Oblivion Quotes - Page 7

• She stood a moment before my eyes, clearly and painfully, loved and deeply woven into my destiny; then fell away again in a deep oblivion, at a half regretted distance.

  Hermann Hesse

  Distance, Eye, Destiny

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.140, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.

  Francis Bacon

  Plato, Imagination, Remembrance

  Francis Bacon (2012). “Complete Essays”, p.168, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No nation went into oblivion or was destroyed because it had bad laws, or because its statesmen were not intelligent, but because of INTERNAL CORRUPTION, and because they could not maintain the POWER OF SELF-CONTROL.

  Melvin J. Ballard

  Intelligent, Self, Law

  10 Copy quote

• It is difficult to think of anything more important than providing the best education possible for our children. They will develop the next technologies, medical cures, and global industries, while mitigating their unintended effects, or they will fail to do these things and consign us all to oblivion.

  Sam Harris

  Children, Technology, Thinking

  "A New Year’s Resolution for the Rich" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 29, 2010.

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Finishing, Complaining, Politics

  7 Copy quote

• Ultimately life is disease, death and oblivion. It's still better than high school.

  Dan Savage

  School, Disease, Life Is

  "Q&A With Dan Savage: On Obama, Fox News’ Shepard Smith and Success of ‘It Gets Better’ Project". Interview with Joshua Kors, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 09, 2011.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion.

  Philip Levine

  Sea, Ordinary, Poet

  Philip Levine (2002). “So ask: essays, conversations, and interviews”, Univ of Michigan Pr

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do they see the lethal insanity of a race to the brink of oblivion, and then over the edge? Apparently not. If they did, surely they wouldn't be racing to begin with. Or is it a simple failure of imagination? One doesn't like to think such a rudimentary failing could bring about the end, yet...

  Stephen King

  Simple, Thinking, Race

  Stephen King, Michael Whelan (2004). “The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower”, p.301, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.

  Hannah Arendt

  Past, Able, Neglect

  6 Copy quote

• ...the darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as I think how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power or memory is never heard, never described or passed on.

  W. G. Sebald

  Memories, Thinking, Darkness

  W. G. Sebald (2013). “Austerlitz”, p.34, Penguin UK

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

  Yann Martel

  Life, Beautiful, Jealous

  Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• Knock, knock. You have the day to hide. Come nightfall, we hunt. (Desiderius) Yeah, yeah...you and your little dog, too. (Kyrian) You're not scared of his threats? (Amanda) Chere, the day I fear something like him is the day I lie down at his feet and hand him the knife to cut my heart out. The only fear I have is getting you back to your sister and convincing High Queen Hard Head to leave off this matter until I can locate Desiderius and send his soul into oblivion where it belongs. (Kyrian)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Dog, Queens, Lying

  4 Copy quote

• A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the altar of the Muse Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Sacrifice, Thinking

  Margaret Atwood (2006). “Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005”, p.107, Basic Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sheep-like tendency of human society soon makes inroads on a child's unsophistications, and then popular education completes the dastardly work with its systematic formulas, and away goes the individual, hurtling through space into that hateful oblivion of mediocrity. We are pruned into stumps, one resembling another, without character or grace.

  N. C. Wyeth

  Children, Character, Sheep

  14 Copy quote

• Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

  Alan Moore

  Children, Dark, Sky

  7 Copy quote

• Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.

  Richard Dawkins

  Hands, Forever, Survival

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.56, Oxford University Press

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• The future will erase everything--there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible.

  John Green

  Real, Genius, Levels

  John Green (2008). “An Abundance of Katherines”, p.198, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gabriel pulled her over his body to lie on the bed beside him. His kisses pressed her down into the oblivion of the mattress as her hands explored his chest, his shoulders, his face. "I want to lay my kill at your feet," he said, more growl than words, and held her tight by her hair as he marked her neck with his teeth. She writhed against him. She wanted to bite him, she wanted to rip the flesh from his back, but most terrible of all, she didn't want him to stop. Her back arched, her body shattered, she howled.

  Annette Curtis Klause

  Rip, Lying, Kissing

  4 Copy quote

• Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.

  Robert Macfarlane

  Mountain, Half, Mountain Climbing

  Robert Macfarlane (2004). “Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit”, Vintage Books

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• With that, the poignant charm vanished. Inside the fifth machine, all was rampant malignity. Deformed flowers thrust monstrous horned tusks and trumpets ending in blaring teeth through the crimson walls, rending them; the ravenous garden slavered over its prey and every brick was shown in the act of falling. Amid the violence of this transformation, the oblivion of the embrace went on. The awakened girl, in all her youthful loveliness, still clasped in the arms of a lover from whom all the flesh had fallen. He was a grinning skeleton.

  Angela Carter

  Girl, Wall, Flower

  4 Copy quote

• Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.

  Robert Greene

  Unseen, Attention, Cost

  Robert Greene (2010). “The 48 Laws Of Power”, p.9, Profile Books

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can't tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.

  Noam Chomsky

  Home, Opportunity, Productive Work

  Noam Chomsky (2010). “The Chomsky Reader”, p.179, Pantheon

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• We cheer the presence of an openly gay woman or man on television there are large numbers of people in Virginia and other states who see these public affirmations as another step towards the country's oblivion.

  Mel White

  Country, Cheer, Gay

  4 Copy quote

• The American humorist sat on his couch suffering thoughts of her, trying to figure out how to win back her affections, wondering what had happened between them or just tumbling head-over-heels down into romantic oblivion where the image of a remembered kiss provokes bottomless despair and makes death seem like the right idea.He experienced the basics of love ended.

  Richard Brautigan

  Love, Kissing, Winning

  Richard Brautigan (1976). “Sombrero Fallout”, Simon & Schuster

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most people are living lives of sort of survival. And constantly posing an existential crisis, either through fantasy or oblivion, really has been pretty much explored in rock and roll. At least in the western version of rock n' roll.

  Billy Corgan

  Live Life, Rocks, Rock And Roll

  5 Copy quote