Unspeakable Quotes - Page 3

• The factory meat industry has polluted thousands of miles of America's rivers, killed billions of fish, pushed tens of thousands of family farmers off their land, sickened and killed thousands of U.S. citizens, and treated millions of farm animals with unspeakable and unnecessary cruelty.

  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Animal, Land, Meat Industry

  6 Copy quote

• Like every other destruction of optimism, whether in a whole civilisation or in a single individual, these must have been unspeakable catastrophes for those who had dared to expect progress. But we should feel more than sympathy for those people. We should take it personally. For if any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now, and you and I would be immortal.

  David Deutsch

  Stars, Optimism, People

  10 Copy quote

• Once out of all the gray days of my life I have looked into the heart of reality; I have witnessed the truth; I have seen life as it really is-ravishingly, ecstatically, madly beautiful, and filled to overflowing with a wild joy, and a value unspeakable.

  Margaret Prescott Montague

  Life, Beautiful, Heart

  9 Copy quote

• Only a fool takes offense at the truth, Jessamine. They are awful, of that there is no question. But they are also very charming. Purveyors of unspeakable suffering and indescribable delights. Performers of murders and miracles! You might grow to like them, if you got to know them as I do. But why has your beloved Crabgrass ventured into this garden of horrors, I wonder?

  Maryrose Wood

  Garden, Miracle, Suffering

  4 Copy quote

• The least known among the virtues and also the most misunderstood is the virtue of humility. Yet, it is the very groundwork of Christianity. Humility is a grace of the soul that cannot be expressed in words and is only known by experience. It is an unspeakable treasure of God, and only can be called the gift of God. Learn, He said, not from angels, not from men, not from books; but learn from My presence, light, and action within you, that I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest to your souls.

  William Bernard Ullathorne

  Book, Heart, Humble

  4 Copy quote

• I was stricken by news and television pictures coming from the United States this morning. It is impossible to fully comprehend the evil that would have conjured up such a cowardly and depraved assault upon thousands of innocent people. There can be no cause or grievance that could ever justify such unspeakable violence. Indeed, such an attack is an assault not only on the targets but an offense against the freedom and rights of all civilized nations.

  Jean Chretien

  Morning, Rights, People

  37 Copy quote

• You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations. And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable.

  Joseph O'Neill

  America, Want, Preoccupation

  4 Copy quote

• It is of unspeakable advantage to possess our minds with an habitual good intention, and to aim all our thoughts, words, and actions at some laudable end.

  Joseph Addison

  Mind, Action, Good Intentions

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays, Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.76

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each person has unspeakable distress. When I remember the past, annoying, I cry; The reality of today is too cruel, too severe, and doesn't even offer me a dream; Imagining the future brings me yet another kind of tears

  Aya Kito

  Dream, Past, Reality

  28 Copy quote

• It is hard for me to believe that any husband and wife are really happy together. And to have thee say you are is an unspeakable comfort.

  Hannah Whitall Smith

  Husband, Believe, Wife

  Hannah Whitall Smith (1949). “A religious rebel: the letters of "H. W. S." (Mrs. Pearsall Smith)”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Atheism, Ineffable, Mystic

  The Moon and Sixpence Ch. 1

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Victory [over homophobia] may require five or maybe 20 years. Yet I have no doubt that "don't ask, don't tell" and same-sex adoption bans will be as unspeakable and inexplicable to my grandchildren as counting a slave as three-fifths of a human being.

  Jacob M. Appel

  Sex, Grandchildren, Years

  "Reparations for Gay Americans". The Detroit Free Press, April 07, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Imagine that for hundreds of years your most formative traumas, your daily suffering and pain, the abuse you live through, the terror you live with, are unspeakable - not the basis of literature. You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs.... You learn how to leave your body and create someone else who takes over when you cannot stand it any more. You develop a self who is ingratiating and obsequious and imitative and aggressively passive and silent - you learn, in a word, femininity.

  Catharine MacKinnon

  Growing Up, Pain, Father

  "Only Words". Book by Catharine MacKinnon, 1993.

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable... unimaginable... unspeakable.

  Paul Keating

  Australia, Would Be, Unthinkable

  "Ned Kelly and 'Mary Poppins' Writer Among Top Irish-Australians". www.irishtimes.com. August 19, 2009.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• Not the least of the hardships to which the dying are subject is the visitation of their loved ones. The poor darlings, God bless them, may feel every impulse to condole and console, but their primary sensation is nonetheless one of embarrassment in the presence of the unspeakable and a guilty gratitude that it is not yet their fate.

  Louis Auchincloss

  Gratitude, Fate, Dying

  Louis Auchincloss (2004). “East Side Story: A Novel”, p.87, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This suffering, this unspeakable capacity to bleed and to know pain and to know annihilation, is what has to be overcome in this world if anyone is to reach God.

  Anne Rice

  Pain, Suffering, Overcoming

  Anne Rice (1997). “Memnoch the Devil”, Random House Digital, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And then, the unspeakable purity - and freshness of the air! There was just enough heat to enhance the value of the breeze, and just enough wind to keep the whole sea in motion, to make the waves come bounding to the shore, foaming and sparkling, as if wild with glee.

  Anne Bronte

  Air, Wind, Sea

  Anne Bronte (1859). “Agnes Grey”, p.194, Library of Alexandria

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• All that was neither a city, nor a church, nor a river, nor color, nor light, nor shadow: it was reverie. For a long time, I remained motionless, letting myself be penetrated gently by this unspeakable ensemble, by the serenity of the sky and the melancholy of the moment. I do not know what was going on in my mind, and I could not express it; it was one of those ineffable moments when one feels something in himself which is going to sleep and something which is awakening.

  Victor Hugo

  Sleep, Color, Sky

  14 Copy quote

• They don't find peace. It's pure bullshit. When something unspeakable happens, or when you do something unspeakable, it changes you. It takes you apart and reassembles you. You are a Frankenstein of circumstance, and the parts never fit back quite right and the life you live is a stolen one. You don't deserve to walk among the living, and you know it.

  Lisa Unger

  Life, Bullshit, Fit

  Lisa Unger (2014). “In the Blood: Chilling grip-lit with a breathtaking twist you won't see coming”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unspeakable is the variety of form and immeasurable the diversity of beauty, but in all is the seal of unity.

  Aleister Crowley

  Diversity, Unity, Form

  Aleister Crowley (1975). “The Commentaries of AL: Being the Equinox Volume V, No. 1”, Weiser Books

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps the way to meet tomorrow's challenges is not to use yesterday's solutions, but to dare to think the previously unthinkable, to speak the previously unspeakable, and to try that which was previously out of the question.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Thinking, Yesterday, Challenges

  Neale Donald Walsch (2005). “The Complete Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue”, p.202, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If menopause is the silent passage, 'male menopause' is the unspeakable passage. It is fraught with secrecy, shame, and denial. It is much more fundamental than the ending of the fertile period of a woman's life, because it strikes at the core of what it is to be a man.

  Gail Sheehy

  Men, Males, Denial

  "Male Menopause: New Book Argues Midlife Transition Is Just As Hard On Men" By Shelley Emling, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 7, 2012.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...the grace of the Spirit takes possession of the quiet soul, and gives it a taste of the unspeakable good things to come, which no passionate and negligent eye has seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of such a man (cf. I Cor. 2:9). This taste is the earnest of these good things, and the heart which accepts these pledges becomes spiritual and receives assurance of its salvation.

  Gregory Palamas

  Christian, Spiritual, Eye

  34 Copy quote

• Supposing you eliminated suffering, what a dreadful place the world would be! I would almost rather eliminate happiness. The world would be the most ghastly place because everything that corrects the tendency of this unspeakable little creature, man, to feel over-important and over-pleased with himself would disappear. He's bad enough now, but he would be absolutely intolerable if he never suffered.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Men, Evil, Suffering

  156 Copy quote

• Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.

  Gore Vidal

  Stuff, Conspiracy, Shorthand

  Gore Vidal (2003). “Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta”, p.50, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

  11 Copy quote

  Show source