Substance Quotes

• Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Roots, Personality, Suffering

  Miguel de Unamuno (2012). “Tragic Sense Of Life”, p.288, tredition

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• We must look for ways to be an active force in our own lives. We must take charge of our own destinies, design a life of substance and truly begin to live our dreams.

  Les Brown

  Success, Dream, Determination

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• Life is infinite energy coupled with limitless creative imagination. It is the invisible essence and substance of every visible form. Its nature is goodness, truth, wisdom and beauty, as well as energy and imagination. Our highest satisfaction comes from a sense of conscious union with this invisible Life. All human endeavor is an attempt to get back to first principles, to find such an inward wholeness that all sense of fear, doubt and uncertainty vanishes.

  Ernest Holmes

  Essence, Imagination, Creative

  Ernest Holmes (2007). “The Art of Life”, p.9, Penguin

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• Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.

  Richard L. Evans

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Words are also seeds, and when dropped into the invisible spiritual substance, they grow and bring forth after their kind.

  Charles Fillmore

  Spiritual, Kind, Invisible

  Charles Fillmore (2009). “Prosperity”, p.104, Cosimo, Inc.

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• But, in the end, the books that surround me are the books that made me, through my reading (and misreading) of them; they fall in piles on my desk, they stack behind me on my shelves, they surprise me every time I look for one and find ten more I had forgotten about. I love their covers, their weight and their substance. And like the child I was, with the key to the world that reading gave me, it is still exciting for me to find a new book, open it at the first page and plunge in, head first, heart deep.

  Ramona Koval

  Education, Children, Book

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• The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

  Carl Jung

  Friendship, Relationship, Positive

  Carl Gustav Jung (2001). “Modern Man in Search of a Soul”, p.49, Psychology Press

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• We are completely unaware of our true nature because we identify ourselves with our body, our emotions and our thoughts, thus losing sight of our unchanging centre, which is pure consciousness. When we return to our true nature, our thoughts and perceptions no longer appear as modifications of a single substance, they come into being and subside like waves of the ocean.

  Jean Klein

  Spiritual, Ocean, Sight

  Jean Klein (2015). “Be Who You Are”, p.16, New Harbinger Publications

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• Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Truth, Motherhood, Morality

  Mahatma Gandhi (1994). “The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings”, p.17, Grove Press

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• High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Office, Decision, Intellectual

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• People of substance may sin without being exposed for their stolen pleasure; but servants and the poorer sort of women have seldom an opportunity of concealing a big belly, or at least the consequences of it.

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Opportunity, People, May

  "The Fable of the Bees". Book by Bernard Mandeville. Remark C, p. 66, 1732.

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• Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.

  John Henry Newman

  Evil, Excess, Corruption

  John Henry Newman, Dave Armstrong (2012). “The Quotable Newman: A Definitive Guide to His Central Thoughts and Ideas”, p.151, Sophia Institute Press

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• Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and interpret facts, even to know what we can or might observe. And we need facts to validate theories and give them substance.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Strong, Science, Giving

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.155, Harvard University Press

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• The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

  William Shakespeare

  Inspirational, Dream, Ambition

  William Shakespeare (2001). “Hamlet”, p.155, Classic Books Company

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• The substance of painting is light.

  Andre Derain

  Light, Painting

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• What is it that dies? A log of wood dies to become a few planks. The planks die to become a chair. The chair dies to become a piece of firewood, and the firewood dies to become ash. You give different names to the different shapes the wood takes, but the basic substance is there always. If we could always remember this, we would never worry about the loss of anything. We never lose anything; we never gain anything. By such discrimination we put an end to unhappiness. (118-119)

  Swami Satchidananda

  Loss, Names, Giving

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• Hence as a private man has a right to say what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their substance for the Administration of public affairs.

  Samuel Adams

  Men, Giving, Community

  John White, Cecil Calvert Baltimore (2d Baron), Charles Hudson, Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson, Massachusetts Historical Society (1904). “The planting of colonies in New England”

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• Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which stemma to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity -namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.

  Mary Baker Eddy

  Life, Pain, Mistake

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• Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

  Walter Benjamin

  Conquer, Destruction, Ecstasy

  Walter Benjamin (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.28, Harvard University Press

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• Man is a substance clad in shadows.

  John Sterling

  Men, Humanity, Shadow

  John Sterling (1848). “Essays and Tales: Fragments from the travels of Theodore Elbert. Thoughts. Tales and apologues”, p.136

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• Man's shortcomings and sins are all due to the substance of the body and not to its form; while all his merits are exclusively due to his form.

  Maimonides

  Men, Body, Merit

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1009, Moses Maimonides

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• The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Life, War, Silly

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• Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Life, Time, Fire

  "Other Inquisitions". Book by Jorge Luis Borges, 1952.

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• Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

  Aesop

  Reality, Focus And Concentration, Shadow

  "Aesop's Fables".

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• Man in his true nature is substance, soul, spirit.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Men, Soul, Spirit

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.3706, Manonmani Publishers

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