Obscurity Quotes

• If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.

  Emily Bronte

  Work, Silence, Effort

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• Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Witty, Time, Powerful

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• Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity.

  Ovid

  Solitude, Wells

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• I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

  Aldous Huxley

  Sunset, Dark, Losing

  1925 Those Barren Leaves, pt.1, ch.1.

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• Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

  Mark Twain

  Life, Happiness, Existence

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.27, St. Martin's Press

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• Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

  Thomas Hardy

  Real, People, Honor

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• How often the highest talent lurks in obscurity.

  Plautus

  Talent, Highest

  "Captivi". I, 2, 62,

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• Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Thus unlamented let me die, Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

  Alexander Pope

  Lying, Unseen, World

  'Ode on Solitude' (written c.1700)

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• Obscurity brings safety.

  Aesop

  Safety

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• The human mind is indeed a cave swarming with strange forms of life, most of them unconscious and unilluminated. Unless we can understand something as to how the motives that issue from this obscurity are generated, we can hardly hope to foresee or control them.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Issues, Mind, Caves

  Charles Horton Cooley (1922). “Human Nature and the Social Order”

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• How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

  Alexander Pope

  Happiness, Sunshine, Literature

  "Eloisa to Abelard" l. 207 (1717)

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• Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Elephants, Poodles, Judgment

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook E 36, 1799.

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• Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Temptation, Armor, World

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• There is no defence against reproach, but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.

  Joseph Addison

  Greatness, Defense, Kind

  "The Works of Joseph Addison".

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• He who has lived obscurely and quietly has lived well.

  Ovid

  Wells

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• It is better to be looked over than overlooked.

  Mae West

  Funny, Sexy, Strong Women

  Belle of the Nineties (motion picture) (1934)

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• There is value in long years of obscurity, if one doesn't go insane or suicidal, in that, simply because nobody is looking, the habit of fooling around and trying things out gets ingrained.

  Jules Olitski

  Suicidal, Years, Long

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• The spirit is often concealed within matter to such an extent that few people are generally capable of perceiving it.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  People, Matter, Spirit

  Wassily Kandinsky, Kenneth Clement Lindsay, Peter Vergo (1994). “Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art”

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• Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting.

  Edmund Burke

  Art, Powerful, Passion

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.93, Penguin

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• Obscurity often brings safety.

  Aesop

  Safety

  Aesop (2015). “Aesop's Fables”, p.38, Pelekanos Books

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• He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Violence, Pushing, Sometimes

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.38

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• We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.

  Tom Stoppard

  Style, Language, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern

  Tom Stoppard (1991). “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead”, Grove/Atlantic

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• All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.

  David Hume

  Ignorance, Understanding, Appearance

  David Hume (1826). “The Philosophical Works: Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Ed. Publ. by the Author”, p.518

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• Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Class, Competition

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1980). “Annals of an Abiding Liberal”, Plume

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• When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Literature, Invisibility, Worship

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