Remains Quotes - Page 5

• It has always been my experience that, whatever groupings I choose for my books, the space in which I plan to lodge them necessarily reshapes my choice and, more important, in no time proves too small for them and forces me to change my arrangement. In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long. Like Nature, libraries abhor a vacuum, and the problem of space is inherent in the very nature of any collection of books.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Space, Long

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.65, Vintage Canada

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• Stone and sea are deep in life Two unalterable symbols of the world Permanence at rest And permanence in motion Participants in the power that remains

  Stephen R. Donaldson

  Sea, Two, World

  Stephen R. Donaldson (2012). “Lord Foul's Bane”, p.103, Del Rey

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• So I went to New York City to be born again. It was and remains easy for most Americans to go somewhere else and start anew. I wasn't like my parents. I didn't have any supposedly sacred piece of land or shoals of friends to leave behind. Nowhere has the number zero been of more philisophical value than in the United States.... and when the [train] plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with it's lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Zero, New York, Cities

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• One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Teacher, Existentialism, Pupils

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.120, Penguin

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• There was a small wooden gazebo built out over the water; Isabelle was sitting in it, staring out across the lake. She looked like a princess in a fairy tale, waiting at the top of her tower for someone to ride up and rescue her. Not that traditional princess behavior was like Isabelle at all. Isabelle with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time.

  Cassandra Clare

  Princess, Lakes, Hair

  Cassandra Clare (2010). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (3 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass”, p.547, Simon and Schuster

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• The truth never shines forth, as the saying goes, because the only truth is that which is known to no one and which remains untransmitted, that which is not translated into words or images, that which remains concealed and unverified, which is perhaps why we do recount so much or even everything, to make sure that nothing has ever really happened, not once it's been told.

  Javier Marías

  Shining, Truth Is, Concealed

  Javier Marías, Margaret Jull Costa (2000). “A Heart So White”, p.186, New Directions Publishing

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• No one knows what he himself is made of, except his own spirit within him, yet there is still some part of him which remains hidden even from his own spirit; but you, Lord, know everything about a human being because you have made him...Let me, then, confess what I know about myself, and confess too what I do not know, because what I know of myself I know only because you shed light on me, and what I do not know I shall remain ignorant about until my darkness becomes like bright noon before your face.

  Saint Augustine

  Light, Darkness, Ignorant

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• Katherine Kenton remains among the generation of women who feel that the most sincere form of flattery is the male erection.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Males, Generations, Flattery

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• The One created us all to be free. To learn. To find common cause with others and to grow stronger and wiser. But the ancient enemy perverts that union of strengths. With the enemy, there is no choice, no freedom. They take. They force a joining of all things, until nothing else remains. --Doroga

  Jim Butcher

  Choices, Enemy, Stronger

  Jim Butcher (2006). “Academ's Fury”, p.144, Penguin

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• When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

  John McPhee

  Ocean, Moving, Writing

  "Basin and Range". Book by John McPhee, 1981; reprinted in his book "Annals of the Former World", 1998.

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• The song I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart….. I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house….. But the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house; I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Song, Heart, Agony

  Rabindranath Tagore, “Gitanjali”

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• Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.

  Harlan Coben

  Broken, Reason, Break

  Harlan Coben (2008). “Hold Tight”, p.289, Penguin

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• sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East. And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead. And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Children, Blessing, Men

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1981). “Selected Poems”

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• But there is one thing you must remember, if you forget all else. There is no good or evil, save in the way you see the world. There is no dark or light save in your own vision. All changes in the blink of an eyelid; yet all remains the same.

  Juliet Marillier

  Dark, Light, Evil

  Juliet Marillier (2010). “Daughter of the Forest: Book One of the Sevenwaters Trilogy”, p.464, Macmillan

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• Fall leaves are brilliant with gold and red. You can cup them in your hand and wonder at them, be amazed at their uniqueness and glory. But eventually they are gone, brown, crumbling, scattered on the wind. But the tree remains. The tree is what is important. The tree lives on. That was a difficult knowledge to bear, and an even more difficult life to live. Of course, being the leaf wasn't exactly desirable either.

  Rob Thurman

  Fall, Hands, Wind

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• Peace does not dwell in outward things but within the soul; we may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence to, not an exemption from, suffering.

  Francois Fenelon

  Peace, Pain, Spring

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• There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.

  Erica Jong

  Successful, Artist, Soul

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.210, Open Road Media

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• It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.

  Joseph Conrad

  Stars, Loneliness, Eye

  Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.167, McClure, Phillips & Company

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• The Lord often has his prophets climb mountains to converse with Him. I always wondered why He did that, and now I know the answer: when we are on high, we can see everything else as small. Our glory and sadness lose their importance. Whatever we conquered or lost remains there below. From the heights of the mountain, you see how large the world is, and how wide its horizons.

  Paulo Coelho

  Religious, Sadness, Religion

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• What I felt for you was a combination of respect and affection. There was a closeness I felt through intimate interaction. The affection part is all over with. All that remains is the respect. If I put my arms around you and told you that I missed you, I would be lying. You're alright with me and I wish you well. But you're not me and that makes you one of them and you can only get so close.

  Henry Rollins

  Lying, Wish, Would Be

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• The mishandling of food and equipment with panache was always admired; to some extent, this remains true to this day. Butchers still slap down prime cuts with just a little more force and noise than necessary. Line cooks can't help putting a little English on outgoing plates, spinning them into the pass-through with reverse motion so they curl back just short of the edge. Oven doors in most kitchens have to be constantly tightened because of repeatedly being kicked closed by clog-shod feet. And all of us dearly love to play with knives.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Cutting, Doors, Knives

  Anthony Bourdain (2011). “Tony Bourdain boxset: Kitchen Confidential & Medium Raw”, p.26, A&C Black

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• Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.

  Philip Larkin

  Attitude, Age, Finals

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• The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

  Albert Einstein

  Personality, Creative, Political

  Albert Einstein (2011). “The World As I See It”, p.15, Open Road Media

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• Revenge is never what you think it's going to be. There's no pleasure and glory, and when it's done your grief remains. Once a man does the things you're talking about, he will never be the same, and he can never go back to who he was before. Worst of all, no matter how many enemies you kill, you are never satisfied. There is always one more who deserves it. When it becomes too easy to kill, it never ends.

  Richard Kadrey

  Revenge, Grief, Men

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• In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Philosophy, Passion, School

  Evelyn Underhill (2012). “Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness”, p.38, Courier Corporation

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