Sinking Quotes - Page 3

• No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled.

  George Eliot

  Heartbreak, Betrayal, Believe

  George Eliot (1873). “Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot”, p.139

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• On the one hand, we have the mass; on the other, its historic goal, located outside of existing society. On one hand, we have the day-to-day struggle; on the other, the social revolution. It follows that this movement can best advance by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers by which it is constantly being threatened. One is the loss of its mass character; the other, the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger of sinking back to the condition of a sect; the other, the danger of becoming a movement of bourgeois social reform.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Struggle, Character, Loss

  "The Russian Revolution, and Leninism Or Marxism?".

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• Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land? All fear, none aid you, and few understand.

  Alexander Pope

  Fear, Land, Understanding

  Alexander Pope, Henry St. John Bolingbroke (Viscount.) (1824). “An essay on man: in four epistles to H. St. John, Lord Bolingbroke”, p.48

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• Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness. . . . But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Nature, Morning, Kindness

  Henry Ward Beecher (1862). “Eyes and ears”, p.69

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• Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.

  Matthieu Ricard

  Mean, Buddhism, Suffering

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• Fight fire with fire. If you must have bores, always put them together or at the same table ... bores have an effervescent chemical reaction on one another at a party. They invariably have a marvelous time trading banalities in the absence of competition. Clichés roll trippingly off the tongue like sparkling epigrams and trite observations acquire depth sinking into receptive minds.

  Elsa Maxwell

  Party, Fighting, Fire

  Elsa Maxwell (1955). “I married the world”

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• I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back.

  Robyn Davidson

  Sinking Feeling, Feelings, Difficult

  Robyn Davidson (1992). “From Alice to Ocean: Alone Across the Outback”, Addison Wesley Publishing Company

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• To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

  Anatole Broyard

  Character, Men, Tragedy

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• I thought I would try my hand at sailing. It was too small and kept sinking, so I decided to try a boat instead.

  Arthur M. Jolly

  Hands, Sailing, Trying

  "Moby (No Last Name Given)". Book by Arthur M. Jolly, 2014.

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• It's so hard to listen to these trains outside my window, here it comes again. And it's calling me, begging me, follow me down the track. And it moans so dark and low, baby ain't comin' back... It sounds like crying, it sounds like letting go. Breathing and lying, sinking and dying slow. And I watch from my window, touching the cold glass sky. As the train rolls down the track, I say goodbye.

  Melissa Etheridge

  Letting Go, Goodbye, Baby

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• The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody's always sinking.

  Bob Dylan

  Night, New Orleans, Light

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• But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.

  E. M. Forster

  Mean, Humanity, Progress

  E. M. Forster (2015). “The Machine Stops”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel-dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Heart, Angel, Dark

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1854). “The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions”, p.588

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• My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Party, Soul, Dinner

  Lois McMaster Bujold (2000). “A Civil Campaign”, p.101, Baen Books

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• The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.

  John Oliver

  Media, Humanity, Trying

  Interview with Jason Zabel, www.avclub.com. September 22, 2011.

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• None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer. Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.

  John Muir

  Blessing, Fire, Climbing

  John Muir (2015). “JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays”, p.217, e-artnow

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• The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper below him.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Men, Doe, Earth

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• The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Wise, Art, Moments

  Philip Dormer Stanhope (4th earl of Chesterfield.), Charles Caleb Colton (1861). “Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.”, p.194

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• Short of climbing aboard a time capsule and peeling back eight and one-half decades, James Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the closest any of us will get to walking the decks of the doomed ocean liner. Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic , you experience it from the launch to the sinking, then on a journey two and one-half miles below the surface, into the cold, watery grave where Cameron has shot never-before seen documentary footage specifically for this movie.

  James Berardinelli

  Ocean, Epic, Journey

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• The realm of death seems an enemy's country to most men, on whose shores they are loathly driven by stress of weather; to the wise man it is the desired port where he moors his bark gladly, as in some quiet haven of the Fortunate Isles; it is the golden west into which his sun sinks, and, sinking, casts back a glory upon the leaden cloud-tack which had darkly besieged his day.

  James Russell Lowell

  Death, Wise, Country

  James Russell Lowell (1845). “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets”, p.111

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• That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It's those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit, that prosper.

  Joe Abercrombie

  Courage, Disappointment, Past

  Joe Abercrombie (2015). “The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country”, p.1336, Hachette UK

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• People sinking into self-pity and depression are dreary, but they can't get out of it by themselves. So every now and then, just sit there and listen, and listen, and listen. You're paying your membership dues in the human race.

  Barbara Walters

  Compassion, Race, Self

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• The sun, a red wheel, was sinking slowly in the west. Besides being spectacularly beautiful, the early-summer sunset was exceedingly soft and gentle: black mulberry leaves turned as red as roses; pristine white acacia petals shed an enshrouding pale-green aura. Mild evening breezes made both the mulberry leaves and the acacia petals dance and whirl, filling the woods with a soft rustle.

  Mo Yan

  Beautiful, Summer, Sunset

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• There was only - spring itself, the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm high wind - rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive ... If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.

  Willa Cather

  Spring, Sunshine, Clouds

  Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.551, Simon and Schuster

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• I'm making out with a dead girl in my dreams. I'm screwing women I have no business screwing. I'm pushing away the one person who actually gives a damn about me. It's like the Bermuda Triangle of heartache and I'm sinking fast.

  Faith Sullivan

  Girl, Dream, Heartache

  Faith Sullivan (2013). “Come What May”, p.74, Faith Sullivan

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