Absent Quotes

• The supreme lesson of any education should be to think for yourself and to be yourself; absent this attainment, education creates dangerous, stupefying conformity.

  Bryant H. McGill

  Being Yourself, Thinking, Lessons

  36 Copy quote

• Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

  Hannah Arendt

  Peace, Power, Opposites

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.165, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Opportunity, Absence, Wells

  5 Copy quote

• I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who returned home after being absent for more than twenty years and was recognized only by his dog.

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Friendship, Dog, Home

  5 Copy quote

• One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.

  Henry James

  Country, Civilization, Texture

  'Hawthorne' (1879)

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• Achilles absent was Achilles still!

  Homer

  Achilles, Absence, Absent Mindedness

  Homer (1818). “The Iliad of Homer. Translated by A. Pope. A new edition. Adorned with plates”, p.476

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• At dramatic rehearsals, the only author that's better than an absent one is a dead one.

  George S. Kaufman

  Rehearsal, Dramatic

  15 Copy quote

• The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression.

  Gary Larson

  Depression, Long, Chickens

  Gary Larson (1988). “The far side gallery 3”, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• A person however learned and qualified in his life's work in whom gratitude is absent, is devoid of that beauty of character which makes personality fragrant.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Gratitude, Character, Personality

  Hazrat Inayat Khan “The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan: Philosophy, Psychology and Myst”, Library of Alexandria

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• The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  People, Absence, Ideals

  4 Copy quote

• Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Generosity, Giving, Absence

  16 Copy quote

• It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Time, Shapes, Assuming

  "Earthly Paradise: Colette's Autobiography Drawn from the Writings of Her Life". Book by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, 1966.

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• Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.

  William Cowper

  Love, I Miss You, Missing You

  William Cowper, Robert Southey (1836). “Miscellaneous poems. Olney hymns. Anti-Thelyphthora. Table talk and other poems. Translations from Vincent Bourne”, p.28

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• Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.

  John Calvin

  Evil, Grace, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Cynical, Faults, Excuse

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac”, p.36, Nayika Publishing

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• Any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the delight, which any present or absent thing is apt to produce in him, has the idea we call love.

  John Locke

  Reflecting Upon, Ideas, Delight

  John Locke (1836). “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, p.146

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• The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Long Distance Relationship, Heart, Thinking

  Death of the Heart (1938) pt. 2, ch. 2

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• The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Heart, Thinking, People

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Death Of The Heart”, p.163, Random House

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• Never find fault with the absent.

  Alexander Pope

  Faults, Literature, Absence

  3 Copy quote

• I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.

  Mark Twain

  Discovery, Talking, People

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.2924, Delphi Classics

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• I was absent at the moment I took up the most space.

  Albert Camus

  Space, Moments

  2 Copy quote

• The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes - love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Love, Stupid, Army

  War and Peace bk. 9, ch. 11 (1865 - 1869) (translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude)

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• A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Inspirational, Dream

  6 Copy quote

• Ever absent, ever near;
  Still I see thee, still I hear;
  Yet I cannot reach thee, dear!

  Ferenc Kazinczy

  Romantic, Valentines Day, Goodnight

  3 Copy quote

• Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.

  Mark Twain

  Courage, Fear, Cancer

  52 Copy quote