Oblivion Quotes - Page 10

• So we went to bed, assaulted by sleep that fumed at us from medicine glasses, or was wielded from small sweet-coated tablets -- dainty bricks of dream wrapped in the silk stockings of oblivion.

  Janet Frame

  Dream, Sweet, Sleep

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• Sleep is harder to reach and thinner, and sleeping is no longer the Drop into the black pit all oblivion until the alarm clock, no, sleep is thin and fitful and full of memories and reminders and the dark is never dark enough.

  Doris Lessing

  Memories, Sleep, Dark

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• Mom had just gotten back from Sydney, and she had brought me an immense, surpassingly blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses, mounted in a frame filled with cotton. I would hold it close to my face, so close I couldn't see anything but that blue. It would fill me with a feeling, a feeling I later tried to duplicate with alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling of unity, oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of the word.

  Audrey Niffenegger

  Mom, Butterfly, Blue

  Audrey Niffenegger (2014). “The Time Traveler's Wife”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion. Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Thinking, Comfort, Pieces

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• I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend — perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Marriage, Wise, Home

  'Epipsychidion' (1821) l. 149

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• The constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of such a silence.

  Michel Foucault

  Broken, Silence, Syntax

  Michel Foucault, Keith Hoeller, Ludwig Binswanger, Jacob Needleman (1984). “Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry”

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• I have, at times, been absorbed in my work to the point of complete self-oblivion. Once I worked for thirty-six hours without a break - to complete exhaustion; and while I was in the middle of it I didn't even notice.

  Alton Tobey

  Self, Six, Obsession

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• I respond, thoughts dropping away, like pebbles plopping one by one in water, sinking down, down into dark oblivion.

  Sophie Jordan

  Dark, Water, Pebbles

  Sophie Jordan (2011). “Firelight”, p.123, Oxford University Press - Children

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• I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better, stronger. I want to be the bird that flies away.

  Tahereh Mafi

  Bird, Stronger, World

  Tahereh Mafi (2011). “Shatter Me”, p.13, Harper Collins

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• All the great truths are basically trivial and so we have to find new ways, preferably paradoxical ways, of expressing them, in order to keep them from falling into oblivion.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Fall, Order, Way

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• If man chooses oblivion, he can go right on leaving his fate to his political leaders. If he chooses Utopia, he must initiate an enormous education program - immediately, if not sooner.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Wisdom, Fate, Men

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• But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel , when by the hand of God, every man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Hands, Towers

  Thomas Hobbes (1750). “The Moral and Political Works To which is Prefixed the Autors Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself ... Illustr. by the Ed. - London 1750”, p.107

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• Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.

  Philip Levine

  Home, Writing, Thinking

  Philip Levine (2002). “So ask: essays, conversations, and interviews”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• Just because you're living in blissful oblivion doesn't mean you're not responsible.

  Arthur M. Jolly

  Mean, Responsible

  "Trash". Book by Arthur M. Jolly, 2013.

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• A general loftiness of sentiment, independence of men, consciousness of good intentions, self-oblivion in great objects, clear views of futurity; thoughts of the blessed companionship of saints and angels, trust in God as the friend of truth and virtue,--these are the states of mind in which I should live.

  William Ellery Channing

  Blessed, Angel, Men

  William Ellery Channing (1848). “Memoir of William Ellery Channing: With Extracts from His Correspondence and Manuscripts”, p.147

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• This I hold to be the chief office of history, to rescue virtuous actions from the oblivion to which a want of records would consign them, and that men should feel a dread of being considered infamous in the opinions of posterity, from their depraved expressions and base actions.

  Tacitus

  Men, Expression, History

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• Though I be shut in darkness, and become insentient dust blown idly here and there, I count oblivion a scant price to pay for having once had held against my lip life's brimming cup of hydromel and rue--for having once known woman's holy love and a child's kiss, and for a little space been boon companion to the Day and Night, Fed on the odors of the summer dawn, and folded in the beauty of the stars. Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay, and serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank Thee for the gracious gift of tears!

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Life, Summer, Stars

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Poems”

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• Death! It is rest to the aged, it is oblivion to the atheist, it is immortality to the poet!

  Ouida

  Death, Atheist, Poet

  Ouida (2016). “Wisdom, Wit and Pathos of Ouida”, p.92, Ouida

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• I would like to save all books, those that are banned, those that are burned, or forgotten with contempt by the mandarins who want to tell us what is good and what is bad. Every book has a soul ... and I believe every book is worth saving from either bigotry or oblivion.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Believe, Book, Soul

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• Too much I've seen, and felt, and lov'd in life, Living I come to seek Lethaean calm; Let me, fair scenes! forget all worldly strife, Oblivion solely is my bosom's balm.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Too Much, Calm, Forget

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• I am not for any form of repression, but I sometimes think the desire for liberation masks the desire for oblivion. It's very hard to tell the difference sometimes.

  Francis Levy

  Thinking, Desire, Sometimes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• People want to be loved; failing that admired; failing that feared; failing that hated and despised. They want to evoke some sort of sentiment. The soul shudders before oblivion and seeks connection at any price.

  Hjalmar Söderberg

  People, Soul, Connections

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• Blue is the insides of something mysterious and lonely. I'd look at fish and birds, thinking the sky and water colored them. The first abyss is blue. An artist must go beyond the mercy of satin or water-from a gutty hue to that which is close to royal purple. All seasons and blossoms inbetween. Lavender. Theatrical and outrageous electric. Almost gray. True and false blue. Water and oil. The gas jet breathing in oblivion. The unstruck match. The blue of absence. The blue of deep presence. The insides of something perfect.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Lonely, Thinking, Artist

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• Oblivion seemed the only reasonable option.

  Ian Mcewan

  Reasonable

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• I'm very happy to have a small, long, career instead of one big hit and then oblivion.

  Susannah McCorkle

  Careers, Long, Bigs

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