Semblance Quotes

• Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.

  Honore de Balzac

  Pain, Men, Suffering

  Honore de Balzac (2015). “A Woman of Thirty: Works of Balzac”, p.15, 谷月社

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• Now the relation which, in the sphere of nature, being and semblance or sensation bear to one another in this antithesis, is the same as that which in ethics exists between good and pleasure or feeling.

  Friedrich Schleiermacher

  Feelings, Bears, Spheres

  Friedrich Schleiermacher (1836). “Schleiermacher's Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato”, p.172

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• We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.

  George Orwell

  Darkness, Nineteen, 1984 Important

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.127, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• This moment will just be another story someday.

  Stephen Chbosky

  Life, Stories, Moments

  Stephen Chbosky (2013). “The Perks of Being a Wallflower YA edition”, p.56, Simon and Schuster

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• Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.

  William Godwin

  Real, Desire, Study

  William Godwin (1797). “The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature, in a Series of Essays”, p.78

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• It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.

  George Orwell

  Beautiful, Language, Absurd

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The nearer people approach old age the closer they return to a semblance of childhood, until the time comes for them to depart this life, again like children, neither tired of living nor aware of death.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Life, Death, Time

  Desiderius Erasmus (1986). “Literary and Educational Writings: Panegyricus and Philippum Austriaeducem. Moriae encomium. Dialogus Julius exclusus e coelis. Institutio principis christiani. Querela pacis”

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• Our soldiers have done a valiant effort in fighting terrorism and bringing a semblance of law and order to the chaos in the region and it would be shortsighted to lay out a specific timetable to bring U.S. troops home prematurely before their mission is accomplished.

  James T. Walsh

  Home, Fighting, Order

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• Though I still have no semblance of a life outside of Nine Inch Nails at the moment, I realize my goals have gone from getting a record deal or selling another record to being a better person, more well-rounded, having friends, having a relationship with somebody.

  Trent Reznor

  Relationship, Goal, Nails

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• I would argue that a truly developed country would be beyond Presidents and Kings. In a world with some semblance of equality, each liberal-minded woman, each gay person, and indeed almost every person could be their own President. In a world of equals, what real service does a ruler provide?

  Isaac Asimov

  Country, Kings, Real

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• You’d be surprised at the things that look great on the outside but are dysfunctional on the inside. Be sure to function as good as you look

  T. D. Jakes

  Dysfunction, Looks, Appearance

  Twitter post from Nov 20, 2013

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• What is this love that endures decades, passes on sleep, and resists death to give one kiss? Call it agape love, a love that bears a semblance of God's.

  Max Lucado

  Sleep, Kissing, Giving

  Max Lucado (2009). “3:16: The Numbers of Hope”, p.30, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Like" and "like" and "like"--but what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing?

  Virginia Woolf

  Lying

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.119, Virginia Woolf

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• I've always felt that acting is acting at the end of the day, so whether you're doing comedy or heavy drama or anything else in between, you always have to bring a semblance of honesty to it. It's all make believe.

  Benjamin Bratt

  Honesty, Drama, Believe

  Source: collider.com

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• Is a brazen and innocent confrontation with paternal authority an unbearably terrifying prospect to some? Are the consequences of a fathers anger and displeasure so catastrophic in the primal imagination that every semblance of it in the world both literally and metaphorically must be denounced in the strongest possible terms? It would seem so.

  Michael Leunig

  Father, Imagination, World

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• Thus grows up fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fashion, Growing Up, Violence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1467, Delphi Classics

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• Illusion - or rather appearance, semblance - is the theme of my life (could be theme of speech welcoming freshmen to the Academy). All that is, seems, and is visible to us because we perceive it by the reflected light of semblance. Nothing else is visible.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Light, Speech

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007”

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• Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.

  Roberto Bolano

  Sea, Water, Way

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• Archimedes was my ideal. I admired the works of artists, but to my mind, they were only shadows and semblances. The inventor, I thought, gives to the world creations which are palpable, which live and work.

  Nikola Tesla

  Inspirational, Artist, Giving

  Nikola Tesla (1978). “Simpozij Nikola Tesla: u okviru programa proslave 120. obljetnice rođenja Nikole Tesle : Zagreb, Smiljan, Gospić, 7-10. jula 1976”

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• He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state and wishes to have it accepted, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Reality, Government, People

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• When I transformed my random and raw words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, a semblance of order and sanity appeared where there had been only chaos and insanity.

  David Sheff

  Order, Insanity, Chaos

  David Sheff (2009). “Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward semblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Heart, Character, Fate

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2013). “The Scarlet Letter (Annotated And Illustrated Edition)”, p.178, Jazzybee Verlag

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• A teddy bear does not depend upon mechanics to give him the semblance of life. He is loved - and therefore he lives.

  Pam Brown

  Giving, Doe, Bears

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• These pages are not my confession; they’re my definition. And I feel, as I begin to write it, that I can write it with some semblance of truth.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Writing, Definitions, Pages

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (2002). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.302, Grove Press

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• How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible..... There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.

  John Ruskin

  Stars, Men, Sea

  John Ruskin “The stones of Venice (cont'd) Seven lamps of architecture. Lectures on architecture and painting, delivered at Edinburgh in Nov. 1853. An inquiry into some of the conditions at present affecting the study of architecture in our schools”

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