Materials Quotes - Page 17

• There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at least a long-distance phone call from the frankly interesting.

  Bill Bryson

  Distance, Phones, Long

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.6, Lulu Press, Inc

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• These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Believe, Passion, Thinking

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• We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.

  T. S. Eliot

  Organization, Humanity, Progress

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Christianity and Culture”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Simple, Data, Knowing

  Pope Benedict XVI (2009). “Charity in Truth”, p.151, Ignatius Press

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• Usually I avoided college students, whom I considered brutal, wrapped up in themselves, particularly in their youth, in which they found material for drama or an excuse for their own boredom. I did not care for young people.

  Francoise Sagan

  Drama, College, People

  FRANCOISE SAGAN (1955). “BONOUR TRISTESSE”

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• Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death.

  Salman Rushdie

  People, Childhood, Victory

  "Imaginary Homelands". Book by Salman Rushdie, 1991.

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• Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Years, Have Faith, Dominion

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• Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Spiritual, Virgin Suicides, Well Being

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• There is a danger there - a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Spiritual, Real, Humanity

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1989). “Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories”, p.1012, Wordsworth Editions

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• In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Spring, Heart, Love Is

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• The alcohol had the effect of making the black cloth blacker. This amused her; she had noted in her journal: "booze affects material as it does people.

  Alice Sebold

  People, Alcohol, Black

  Alice Sebold (2014). “The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic”, p.177, Pan Macmillan

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• Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.

  Yann Martel

  Book, Unique, People

  Yann Martel (2009). “What Is Stephen Harper Reading?: Yann Martel's Recommended Reading for a Prime Minister and Book Lovers of All Stripes”, p.152, Vintage Canada

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• The more they lack material things, the more they indulge themselves when they can, but the less is their satisfaction with this world and they hunger for life after death(on Russian slave laborers.)

  Sophie Scholl

  World, Satisfaction, Hunger

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• There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle.

  Joseph Conrad

  Law, Justice, Principles

  Joseph Conrad (1996). “Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard”, p.341, Wordsworth Editions

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• It's experiences in life that give us something to write about, and since good fiction is applied tension, you'll have an arsenal of good material if life hasn't been peachy (and not a whole lot if it has).

  Wendelin Van Draanen

  Writing, Giving, Fiction

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• Perfect date material, she thought. A vampire with the social equivalent of road rage. ---Beth about Wrath

  J.R. Ward

  Wrath, Perfect, Brotherhood

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• Man is more miserable, more restless and unsatisfied than ever before, simply because half his nature--the spiritual--is starving for true food, and the other half--the material--is fed with bad food.

  Paul Brunton

  Spiritual, Men, Half

  Paul Brunton (1987). “The Notebooks of Paul Brunton: Pt. 1 Healing of the Self; Pt. 2 the Negatives”, Larson Publication

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• Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I dont want us to forget Alaska, and I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to und3erstand how people answered that question and the question each of you posed in your papers--how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called 'people's rotten lots in life.

  John Green

  Alaska, Way In Life, People

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• A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Dream, Real, Air

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2007). “The Great Gatsby”, p.162, Broadview Press

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• When people love each other, they are content with very little. When we have light and joy in our hearts, we don't need material wealth. The most loving communities are often the poorest.

  Jean Vanier

  Heart, Loving Life, Light

  "A L’Arche Serving of Love in Kolkata" by Rumni Saha, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 6, 2015.

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• Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.

  Alain de Botton

  Jobs, Book, Holiday

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• Devotion gradually progresses to higher levels. . . . One type goes to God and asks Him to remove his suffering. Another one will ask for money or material things. A third will request liberation or release from his bondage. And the fourth will not ask for anything. He will just enjoy praying and praising his Lord. That is the highest form of prayer. (Beyond Word, 119)

  Swami Satchidananda

  Prayer, Suffering, Progress

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• The Challenge is to pry Bertie loose from Dain and his circle of oafish dengenerates,” Jessica said severely. “It would be far more profitable to pry Dain loose for yourself,” said her grandmother. “He is very wealthy, his lineage is excellent, he is young, strong, and healthy, and you feel a powerful attraction.” “He isn’t husband material.” “What I have described is perfect husband material.” said her grandmother. “I don’t want a husband.” “Jessica, no woman does who can regard men objectively. And you have always been magnificently objective.

  Loretta Chase

  Strong, Powerful, Husband

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• Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.

  Alan Watts

  Inspirational, Pleasure, Symbols

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.59, Souvenir Press

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• I always write a draft version of the novel in which I try to develop, not the story, not the plot, but the possibilities of the plot. I write without thinking much, trying to overcome all kinds of self-criticism, without stopping, without giving any consideration to the style or structure of the novel, only putting down on paper everything that can be used as raw material, very crude material for later development in the story.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Writing, Thinking, Self

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2013). “A Writer's Reality”, p.48, Faber & Faber

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