Lucidity Quotes

• In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals: lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime.

  Karl Popper

  Views, Simplicity, Moral

  44 Copy quote

• Lucidity is the first purpose of color in music.

  Arnold Schoenberg

  Color, Purpose, Firsts

  28 Copy quote

• If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.

  Zhuangzi

  Mirrors, Water, Mind

  Zhuangzi, Herbert Allen Giles (1909). “Teachings and Sayings of Chuang Tzu”, p.53, Courier Corporation

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The beginning of art is not reason. It is the buried treasure of the unconscious...that unconscious which has more understanding than our lucidity.

  Edgard Varese

  Art, Understanding, Treasure

  9 Copy quote

• Intelligence in chains loses in lucidity what it gains in intensity.

  Albert Camus

  Intelligence, Gains, Intensity

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.36, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind.

  Zhuangzi

  Water, Mind, Faculty

  Zhuangzi, Herbert Allen Giles (1909). “Teachings and Sayings of Chuang Tzu”, p.53, Courier Corporation

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I live neither in the past nor in the future. I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Music, Past, Today

  Igor Stravinsky “An Autobiography”, Library of Alexandria

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that's what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

  Albert Camus

  Giving, Joy, Defeat

  "WIRED Binge-Watching Guide: Fargo" by Jennifer M. Wood, www.wired.com. February 8, 2017.

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone.

  Henri Barbusse

  Echoes, People, Looks

  Henri Barbusse (2005). “The Inferno”, p.65, 1st World Publishing

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident.

  Sidney Lumet

  Directors, Littles, Film

  50 Copy quote

• He has the lucidity which is the by-product of a fundamentally sterile mind.

  Aneurin Bevan

  Personality, Intellectual, Intelligence

  10 Copy quote

• How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Philosophy, Doe, Ephemeral

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2004). “On the Suffering of the World”, p.87, Penguin UK

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lucidity, I maintain, is almost always desirable.

  Yi-Fu Tuan

  Desirable

  Yi-Fu Tuan (2000). “Escapism”, p.23, JHU Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lucid dreaming lets you make use of the dream state that comes to you every night to have a stimulating reality.

  Stephen LaBerge

  Dream, Night, Reality

  "Turning vivid dreams into reality" by Donna Tapellini, www.wired.com. March 19, 2001.

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• The consciousness of lucid dreaming is a cultural evolution. It's something that we are talking about and learning about, not biological evolution.

  Stephen LaBerge

  Dream, Talking, Evolution

  "The Edge of Dreaming". PBS Live Chat, www.pbs.org. August 24, 2010.

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lucid dreaming has considerable potential for promoting personal growth and self-development, enhancing self-confidence, improving mental and physical health, facilitating creative problem solving and helping you to progress on the path to self-mastery.

  Stephen LaBerge

  Dream, Self Confidence, Creative

  59 Copy quote

• The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion... One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Light, Return, Welcome

  "On the Heights of Despair". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1934.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.

  Mark Helprin

  Beautiful, Art, Memories

  Mark Helprin (2017). “Ellis Island and Other Stories”, p.131, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Real, Responsibility, Thinking

  16 Copy quote

• Properly understood, style is not a seductive decoration added to a functional structure; it is of the essence of a work of art. The necessary elements of style are lucidity, elegance, and individuality; these three qualities combine to form a preservative which ensures the nearest approximation to permanence in the fugitive art of letters.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Art, Essence, Seductive

  41 Copy quote

• Sanity is the lot of those who are most obtuse, for lucidity destroys one's equilibrium: it is unhealthy to honestly endure the labors of the mind which incessantly contradict what they have just established.

  Georges Bataille

  Mind, Sanity, Equilibrium

  Georges Bataille (1983). “L'abbé C: A Novel”, Marion Boyars Publishers

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• The spirit of God, like the sun, always gives all its light at once. The spirit of man resembles the pale moon, which has its phases, its absences and its returns, its lucidity and its spots, its fullness and its disappearance, which borrows all its light from the rays of the sun, and which still dares to intercept them on occasion.

  Victor Hugo

  God, Pride, Moon

  9 Copy quote

• Good writing , like gold , combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints.

  Eric Hoffer

  Writing, Mean, Gold

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• You who look at everything through your perpetually open eyes, is your lucidity never bathed in tears?

  Michel Serres

  Eye, Tears, Looks

  Michel Serres (2016). “The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies”, p.52, Bloomsbury Publishing

  12 Copy quote

  Show source