Absolutes Quotes - Page 12

• May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best - out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters.

  May Sarton

  Fashion, What Matters, Trying

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.65, Open Road Media

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• Nothing is absolute, with the debatable exceptions of this statement and death.

  John Ralston Saul

  Exception, Statements

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Loneliness, Believe, Discovery

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• Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?

  Annie Dillard

  People, Church, Cheerful

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.173, Canongate Books

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• Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues 'no air exists' but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe - they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions [which assumes an orderly universe], to make moral judgments [which assumes absolute values] - but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such 'breathing' impossible. They are breathing God's air all the time they are arguing against him.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  God, Religious, Atheist

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• How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.

  Ian Mcewan

  Atheist, Imagination, Forgiving

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• That is another of your odd notions," said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing "odd" that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of "oddities.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Fashion, Science, Oddities

  Edgar Allan Poe, Stuart Levine, Susan Levine (1976). “The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition”, p.226, University of Illinois Press

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• Once war becomes a clash of absolutes, there is no breathing room for mercy. Absolute truth is blind truth.

  Deepak Chopra

  Spiritual, War, Breathing

  Deepak Chopra (2008). “The Third Jesus: How to Find Truth and Love in Today's World”, p.229, Random House

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• I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.

  Martin Buber

  Knowledge, Learning, Adventure

  "Martin Buber: An Intimate Portrait". Book by Aubrey Hodes, 1971.

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• Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  School, Knowledge, Suggestions

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• (He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute

  Bruce Sterling

  Men, Finals, Purpose

  Bruce Sterling (2014). “Schismatrix Plus”, p.224, Open Road Media

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• Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Levels, Relative, Values

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.178, Macmillan

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• Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day.

  Vera Nazarian

  Good Morning, Sleep, Adventure

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• Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?

  Jim Butcher

  Heart, Forever, Darkness

  Jim Butcher (2010). “The Dresden Files Collection 1-6”, p.256, Penguin

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• I know it's hard being a single mother baby, he said, but we're talking fundamentals here. Homemade cookies are one of the best parts of christmas. It's an absolute fundamental.

  Dean Koontz

  Mother, Baby, Talking

  Dean Koontz (2002). “Strangers”, p.209, Penguin

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• Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity.

  P. D. James

  Confusing, Identity, Senses

  P. D. James (1984). “Trilogy of Death: Three Complete Novels”, Scribner Book Company

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• You haven't yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior's way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability--to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt. All along I've shown you by example that a warrior's life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior's sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.

  Dan Millman

  Heart, Warrior, Cutting

  Dan Millman (2006). “Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book that Changes Lives”, p.178, H J Kramer

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• New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves... A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute meaningless.

  Henry Miller

  Jobs, New York, Thug

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• No matter what God's power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on our human level and limits himself.

  Jacques Ellul

  Levels, May, Matter

  Jacques Ellul (2011). “Anarchy and Christianity”, p.34, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Opportunity, Thinking

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• But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse

  Cormac McCarthy

  Misery, Humans

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.448, Pan Macmillan

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• This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone.

  Jack London

  Expression, Surrender, Masters

  Jack London, JACK LONDON (2015). “White Fang (Arcadia Classics)”, p.176, Jack London

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• There is no pretending," Jace said with absolute clarity. "I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then.

  Cassandra Clare

  Romantic, Love You, Forbidden Love

  Cassandra Clare (2009). “City of Glass”, p.331, Simon and Schuster

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• [Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

  Tim O'Brien

  War, Evil, Stories

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.66, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I began to wonder whether anything truly existed, whether reality wasn't an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses....If that were true, each of us was living in absolute isolation. The thought terrified me. I was consoled by the idea that I could take that gelatin and mold it to create anything I wanted...At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.

  Isabel Allende

  Reality, Ideas, Blood

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