Looking Away Quotes

• I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things:—then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love from henceforth!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Beautiful, Amor, Want

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.223, Vintage

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• Looking away is submissive. Looking [..] in the eye is a challenge.

  Veronica Roth

  Eye, Challenges, Submissive

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• The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.

  Philip Pullman

  Thinking, Ideas, Soap Bubbles

  Philip Pullman (2015). “His Dark Materials: The Complete Trilogy”, p.233, Random House

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• The grand difficulty is to feel the reality of both worlds, so as to give each its due place in our thoughts and feelings, to keep our mind's eye and our heart's eye ever fixed on the land of promise, without looking away from the road along which we are to travel toward it.

  Augustus William Hare

  Future, Heart, Eye

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• If enough of us stop looking away and decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one.

  Naomi Klein

  Decision, Climate, Levels

  Naomi Klein (2014). “This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• God is to be found not by stepping aside from the flow of daily life into religious moments and environments, or by looking away from creation to a spiritual realm beyond, but rather by entering attentively the depths of the present moment. There we will find God

  John Philip Newell

  Spiritual, Religious, Flow

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• My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.

  Frank O'Hara

  Eye, Blue, Sky

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.197, Univ of California Press

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• Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Heart, Eye, Piano

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• He stares at me, and I don't look away. He isn't a dog, but the same rules apply. Looking away is submissive. Looking him in the eye is a challenge. It's my choice.

  Veronica Roth

  Dog, Eye, Choices

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• There were many ways of not burdening one's conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything.

  Richard von Weizsaecker

  War, Responsibility, Holocaust

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• I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Beautiful, War, Wish

  1882 Die fro« hliche Wissenschaft ( The Gay Science), section 276 (translated by WKaufmann).

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• It must be because you're so approachable", I say flatly. "You know, like a bed of nails." He stares at me, and I don't look away. He isn't a dog but the same rules apply. Looking away is submissive. Looking him in the eye is a challenge. It's my choice. Heat rushes into my cheeks. What will happen when this tension breaks? But he just says, "Careful, Tris.

  Veronica Roth

  Dog, Eye, Choices

  Veronica Roth (2013). “The Divergent Series Complete Collection: Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant”, p.39, Harper Collins

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• There was the man who seemed to be attempting to decieve his ball and lull it into a false sense of security by looking away from it and then making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Golf, Men, Lightning

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• Gabbe jumped up and seized the cocanut first, giving its contents a sniff. "Arriane, she has just been through a trama," she scolded. Arriane tossed her shoulders back. "Precisely why she needs something with a kick," she argued, holding the tray possessively while she and Gabbe engaged in a stare-down. "Fine," Arriane said, looking away from Gabbe.

  Lauren Kate

  Giving, Needs, Firsts

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• Holmes had cultivated the ability to still the noise of the mind, by smoking his pipe and playing nontunes on the violin. He once compared this mental state with the sort of passive seeing that enables the eye, in a dim light or at a great distance, to grasp details with greater clarity by focusing slightly to one side of the object of interest. When active, strained vision only obscures and frustrates, looking away often permits the eyes to see and interpret the shapes of what it sees. Thus does inattention allow the mind to register the still, small whisper of the daughter of the voice.

  Laurie R. King

  Daughter, Distance, Eye

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• For the rest of my life I'll be thinking about that hamburger. I'll be sitting there at the counter, holding it in my hands with tears streaming down my cheeks. The waitress will be looking away because she doesn't like to see kids crying when they are eating hamburgers.

  Richard Brautigan

  Kids, Thinking, Hands

  Richard Brautigan (2011). “So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away”, p.1, Canongate Books

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