Uneasy Quotes - Page 7

• A university anywhere can aim no higher than to be as British as possible for the sake of the undergraduates, as German as possible for the sake of the public at large-and as confused as possible for the preservation of the whole uneasy balance.

  Clark Kerr

  Confused, Balance, Sake

  Clark Kerr (2001). “The Uses of the University”, p.14, Harvard University Press

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• Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.

  Samuel Johnson

  Children, Men, Compassion

  "Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey Into North Wales".

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• Budapest is a prime site for dreams: the East’s exuberant vision of the West, the West’s uneasy hallucination of the East. It is a dreamed-up city; a city almost completely faked; a city invented out of other cities, out of Paris by way of Vienna — the imitation, as Claudio Magris has it, of an imitation.

  M. John Harrison

  Dream, Cities, Paris

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• His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast Of some great ammiral were but a wand, He walk'd with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle.

  John Milton

  Support, Steps, Burning

  'Paradise Lost' (1667) bk. 1, l. 292

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• I prefer poems that occupy an imaginative sphere. When I lived in Cincinnati, I was occasionally referred to as an "Ohio Poet;" this made me uneasy, not only because I think of myself as a generally American poet but also because I like to think I write out of the country of my own mind.

  Cate Marvin

  Country, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.redividerjournal.org

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• Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Company, Persons

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• So the idea was that, some catastrophic event had happened. There was a long dark age and then out of that, 100 years ago in this world, seven barons - these men and women - rose up and formed the new society. It's a feudal world, a part feudal barons and part warlord and part mob boss and they each control a huge resource so that there's an uneasy alliance, but they all need each other.

  Alfred Gough

  Dark, Men, Years

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation.

  John Donne

  Friday, Morning, Passion

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• Writers block: when I get it, it's because my subconscious spotted that I'd make a huge structural mistake in constructing a novel before my conscious mind became aware of it, and threw on the brakes. So I've learned not to sweat it: take two days off, then back up a chapter, read through, and try to work out why I'm suddenly uneasy about continuing.

  Charles Stross

  Mistake, Block, Sweat

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 02, 2012.

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• I felt uneasy about making the rapid decisions I have always made, and wondered whether every decision should be formally ratified and minuted at a board meeting.

  Richard Branson

  Decision, Boards, Made

  Richard Branson (1999). “Losing my virginity: how I've survived, had fun, and made a fortune doing business my way”, Crown Business

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• A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

  Robert O. Paxton

  Party, Goal, Political

  Robert O. Paxton (2011). “The Anatomy of Fascism”, p.372, Penguin UK

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• Religion looks forward to the destruction of the world.... Perhaps half aware that its unsupported arguments are not entirely persuasive, and perhaps uneasy about its own greedy accumulation of temporal power and wealth, religion has never ceased to proclaim the Apocalypse and the day of judgment.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Looks, Half, World

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.44, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky,is where we run out of continent.

  Joan Didion

  Running, Loss, Sky

  Joan Didion (1968). “Slouching towards Bethlehem”

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• Look, I asked you here for a reason. Much as I hate to admit it, vampire, we have something in common. " "Totally awesome hair?" Simon suggested, but his heart wasn't really in it either. Something about the look on Jace's face was making him increasingly uneasy. Simon was caught off guard. "Clary?" "Clary, " Jace said again. "You know: short, redheaded, bad temper.

  Cassandra Clare

  Hate, Heart, Hair

  Cassandra Clare (2010). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (3 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass”, p.819, Simon and Schuster

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• The reflection upon my situation and that of this army produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep. Few people know the predicament we are in.

  George Washington

  Sleep, Army, Reflection

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1776). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”, p.243

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• Think anything like that at her again, and I'll kill you here and now." Madigan's scoff was uneasy. "Any attack on me -" "Is the same as an attack on the United States itself," Bones finished, still in that deadly calm manner. "Heard you the first time - and didn't give a shite then, either.

  Jeaniene Frost

  Thinking, Giving, Firsts

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• Adrian's new research partner stepped through the door, and I knew the uneasy peace we'd just established in Palm Springs was about to shatter. Dimitri Belikov had arrived.

  Richelle Mead

  Spring, Doors, Research

  Richelle Mead (2011). “Bloodlines”, p.268, Penguin

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• The driver got out smiling. He looked about seventeen or eighteen, and for a second, I had the uneasy feeling it was Luke, my old enemy. This guy had the same sandy hair and outdoorsy good looks. But it wasn't Luke. His smile was brighter and more playful. (Luke didn't do much more than scowl and sneer these days.) The Maserati driver wore jeans and loafers and a sleeveless T-shirt. "Wow" Thalia muttered. Apollo Is hot." "He's the sun god," I said. "That's not what I meant.

  Rick Riordan

  Hair, Jeans, Guy

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• One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, “As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. . . .” When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Dream, Morning, Book

  "Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69". Interview with Peter H. Stone, www.theparisreview.org. 1981.

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• She's always polite and kind, but her words lack the kind of curiosity and excitement you'd normally expect. Her true feelings- assuming such things exist- remain hidden away. Except for when a practical sort of decision has to be made, she never gives her personal opinion about anything. She seldom talks about herself, instead letting others talk, nodding warmly as she listens. But most people start to feel vaguely uneasy when talking with her, as if they suspect they're wasting her time, trampling on her private, graceful, dignified world. And that impression is, for the most part, correct.

  Haruki Murakami

  Personal Opinions, Talking, People

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• I am uneasy about the practice of other people telling you how to write. This is especially true for beginners who haven't yet developed their style and their writer's persona and are easily pushed off the course.

  Yuriy Tarnawsky

  Writing, Practice, People

  "No Tall Tales: An Interview With Yuriy Tarnawsky". Interview with David Moscovich, www.raintaxi.com. 2012.

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• The story of the memoir is a story of me creating certain narratives so that I could live with my own experience and with the uneasy relationship between what I was doing and what I believed in - or what I saw as an uneasy relationship between those two things.

  Melissa Febos

  Two, Creating, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting.

  Laurie Foos

  Mother, Writing, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I've always gone with Kafka's model of establishing the world from the first line, as in Kafka's famous line from Metamorphosis, "Gregor Samsa woke up from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect" (or beetle or cockroach, depending on the translation). I have to have that first line before I can go further.

  Laurie Foos

  Dream, Cockroaches, Gone

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I adore [photography's] uneasy mix of fact and fiction - its dubious claim to truth - its status as history.

  Eleanor Antin

  Photography, Dubious, Fiction

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