Vague Quotes - Page 4

• The camera has an interest in turning history into spectacle, but none in reversing the process. At best, the picture leaves a vague blur in the observer's mind; strong enough to send him into battle perhaps, but not to have him understand why he is going.

  Denis Donoghue

  Strong, Mind, Battle

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• You can't wish for more wishes or for vague generalities like happiness that are impossible to grant. Your wish has to be something specific enough that I can use my wand to make it happen. Oh, and recently there's been a ban on inserting yourself into the Twilight series. The Cullens are tired of different teenage girls pinging into their story every time they turn around.

  Janette Rallison

  Girl, Teenage, Twilight

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• Socialism may be worthless as a scheme, but it is not meaningless as a symptom. Rousseau's theory of the origin of society, of the social contract, and of a cure for all the social evils by a return to a state of nature, had, as we all know now, no more relation to fact than the dreams of an illiterate drunkard; but they were not without value as a vague and symbolical expression of certain evils from which the France of his day was suffering.

  William Hurrell Mallock

  Dream, Expression, Evil

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• What gives value to travel is fear. It is a fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country, we are seized by a vague fear and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. I look upon it more as an occasion for testing.

  Albert Camus

  Country, Travel, Old Habits

  Albert Camus (1963). “Carnets: 1935-1942”

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• A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by their parents for inherited deformities that were attributed to sins in a previous 'life.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Children, Believe

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• Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.

  Eric Hoffer

  Eye, Acceptance, Self

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• You know... that a blank wall is an apalling thing to look at...
  The wall of a museum - a canvas - a piece of film - or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something - that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you.

  Edward Steichen

  Wall, Museums, Typewriters

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• Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise and self-consistent.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Real, Self

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “An Outline of Philosophy”, p.2, Routledge

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• Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.

  Raymond Chandler

  Funny, Men, People

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• The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, Maybe I didn't write you, but I found you.

  Hoagy Carmichael

  Writing, Technology, Found You

  Hoagy Carmichael, Stephen Longstreet (1999). “The Stardust Road & Sometimes I Wonder: The Autobiography of Hoagy Carmichael”

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• With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome.

  Edward Carpenter

  Rude, Mind, Details

  Edward Carpenter (1984). “Selected Writings: Sex”

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• Renunciation mind has nothing to do with sacrificing. When we talk about renunciation, somwhow we get all scared because we think that we have to give up some goodies, somehing valuable, some important things. But there is nothing that is important; there is nothing that is solidly exisiting. All that you are give up is actually a vague identity . You realize thigs is not true; it's noe the ultimate. This how and why to develop renunciation

  Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

  Giving Up, Sacrifice, Thinking

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• In his Philosophy of Style, Herbert Spencer gives two sentences to illustrate how the vague and general can be turned into the vivid and particular: In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe. In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights, and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack.

  William Strunk, Jr.

  Philosophy, Men, Two

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• Such are the mass of the supporters of either party. They derive their political opinions originally from some family tradition or some fanciful preference, but they back them with all the passion of sportsmen. In a vague subconscious way they know it is a game, but they happen to enjoy playing the game.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Party, Passion, Political Opinions

  Hilaire Belloc (2008). “The Party System”, p.37, IHS Press

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• If you can't say anything nice, at least have the decency to be vague.

  Susan Andersen

  Nice, Say Anything, Ifs

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• Introducing a technology is not a neutral act--it is profoundly revolutionary. If you present a new technology to the world you are effectively legislating a change in the way we all live. You are changing society, not some vague democratic process. The individuals who are driven to use that technology by the disparities of wealth and power it creates do not have a real choice in the matter. So the idea that we are giving people more freedom by developing technologies and then simply making them available is a dangerous illusion.

  Karl Schroeder

  Real, Technology, Ideas

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• Melanctha Herbert was always losing what she had in all the things she saw. Melanctha was always being left when she was not leaving others. Melanctha Herbert always loved too hard and much too often. She was always full with mystery and subtle movements and denials and vague distrusts and complicated disillusions. Then Melanctha would be sudden and impulsive and unbounded in some faith, and then she would suffer and be strong in her repression. Melanctha Herbert was always seeking rest and quiet and always she could only find new ways to be in trouble.

  Gertrude Stein

  Strong, Leaving, Suffering

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• In such a case secrecy must be absolute to be effective, and although mere vague curiosity induced many persons of my intimate acquaintance to ask to be allowed to just go in and have a peep, I never admitted anyone.

  Henry Bessemer

  Curiosity, Intimate, Secrecy

  Sir Henry Bessemer (1905). “Sir Henry Bessemer, F.R.S.: An autobiography”

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• Technique does not constitute art. Nor is it a vague, fuzzy romantic quality known as ‘beauty,’ remote from the realities of everyday life. It is the depth and intensity of an artist’s experience that are the first importance in art.

  Grant Wood

  Beauty, Art, Reality

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• I didn't actually realise what apartheid meant. I'm probably a bit naive, but I thought it was more of a vague segregation, like on the beaches and buses.

  John Deacon

  Beach, Discrimination, Segregation

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• Continue your quest by taking the test. Yes, but what test? What test was I supposed to take? The Kobayashi Maru? The Pepsi Challenge? Could the clue have been any more vague?

  Ernest Cline

  Challenges, Pepsi, Quests

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• By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Effort, Leaving

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.279, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Gel'fand amazed me by talking of mathematics as though it were poetry. He once said about a long paper bristling with formulas that it contained the vague beginnings of an idea which could only hint at and which he had never managed to bring out more clearly. I had always thought of mathematics as being much more straightforward: a formula is a formula, and an algebra is an algebra, but Gel'fand found hedgehogs lurking in the rows of his spectral sequences!

  Dusa McDuff

  Math, Talking, Ideas

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• That sometimes clear ... and sometimes vague stuff ... which is ... mathematics.

  Imre Lakatos

  Math, Stuff, Sometimes

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• So often we have a kind of vague, wistful longing that the promises of Jesus should be true. The only way really to enter into them is to believe them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man.

  William Barclay

  Jesus, Believe, Men

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