Recoil Quotes - Page 2

• We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. Like the images the photographer plunges into a golden bath, our sentiments take on color; and only then, after that recoil and that trans-figuration, do we understand their real meaning and enjoy them in all their tranquil splendor.

  Georges Duhamel

  Memories, Real, Color

  "The Heart's Domain". Book by Georges Duhamel, 1919.

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• Sole and self-commanded works,
  Fears not undermining days,
  Grows by decays,
  And, by the famous might that lurks
  In reaction and recoil,
  Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self, Flames, Ice

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.48, Graphic Arts Books

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• Most Americans instinctively recoil from the claim that there is an antireligious bias running through the underlying assumptions with which their society approaches church-state issues. However, there is persuasive evidence that among some influential segments of the population, there is a very real antireligious strain.

  Stephen V Monsma

  Christian, Running, Religious

  Stephen V. Monsma (1995). “Positive Neutrality: Letting Religious Freedom Ring”, Baker Publishing Group

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• Coercive measures may have a restraining effect for a time, but can never subdue an untractable spirit: it is only by engaging the affections and enlarging the understanding, that the heart can be meliorated or principles be formed; for like a bow forcibly bent, the mind recoils from oppression with elastic power.

  Mary Hays

  Heart, Understanding, Mind

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• This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness; hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish, but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good--these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages.

  James Martineau

  Jesus, Heart, Invisible Hand

  James Martineau (1905). “A Martineau year book: Extracts from sermons”

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• The persons whom you have idolized can never, in the end, be ungrateful, and, probably, at the time of retreat they still do justice to your heart. But, so long as you must draw persons too near you, a temporary recoil is sure to follow. It is the character striving to defend itself from a heating and suffocating action upon it.

  Margaret Fuller

  Heart, Character, Long

  Margaret Fuller, Bell Gale Chevigny (1976). “The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings”, p.134, UPNE

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• The good or evil we confer on others very often, I believe, recoils on ourselves; for as men of a benign disposition enjoy their own acts of beneficence equally with those to whom they are done, so there are scarce any natures so entirely diabolical as to be capable of doing injuries without paying themselves some pangs for the ruin which they bring on their fellow-creatures.

  Henry Fielding

  Believe, Men, Evil

  Henry Fielding (1975). “The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling”, p.765, Wesleyan University Press

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• The promise of God is that you are His son. Her offspring. Its likeness. His equal. Ah...here is where you get hung up. You can accept "His son," "offspring," "likeness," but you recoil at being called "His equal." It is too much to accept. Too much bigness, too much wonderment-too much responsibility. For if you are God's equal, that means nothing is being done to you-and all things are created by you. There can be no more victims and no more villains-only outcomes of your thought about a thing.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Inspirational, Religious, Mean

  "Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue". Book by Neale Donald Walsch, 1995.

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• Crime oft recoils upon the author's head.

  Seneca the Younger

  Crime

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• I'm always making things, and I have this ongoing practice of compelling stuff that strikes me. Over the course of my life doing this, I've trained myself to do the opposite of what's human nature, and that is to recoil from things I don't like.

  Arthur Jafa

  Opposites, Practice, Ongoing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• My dad used to take my younger sister Whitney and I to the firing range, and he'd stand behind us as we shot. We were tiny, tiny girls, only about ten years old at the time, so the recoil when we pulled the trigger would send us flying backwards. But he'd stand behind us and make sure we were safe.

  Amber Heard

  Girl, Dad, Years

  "20Q: Amber Heard". Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.playboy.com. August 10, 2011.

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• Just in time for Bob Dylan to recoil from the attention, leave the city for Woodstock, and turn his back on fame.

  Bob Dylan

  Cities, Attention, Bob

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

  Harold Pinter

  Art, Hands, Challenges

  "Art, Truth & Politics". Harold Pinter's Nobel lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 7, 2005.

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• So, think as if your every thought were to be etched in fire across the sky for all and everything to see.For so, in truth, it is.So speak as if the world entire were but a single ear intent on hearing what you say.And so, in truth, it is.Do as if your every deed were to recoil upon your heads.And, so in truth it does.So wish as if you were the wish.And so, in truth, you are.So live as if your God Himself had need of you his life to live.And so, in truth, he does.

  Mikhail Naimy

  Thinking, Fire, Sky

  Mikha'il Na'ima, “This Is The Way To Freedom From Care And Pain”

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• People should remain unaffected by what others may say. A true man is one who overcomes the ups and downs of life with fortitude. One should not recoil before reverses of fortunes. One should bravely face them and overcome them.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Men, People, Overcoming

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• Violence recoils on the violent.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Violence, Violent

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• The man who seeks revenge is like the man who shoots himself in order to hit his enemy with the kick of the gun's recoil.

  Tim LaHaye

  Revenge, Gun, Men

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• One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

  Jack London

  Environment

  Jack London (1992). “The Call of the Wild and White Fang”, p.158, Wordsworth Editions

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• I despise Birth-Control first because it is ... an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Science, Doctors

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• Force, unregulated or ill-regulated, is not only wasted in the void, like that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam unconfined by science; but, striking in the dark, and its blows meeting only the air, they recoil, and bruise itself.

  Albert Pike

  Dark, Blow, Air

  Albert Pike (2013). “Morals and Dogma”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• It's fine to dress in polka dots and pink crinoline if you want. What I recoil from is the idea that that alone is the only way to be female.

  Susan Faludi

  Ideas, Dresses, Female

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends. The heart recoils; in its retired some drops of childhood's dew still linger, defying manhood's fiery noon.

  James Russell Lowell

  Heart, Forget Everything, Childhood

  James Russell Lowell (1845). “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets”, p.141

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• He who sports compliments, unless he takes good aim, may miss his mark, and be wounded by the recoil of his own weapon.

  Thomas Chandler Haliburton

  Sports, Missing, May

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• I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man. Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force? Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying to our nature than a waste of the blood of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Men, Blood

  Thomas Jefferson, Barbara B. Oberg, Lyman Henry Butterfield, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti (2003). “The papers of Thomas Jefferson: 1 January 1798 to 31 January 1799”, Princeton Univ Pr

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• If you throw a stone in a pond... the waves which strike against the shores are thrown back towards the spot where the stone struck; and on meeting other waves they never intercept each other's course... In a small pond one and the same stroke gives birth to many motions of advance and recoil.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Nature, Travel, Giving

  Leonardo da Vinci (2008). “Notebooks”, p.23, OUP Oxford

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