Illuminating Quotes - Page 2

When I'm alone at home, I really prefer to listen to Wagner's orchestral music rather than any vocal music. I find it illuminating not to have to pay attention to voices in the recordings.

Kiri Te Kanawa

Home, Voice, Attention

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I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.

Max Born

Philosophy, Knowledge, Science

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For since most of our living is unconscious, play is like matchstrokes in the void, bringing into light the structures we behave by, illuminating for us, however briefly, our deep meanings.

Mary Caroline Richards

Fun, Light, Play

Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.63, Wesleyan University Press

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What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives.

Daniel Dennett

Philosophy, Roles, Philosopher

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A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating, and that's what separates a life story that can influence other people.

Mitch Albom

Uplifting, Should Have, People

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Every fight is one between different angles of vision illuminating the same truth.

Mahatma Gandhi

Fighting, Vision, Different

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The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.

Blaise Pascal

Lasts, Infinity, Reason

Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pascal's Pensees”, p.80, Simon and Schuster

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Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

Jonathan Safran Foer

Children, Book, Hero

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The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.

Thomas Huxley

Ocean, Land, Generations

Thomas Henry Huxley “Selected Works of Thomas Henry Huxley”, Library of Alexandria

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When one takes action for others, one's own suffering is transformed into the energy that can keep one moving forward; a light of hope illuminating a new tomorrow for oneself and others is kindled.

Daisaku Ikeda

Moving Forward, Light, Suffering

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Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.

Henri Matisse

Inspirational, Happiness, Work

Henri Matisse (1992). “Jazz”, George Braziller

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If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

Bertrand Russell

Giving, Able, Infinity

Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.77, Booklassic

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Desires should never be justified,' Tehol said, wagging a finger. 'All you end up doing is illuminating the hidden reasons by virtue of their obvious absence.

Steven Erikson

Desire, Justified, Virtue

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Giving to others selflesly and anonymously, radiating light throughout the world and illuminating your own darkness, your virtue becomes a sanctuary for yourself and all beings.

Laozi

Inspirational, Helping Others, Light

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Now and then in life, love catches you unawares, illuminating the dark corners of your mind, and filling them with radiance. Once in awhile you are faced with a beauty and a joy that takes your soul, all unprepared, by assault.

Jennifer Worth

Love Life, Dark, Joy

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An enlightened awareness is within each one of us, right at this moment.
This enlightened awareness is truly unborn and marvellously illuminating; and everything is perfectly managed by it.
Conclusively realise that what is unborn and illuminating is truly awakened and without effort,
rest naturally as the Unborn Mind.
Resting in this way, you are a living Buddha.

Bankei Yotaku

Effort, Meditation, Mind

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The chemical differences among various species and genera of animals and plants are certainly as significant for the history of their origins as the differences in form. If we could define clearly the differences in molecular constitution and functions of different kinds of organisms, there would be possible a more illuminating and deeper understanding of question of the evolutionary reactions of organisms than could ever be expected from morphological considerations.

Ray Lankester

Science, Animal, Differences

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Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again.

Tan Twan Eng

Memories, Fall, Clouds

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While Max appears to greatly admire Wallace as a writer and feel compassion for him as a man, he is never starry-eyed, or pulls his punches. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story is as illuminating, multifaceted, and serious an estimation of David Foster Wallace's life and work as we can hope to find.

Elissa Schappell

Men, Compassion, Ghost Stories

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Finding Mecca in America weaves social theory and concrete ethnography into a significant contribution on Muslims in the United States, illuminating broader questions about the integration of minority and immigrant groups along the way. This is an important work and a joy to read.

Eboo Patel

America, Joy, Important

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Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

Agnes Repplier

Innovation, Committed, Newness

Agnes Repplier (2009). “American Austen: The Forgotten Writing of Agnes Repplier”, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

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The Hawk and the Dove is a wonderful idea for a book, wonderfully carried out. Nicholas Thompson has used illuminating new material to present each of his protagonists in a convincing, respectful, but unsparing way. Even more valuable, he has used the interactions and tensions between Paul Nitze and George Kennan to bring much of American 20th century foreign policy to life, with human richness ever present but with the big issues clear in all their complexity.

James Fallows

Book, Ideas, Issues

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Indeed, I find it illuminating to consider to what extent our "classical conditions" for economic growth are satisfied in the current, monopolistic phase of capitalism.

Paul A. Baran

Growth, Phases, Economic

Paul A. Baran (1968). “Political Econ of Growth”, p.51, NYU Press

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Do you know what the lurid intermixture of complicated emotions produces, according to Nathaniel Hawthorne? That's right, it produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions. Ryan MacDonald's glorious shards of prose are both lurid and blazing, and together they comprise an anthology of complex feelings-dream-like, vivid, and never, ever obvious.

Chris Bachelder

Dream, Feelings, Together

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[Property] is a brilliant, chillingly revelatory piece of fiction, a work of craft, economy and such good merciless observation-one of those rare, crucial novels illuminating a history we think we know and understand so that after we've read it we'll never forget its truths.

Ali Smith

Thinking, Fiction, Pieces

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