51, Voltaire

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• The chief benefit, which results from philosophy, arises in an indirect manner, and proceeds more from its secret, insensible influence, than from its immediate application.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Secret, Benefits

  David Hume (1825). “Essays and treatises on several subjects: essays, moral, political and literary”, p.167

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• The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Meditation, He Man

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.279, Simon and Schuster

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• I have been long sensible that while I was endeavoring to render our country the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the public education, and placing our rising generation on the level of our sister states (which they have proudly held heretofore), I was discharging the odious function of a physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient insensible of needing it.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Education, Country, Medicine

  Thomas Jefferson, Nathaniel Francis Cabell, Joseph Carrington Cabell (1856). “Early History of the University of Virginia: As Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, Hitherto Unpublished; with an Appendix, Consisting of Mr. Jefferson's Bill for a Complete System of Education and Other Illustrative Documents; and an Introduction, Comprising a Brief Historical Sketch of the University, and a Biographical Notice of Joseph C. Cabell”, p.366

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• All over the world today, not just in the totalitarian countries, assiduous functionaries in Ministries of Truth are clubbing history dumb and rendering language insensible.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Country, Dumb, Ministry

  E.L. Doctorow (2011). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution:: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, p.71, Random House

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• The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture-aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.

  Stephen Vizinczey

  War, America, Atmosphere

  Stephen Vizinczey (1988). “Truth and Lies in Literature: Essays and Reviews”, p.197, University of Chicago Press

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• The great spirals, with their enormous radial velocities and insensible proper motions, apparently lie outside our Solar system.

  Edwin Powell Hubble

  Lying, Velocity, Astronomy

  Edwin Powell Hubble (1920). “Photographic Investigations of Faint Nebulae ...”

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• All in all, punishment hardens and renders people more insensible; it concentrates; it increases the feeling of estrangement; it strengthens the power of resistance.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Punishment, People, Feelings

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• There are few mortals so insensible that their affections cannot he gained by mildness, their confidence by sincerity, their hatred by scorn or neglect

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Hate, Hatred, Affection

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• Nothing betrays imbecility so much as the being insensible of it.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Betray, Imbecility

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private : Published by the Order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original Manuscripts, Deposited in the Department of State”, p.4

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• Blessed is the mind which, during prayer, is insensible to all things.

  Nilus of Sinai

  Prayer, Blessed, Mind

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• Jane Austin was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman. If this is heresy, I cannot help it.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Austin, Helping, Sensible

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• Let no one ask a stronger mark of an excellent love to God, than that we are insensible to our own reputation.

  Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

  Stronger, Reputation, Excellent

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• When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Luxury, Government, Long

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• Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
  Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
  And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
  Thine individual being, shalt thou go
  To mix forever with the elements,
  To be a brother to the insensible rock
  And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
  Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
  Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.

  William C. Bryant

  Death, Brother, Rocks

  William Cullen Bryant, “Thanatopsis”

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• Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning, indicating a sound body and a mind free from care; but his master, being unable to sleep himself awakened him, saying, "I am amazed, Sancho, at the torpor of thy soul; it seems as if thou wert made of marble or brass, insensible of emotion or sentiment!

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Morning, Sleep, Night

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1866). “Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha”, p.681

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• The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Vanity, Names

  Herman Melville (2006). “Bartleby the Scrivener: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.2, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Sorrow and frustration have their power. The world is moved by people with great discontents. Happiness is a drug. It can make men blind and deaf and insensible to reality. There are times when only sorrow can give to sorrow.

  Winifred Holtby

  Happiness, Frustration, Reality

  Winifred Holtby (1937). “Pavements at Anderby: tales of "South riding" and other regions by Winifred Holtby”

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• Had it not been for you, I should have remained what I was when we first met, a prejudiced, narrow-minded being, with contracted sympathies and false knowledge, wasting my life on obsolete trifles, and utterly insensible to the privilege of living in this wondrous age of change and progress.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Change, Should Have, Progress

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.3719, Delphi Classics

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