Perplexed Quotes - Page 3

• It is said that Windham, when he came to the end of a speech, often found himself so perplexed by his own subtlety that he hardly knew which way he was going to give his vote. This is a good illustration of the fallaciousness of reasoning, and of the uncertainties which attend its practical application.

  Augustus William Hare

  Illustration, Giving, Speech

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• Without Virginia, as we must all acknowledge--without her Patrick Henry among the people, her Lees and Jefferson in the forum, and her Washington in the field--I will not say that the cause of American liberty and American independence must have been ultimately defeated--no, no, there was no ultimate defeat for that cause in the decrees of the Most High; but it must have been delayed, postponed, perplexed, and to many eyes and hearts rendered seemingly hopeless.

  Robert Charles Winthrop

  Heart, Eye, Virginia

  Robert Charles Winthrop (1876). “Oration on the Centennial Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence: Delivered in the Music Hall, at the Request of the City Government, Boston, 4 July, 1876”, p.22

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• It is reported in the supplement of the council of Nicæan that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this eloquent procedure has not survived.

  Voltaire

  Father, Book, Atheism

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• Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.

  Steve Allen

  Swimming, Thinking, Animal

  Steve Allen (1998). “Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking : with 101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve Your Mind”

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• I'm often a little perplexed, when I read a review of a book, by the quotes that are pulled out as evidence of excellent prose. I don't think great novels are necessarily composed of great prose, or that there's a correlation between beautiful prose and the quality of a work of fiction. A really good, interesting novel will often let a little ugliness get into its words - to create a certain effect, to leave the reader with a certain sense of disorientation.

  Katie Kitamura

  Beautiful, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• But-" Maia, still looking at Alec and Magnus, broke off and rasied her eyebrows. Simon turned to see what she was looking at - and stared. Alec had his arms around Magnus and was kissing him full on the mouth. Magnus, who appeared to be in a state of shock, stood frozen. Several groups of people - Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike - were staring and whispering. Glancing to the side, Simon saw the Lightwoods, their eyes widen, gaping at the display. Maryse had her hand over her mouth. Maia looked perplexed. "Wait a second," she said. "Do we all have to do that, too?

  Cassandra Clare

  Eye, Kissing, Hands

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• Men who have seen life and death... as an unbroken continuum, the swinging pendulum, have been able to move as freely into death as they walked through life. Socrates went to the grave almost perplexed by his companions' tears.

  Voltaire

  Spiritual, Moving, Men

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• If you look at a photograph, and you think, 'My isn't that a beautiful photograph,' and you go on to the next one, or 'Isn't that nice light?' so what? I mean what does it do to you or what's the real value in the long run? What do you walk away from it with? I mean, I'd much rather show you a photograph that makes demands on you, that you might become involved in on your own terms or be perplexed by.

  Duane Michals

  Beautiful, Running, Real

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• What are your thoughts?' 'My thoughts?' I replied, before I even realized what I was saying. 'My thoughts created my world.' Mac sat up in his seat. He scrunched his curls with his hands, perplexed. 'Who said that?' I told him the truth. 'Oh, just someone I used to know,' I said, stroking the naked skin on my middle finger.

  Megan McCafferty

  Hands, Skins, Curls

  Megan McCafferty (2006). “Charmed Thirds: A Jessica Darling Novel”, p.319, Broadway Books

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• He was so excited by this little bit of intelligence that he might have gone off, perplexed, pondering for a long time. It was like reading a wonderful sentence in a book, and not being able to continue because so many possibilities were crowding his mind.

  Anne Rice

  Book, Reading, Long

  Anne Rice (2012). “The Wolf Gift”, p.373, Random House

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• September has come, it is hers Whose vitality leaps in the autumn, Whose nature prefers Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace. So I give her this month and the next Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already So many of its days intolerable or perplexed But so many more so happy. Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls Dancing over and over with her shadow Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls And all of London littered with remembered kisses.

  Louis MacNeice

  Wall, Autumn, Kissing

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Autumn Journal”, p.14, Faber & Faber

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• Society, during the last hundred years, has been alternately perplexed and encouraged, respecting the two great questions -how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of, in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand, and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?

  Dorothea Dix

  Hands, Order, Years

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• I think an increasing number of Republicans are perplexed and actually nervous about Donald Trump and Russia, nervous in the sense that he is gratuitously giving Democrats the national security advantage, that they're standing up for the country.

  Mark Shields

  Country, Thinking, Russia

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I'm completely perplexed how someone who has most of the mainstream media for Hillary Clinton, well all the mainstream media, well most of the media for her, she's got a sitting president - a sitting First Lady far more popular than she'll ever supposed to be, a former president also her husband, the sitting vice president, a thousand people working in Brooklyn, she has all these states locked up and she can't crack 50% and stay there.

  Kellyanne Conway

  Husband, Media, People

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• The biggest questions that always have perplexed me are "Where do I come from?" and "Where am I going?" The "Where do I come from?" question, which I think I largely am answering now, is about what quantum physics teaches us. If you try to find your source, you are not going to find it in a tiny little particle that began with your parents commingling.

  Wayne Dyer

  Thinking, Parent, Trying

  "Interview With New Age Retailer". Interview with Ray Hemachandra, www.drwaynedyer.com. November, 2005.

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• Women are the essential part of the theater but the writers are not writing about women. I think they're too perplexed about the whole female situation probably.

  Bette Davis

  Writing, Thinking, Essentials

  "Listen to Bette Davis Stick it to Sexists in a 1963 Interview" by Megan Friedman, www.elle.com. October 1, 2014.

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• Elegant and lucid . . . a pitch-perfect clarion call, issued not with preachy hubris but from a deep place of humility, for awakening to the greatest rewards of living . . . The Road to Character is an essential read in its entirety-Anne Lamott with a harder edge of moral philosophy, Seneca with a softer edge of spiritual sensitivity, E. F. Schumacher for perplexed moderns.

  Maria Popova

  Spiritual, Philosophy, Character

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• It seems to me that Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed, not so much by our famous problem of identity, important as that is, as by a series of paradoxes in what confronts that identity. It is less perplexed by the question "Who am I?" than by some such riddle as "Where is here?

  Northrop Frye

  Important, Identity, Problem

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham, Jean O'Grady, David Staines (2003). “Northrop Frye on Canada”, p.346, University of Toronto Press

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• The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?

  Milan Kundera

  Thinking, Ideas, Mad

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• The Christian is joyful, not because he is blind to injustice and suffering, but because he is convinced that these, in the light of the divine sovereignty, are never ultimate. The Christian can be sad, and often is perplexed, but he is never really worried, because he knows that the purpose of God is to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

  D. Elton Trueblood

  Sad, God, Faith

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• So I was doing well academically, and I was a well-ranked tennis player and was the apple of my handsome father's eye-and then I would bring home a report card with a B-plus on it, and my parents would look at the report card as if I'd flunked. "Uh, honey?" one of them would ask, looking perplexed. "Now, this isn't a criticism but, if you could get a B-plus in philosophy, how much harder would it have been to get an A-minus?"

  Anne Lamott

  Father, Philosophy, Eye

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.21, Anchor

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• My wretched dragon is perplexed.

  William Butler Yeats

  Inspirational, Life, Dragons

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.148, Wordsworth Editions

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• The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they took the migrant way to the West.... And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a mysterious new place, ... a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream.

  John Steinbeck

  Country, Dream, Lonely

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• If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.

  Saint Augustine

  Book, Scripture, Contradiction

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• I'm an amateur at music and an amateur at most things. I like the idea of offering some music and some records and a website to people who feel perplexed.

  Ezra Furman

  Offering, Ideas, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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