Insight Quotes - Page 35

• Dying makes everyone weaker, subject to painful insight, and not always insight into any kind of special truth - it's just the approaching end that makes people want to believe they are seeing something in the line of a great revelation.

  Jeff Lindsay

  Believe, People, Special

  Jeff Lindsay (2009). “Dexter by Design”, p.109, Hachette UK

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• It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I walked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.

  Sherwood Smith

  Hurt, Ideas, Gossip

  "Crown Duel". Book by Sherwood Smith, 1997.

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• In reality, genuine epiphanies are extremely rare. In contemporary adult life maturation & acquiescence to reality are gradual processes. Modern usage usually deploys epiphany as a metaphor. It is usually only in dramatic representations, religious iconography, and the 'magical thinking' of children that insight is compressed to a sudden blinding flash.

  David Foster Wallace

  Religious, Children, Reality

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• By observing natural scientific discoveries through a perception deepened by meditation, we can develop a new awareness of reality. This awareness could become the bedrock of a spirituality that is not based on the dogmas of a given religion, but on insights into a higher and deeper meaning. I am referring to the ability to recognize, to read, and to understand the firsthand revelations.

  Albert Hofmann

  Reality, Discovery, Meditation

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• Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.

  Daniel Dennett

  Philosophy, Imagination, Philosopher

  "Consciousness Explained". Book by Daniel Dennett, 1991.

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• Hey, Sydney. I thought I saw your car out there." He glanced around. "Is, uh, Jill with you?" "Not today." I said. New insight struck me as I recalled that Lee attended school in Los Angeles. "Lee, have you ever dated a human girl at your school?" Adrian arched an eyebrow. "Are you asking him out, Sage?" I scowled. "No!

  Richelle Mead

  Girl, School, Eyebrows

  Richelle Mead (2011). “Bloodlines”, p.90, Penguin

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• Students and scholars of all kinds and of every age aim, as a rule, only at information, not insight. They make it a point of honour to have information about everything, every stone, plant, battle, or experiment and about all books, collectively and individually. It never occurs to them that information is merely a means to insight, but in itself is of little or no value.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Book, Mean, Age

  Arthur Schopenhauer, E. F. J. Payne (1974). “Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays”, p.479, Oxford University Press

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• Plants grow most in the darkest hours preceding dawn; so do human souls. Nature always pays for a brave fight. Sometimes she pays in strengthened moral muscle, sometimes in deepened spiritual insight, sometimes in a broadening, mellowing, sweetening of the fibres of character,—but she always pays.

  William George Jordan

  Spiritual, Character, Fighting

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• It takes a person of great care and insight to watch for any abnormality in the green grass even while it grows abundantly and healthily.

  Kenzaburo Oe

  Watches, Care, Green

  "A Personal Matter". Book by Kenzaburo Oe, 1964.

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• Intelligence is composed mostly of imagination, insight, things that have nothing to do with reason.

  Vivienne Westwood

  Imagination, Reason

  "I don't feel comfortable defending my clothes. But if you've got the money to afford them, then buy something from me. Just don't buy too much" by Carole Cadwalladr, www.theguardian.com. December 1, 2007.

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• And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight-- isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before?

  Jonathan Franzen

  Stronger, Events, Strange

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.305, Macmillan

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• The most compelling insight of that day was that this awesome recall had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid. Everything I had recognized came from the depths of my memory and my psyche. I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability.

  Alexander Shulgin

  Memories, White, Availability

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• What we need to know about loving is no great mystery. We all know what constitutes loving behavior; we need but act upon it, not continually question it. Over-analysis often confuses the issue and in the end brings us no closer to insight. We sometimes become too busy classifying, separating, and examining, to remember that love is easy. It's we who make it complicated.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Love, Romantic, Issues

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• That day, I really believed that I had grasped something and that henceforth my life would be changed. But insights cannot be held for ever. Like water, the world ripples across you and for a while you take on its colours. Then it recedes, and leaves you face to face with the void you carry inside yourself, confronting that central inadequacy of soul which you must learn to rub shoulders with and to combat, and which, paradoxically, may be our surest impetus.

  Nicolas Bouvier

  Water, Soul, Would Be

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• Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like...you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.

  Anne Sexton

  Wise, Thinking, Sometimes

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• A real love letter is made of insight, understanding, and compassion. Otherwise it's not a love letter. A true love letter can produce a transformation in the other person, and therefore in the world. But before it produces a transformation in the other person, it has to produce a transformation within us. Some letters may take the whole of our lifetime to write.

  Nhat Hanh

  Peace, Truth, Real

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2011). “Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh: 365 days of practical, powerful teaching s from the beloved Zen teacher”, p.24, Shambhala Publications

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• The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

  Noam Chomsky

  Philosophical, Issues, Experts

  Noam Chomsky (2010). “The Chomsky Reader”, p.71, Pantheon

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• Mythology is composed by poets out of their insights and realizations. Mythologies are not invented; they are found. You can no more tell us what your dream is going to be tonight than we can invent a myth. Myths come from the mystical region of essential experience.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, Found You, Essentials

  Joseph Campbell, David Kudler (2003). “Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal”, p.19, New World Library

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• Without memory there can be no insight. Without love, there can be no appreciation.

  Anne Rice

  Appreciation, Memories, Without Love

  Anne Rice (1996). “Servant of the Bones”, Random House Large Print Publishing

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• With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight.

  Chris Bohjalian

  Age, Acumen

  Chris Bohjalian (2010). “Secrets of Eden: A Novel”, p.325, Crown

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• Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams.

  Lady Gaga

  Dream, Strong Women, Inspiration

  "Lada Gaga Offers Career, Love Advice". pagesix.com. February 28, 2010.

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• The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.

  Susan Cain

  Art, Thinking, Persistence

  Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.264, Broadway Books

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• Truthfulness itself is almost medication, even when it’s served without advice or insight.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Advice, Medication, Truthfulness

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• Lack of comfort means we are on the threshold of new insights.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Mean, Comfort, Threshold

  Lawrence M. Krauss (2012). “A Universe From Nothing”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. [...] By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.

  Aldous Huxley

  Hands, Solitude, Feelings

  Aldous Huxley (2009). “The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell”, p.10, Harper Collins

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