Vague Quotes - Page 17

• I preferred that my bad dreams be vague.

  Walter Kirn

  Dream, Bad Dream

  Walter Kirn (2006). “Mission to America”, p.99, Anchor

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• The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread - a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Names, Enemy, Atheism

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.899, Library of Alexandria

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• Who exactly do you want to be? What kind of person do you
  want to be? What are your personal ideals? Whom do you admire? What are their special traits that you would make your own It's time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to become wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become. If you have a daybook, write down who you're trying to be, so that you can refer to this self-determination. Precisely describe the demeanor you want to adopt so that you may preserve it when you are by yourself or with other
  people.

  Epictetus

  Wise, Determination, Writing

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• Nostradamus himself confessed that the vague manner in which he wrote his "prophecies" was so that 'they could not possibly be understood until they were interpreted after the event and by it.'

  James Randi

  Events, Prophecy, Understood

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• A vague goal is no goal at all. The Ten Commandments wouldn't be very impressive, for instance, if they weren't specific, but simply were couched in a phraseology such as 'thou shalt not be a bad person.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Goal, Impressive, Ten Commandments

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• My library is my kingdom, and here I try to make my rule absolute-shutting off this single nook from wife, daughter and society. Elsewhere I have only a verbal authority, and vague. Unhappy is the man, in my opinion, who has no spot at home where he can be at home to himself-to court himself and hide away.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Daughter, Home, Men

  Michel de Montaigne (1956). “Autobiography: Comprising the Life of the Wisest Man of His Times ...”

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• We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Thinking, Thoughtful, Essence

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• An enormous amount of art and literature is erotic in the sense that it stimulates vague sexual emotions, but it has no pornographic intention or effect because "it leaves everything to the imagination." The consumer has to invent his own images, and it is felt, I do not know with what justification, that there is no harm in this.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Imagination, Erotic

  Herbert Read (2005). “To Hell With Culture”, p.152, Routledge

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• I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf; it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.

  H. L. Mencken

  Taken, Golf, Hair

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• It is indubitable that a 50-year-old mathematician knows the mathematics he learned at 20 or 30, but has only notions, often rather vague, of the mathematics of his epoch, i.e. the period of time when he is 50.

  Jean Dieudonne

  Years, Mathematics, Periods

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• A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question: all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must. And if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, May, Politics

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• I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Dream, Husband, Father

  Entry for May 03, 1849, "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel", Book by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Mary Augusta Ward, 1882.

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• ... the sciences are like a beautiful river, of which the course is easy to follow, when it has acquired a certain regularity; but if one wants to go back to the source, one will find it nowhere, because it is everywhere; it is spread so much [as to be] over all the surface of the earth; it is the same if one wants to go back to the origin of the sciences, one will find only obscurity, vague ideas, vicious circles; and one loses oneself in the primitive ideas.

  Lazare Carnot

  Beautiful, Circles, Ideas

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• When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft. Protestantism,in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being too much like all the other religions; Protestantism of being insufficiently like a religion at all. Hence Plato, with his transcendent Forms, is the doctor of Protestants; Aristotle, with his immanent Forms, the doctor of Catholics.

  C. S. Lewis

  Plato, Doctors, Catholic

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Allegory of Love”, p.403, Cambridge University Press

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• 

  Only a handful of people are honest when they sing. A lot of people sing about very vague things, or they'll sing about someone breaking up with them, but a lot of people don't go too deep into their past and stuff, because they don't want it to be let out. I just do it anyway.

  Ronnie Radke

  Past, People, Want

  Source: fallinginreversefansite.weebly.com

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• Consensus is usually made possible by vague language and shallow commitments.

  Mason Cooley

  Commitment, Language, Shallow

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• I dream of vague shapes that hint of my heart's desire.

  Mason Cooley

  Dream, Heart, Desire

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• The fumes of the most disordered imaginations were recorded in their religious code, as special communications of the Deity; and as it could not but happen that, in the course of ages, events would now and then turn up to which some of these vague rhapsodies might be accommodated by the aid of allegories, figures, types, and other tricks upon words, they have not only preserved their credit with the Jews of all subsequent times, but are the foundation of much of the religions of those who have schismatised from them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Communication, Imagination

  Thomas Jefferson (2017). “LETTERS”, p.1202, 右灰文化傳播有限公司可提供下載列印

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• The priest, realistically considered, is the most immoral of men, for he is always willing to sacrifice every other sort of good to the one good of his arcanum - the vague body of mysteries that he calls the truth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sacrifice, Men, Atheism

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• I can picture the color of the song, or the shape of it, or who it is that I'm trying to appeal to, in the song, and what I'm trying to, almost, reinforce my feelings for. And I know that sounds sort of vague and abstract, but I've got a handle on it when I'm doing it.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Color, Feelings

  Source: www.rightwingbob.com

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• There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal.

  Abraham Lincoln

  People, Honor, Vivid

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.46, Fordham Univ Press

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• Nature's never quite
  Sure she hasn't erred
  In her vague design.

  Robert Frost

  God, Design, Never Quit

  Robert Frost (1975). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

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• What is most appalling in an F. Scott Fitzgerald book is that it is peopleless fiction: Fitzgerald writes about spectral, muscledsuits; dresses, hats, and sleeves which have some sort of vague, libidinous throb. These are plainly the product of sickness.

  Edward Dahlberg

  Book, Writing, Scott Fitzgerald

  Edward Dahlberg (1967). “Alms for Oblivion”, p.68, U of Minnesota Press

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• The Court abandoned the traditional constitutional meaning of 'religion' as a single denomination or system of worship and instead substituted a new 'modern' concept which even now remains vague and nebulous, having changed several times in recent years.

  David Barton

  Christian, Religious, Years

  David Barton (2013). “Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, and Religion”, p.22, BookBaby

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• As I grew up I got cynical. I'd see Mother enthusiastic and involved with charlatans. Numerologists and astrologists who charged five hundred dollars for a 'reading' which was so vague you could twist the meaning any way you wanted.

  Anya Seton

  Mother, Reading, Cynical

  Anya Seton (2013). “Green Darkness”, p.40, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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