Rift Quotes

• Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Fall, Ties, Discovery

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• The little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Girl, Sex, Teaching

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2014). “Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)”, p.581, Jazzybee Verlag

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• You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.

  John Keats

  Artist, Might, Curb

  Letter to Shelley, August 1820, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 2, p. 323; echoing Edmund Spenser 'The Faerie Queen' (1596) bk. 2, canto 7, st. 28, l. 5: 'And with rich metal loaded every rift'

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• Now, you mummy's darlings, get a rift on them boots. Definitely shine em, my little curly-headed lambs, for in our mob, war or no war, you die with clean boots on.

  Gerald Kersh

  War, Shining, Navy

  Gerald Kersh (1945). “Sergeant Nelson of the Guards”, J.C. Winston Company

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• It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Music, Silence, Littles

  'Idylls of the King' (1842-85) 'Merlin and Vivien' (1859) l. 388

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• You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and 'load every rift' of your subject with ore.

  Bob Dylan

  Artist, Forgive Me, Poetry

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• Know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Joy, Deeds, Knows

  "Meditations". Book by Marcus Aurelius. Book XII, 29,

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• The Rift, which was well over a thousand pages of manuscript, took two years.

  Walter Jon Williams

  Years, Two, Pages

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• I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Men, Clouds, Sky

  Ernest Shackleton (2004). “South: The Endurance Expedition”, p.149, Penguin

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• It took us a long time to find out that we had been lied to by our parents' generation. The moralities that were followed during our parents' generation were basically arbitrary. This caused a rift between the two generations, which was brought on by the beatniks

  Peter Fonda

  Two, Long, Parent

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• In spite of all evidence that life is discontinuous, a valley of rifts, and that random chance plays a great part in our fates, we go on believing in the continuity of things, in causation and meaning. But we live on a broken mirror, and fresh cracks appear in its surface every day.

  Salman Rushdie

  Believe, Fate, Play

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• Love should be our walk and our talk.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Should, Walks, Divisiveness

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• "The ego is created by the rift. When you are fighting, the ego comes in; when you are not fighting, the ego cannot come in. Ego is a tension. If you want the ego, then divide yourself as fully as possible - become two persons. That is what is happening to many people, that is what has happened to whole of humanity. Everybody has become two persons: one voice says "Do this," the other voice says "Don't do that" - then the ego arises. Out of friction ego arises, and ego is very intoxicating; it makes you unconscious. This is the whole mechanism."

  Rajneesh

  Fighting, Two, Voice

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• Because love is the great commandment, it ought to be at the center of all and everything we do in our own family, in our Church callings, and in our livelihood. Love is the healing balm that repairs rifts in personal and family relationships. It is the bond that unites families, communities, and nations. Love is the power that initiates friendship, tolerance, civility, and respect. It is the source that overcomes divisiveness and hate. Love is the fire that warms our lives with unparalleled joy and divine hope. Love should be our walk and our talk.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Hate, Healing, Love Is

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• All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.

  Charles Frazier

  Grandchildren, Men, Passing On

  Charles Frazier (2006). “Thirteen Moons: A Novel”, p.412, Random House

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• Load every rift with ore.

  John Keats

  Crafts, Load

  "An introduction to the poetry of John Keats" by Andrew Motion, www.theguardian.com. January 23, 2010.

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• There can be no barrenness in full summer. The very sand will yield something. Rocks will have mosses, and every rift will have its wind-flower, and every crevice a leaf; while from the fertile soil will be reared a gorgeous troop of growths, that will carry their life in ten thousand forms, but all with praise to God. And so it is when the soul knows its summer. Love redeems its weakness, clothes its barrenness, enriches its poverty, and makes its very desert to bud and blossom as the rose.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Love, Summer, Flower

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• Since social relationships are always ambiguous, since my thought is only a unit, since my thoughts create rifts as much as they unite, since my words establish contacts by being spoken and create isolation by remaining unspoken, since an immense moat separates the subjective certitude that I have for myself from the objective reality that I represent to others, since I never stop finding myself guilty even though I feel I am innocent.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Reality, Moats, Isolation

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• The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secrets of things.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Knowledge, Secret, Way

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.50, BookBaby

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• There were occasionally rifts in the cloud where the face of a woman appeared, frowning.

  Frank O'Hara

  Clouds, Frowning, Faces

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.167, Univ of California Press

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• exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.

  Edward Said

  Home, Sadness, Thinking

  Edward W. Said (2013). “Reflections On Exile: And Other Literary And Cultural Essays”, p.212, Granta Books

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• When readers close the covers on Running the Rift, I want them to understand that it is not a genocide novel but rather a story of hope and rebirth.

  Naomi Benaron

  Running, Stories, Want

  "Interview with author Naomi Benaron: Running the Rift". Interview with Jennifer Haupt, www.psychologytoday.com. January 3, 2012.

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• In our family, we don't have rifts. We have a jolly good row and then it's all over. And I've only twice ever had a row with my sister.

  Princess Margaret

  My Sister, Our Family, Jolly

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• The confrontation between America and Europe reveals not so much a rapprochement as a distortion, an unbridgeable rift. There isn't just a gap between us, but a whole chasm of modernity.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Europe, America, Gaps

  Jean Baudrillard (1989). “America”, p.73, Verso

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• I don't think that writing, real writing, has much to do with affirming belief--if anything it causes rifts and gaps in belief which make belief more complex and more textured, more real. Good writing unsettles, destroys both the author and the reader. From my perspective, there always has to be a tension between the writer and the monolithic elements of the culture, such as religion.

  Brian Evenson

  Real, Writing, Thinking

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