Absolutes Quotes - Page 20

• A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back. In the coffee houses, in the government buildings, in boats of Lake Geneva, people look at their watches and take refuge in time. Each person knows that somewhere is recorded the moment she was born, the moment she took her first step, the moment of her first passion, the moment she said goodbye to her parents.

  Alan Lightman

  Goodbye, Coffee, Passion

  4 Copy quote

• All the children seem to be coming out quite intelligent, thank goodness. It would have been such a bore to be the mother of morons, and it’s an absolute toss-up, isn’t it? If one could only invent them, like characters in books, it would be much more satisfactory to a well-regulated mind.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Mother, Children, Book

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2012). “The Nine Tailors”, p.464, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything.

  Nathanael West

  College, Expression, Years

  Nathanael West, Jonathan Lethem (2009). “Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust”, p.14, New Directions Publishing

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sole philosophy open to those who doubt the possibility of truth is absolute silence -- even mental.

  Jacques Maritain

  Philosophy, Silence, Doubt

  Jacques Maritain, E. I. Watkin (2005). “An Introduction to Philosophy”, p.128, Rowman & Littlefield

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from.

  C. S. Lewis

  Fun, Thinking, People

  "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis, Book I, Chapter 5, ("We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"), 1952.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I become more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of Hussein, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers and his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Self, Simplicity, Islam

  Young India article on September 23, 1924. "My Jail Experiences". Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 29, p. 133, 1960.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• So perhaps the real secret to style is filling yourself to the absolute brim with engagement. Loving not wisely, but too well and all that.

  Tim Gunn

  Real, Style, Secret

  Tim Gunn, Kate Moloney (2011). “Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style”, p.179, Abrams

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Without memories to cloud it, the mind perceives with absolute clarity. Each observation stands out in stark relief. In the beginning, when there's not yet a smudge, the slate still blank, there is only the present moment: each vital detail, shocked color, the fall of light. Like film stills. The mind relentlessly open to the world, deeply impressed, even hurt by it: not yet gauzed by memory.

  Nicole Krauss

  Hurt, Memories, Fall

  Nicole Krauss (2003). “Man Walks Into a Room”, p.138, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes we have the absolute certainty there's something inside us that's so hideous and monstrous that if we ever search it out we won't be able to stand looking at it. But it's when we're willing to come face to face with that demon that we face the angel.

  Hubert Selby, Jr.

  Angel, Able, Faces

  FaceBook post by Hubert Selby, Jr. from Jan 27, 2017

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wake up now, look alive, for here is a day off work just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash, and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then in the shortening days laid down their lives for our welfare and onward resolve. There's the miracle for you, the absolute sacrifice that still holds back seed: a germ of promise to do the whole thing again, another time. . . Thanksgiving is Creation's birthday party. Praise harvest, a pause and sigh on the breath of immortality.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Party, Rain, Sunshine

  Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.284, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.

  Bertrand Russell

  Real, Thinking, Self

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.10, Lulu.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the photograph's immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolute superior, somehow eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past ("this-has-been"), the photograph suggests that it is already dead.

  Roland Barthes

  Real, Past, Two

  "Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography". Essay by Roland Barthes (translated by R. Howard), 1980.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• He spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another, a mind aware of the impossibility of absolute understanding. The difficulty of having a mind that understands that it will always be misunderstood.

  Nicole Krauss

  Loneliness, Understanding, Solitude

  Nicole Krauss (2003). “Man Walks Into a Room”, p.156, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.

  Howard Nemerov

  Responsibility, Government, Promise

  12 Copy quote

• A novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.

  Azar Nafisi

  Believe, Usual, Moral

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.129, Random House

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There’s no such thing as winning or losing. There is won and there is lost, there is victory and defeat. There are absolutes. Everything in between is still left to fight for. Serpine will have won only when there is no one left to stand against him. Until then, there is only the struggle, because tides do what tides do–they turn.

  Derek Landy

  Struggle, Fighting, Winning

  Derek Landy (2015). “Skulduggery Pleasant -”, p.181, HarperCollins UK

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far. The secret is in action - here and now. It is your behavior that blinds you to yourself. Disregard whatever you think yourself to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect - whatever your idea of perfection may be. All you need is courage.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Wisdom, Fun, Thinking

  47 Copy quote

• Inside each of us resides the truth, I began, the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the real thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion.

  Garth Stein

  Real, Believe, Mirrors

  Garth Stein (2008). “The Art of Racing in the Rain”, Harper

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is ‘overruled’ already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In short, they mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business.

  William James

  Holiday, Mean, Responsibility

  4 Copy quote

• Human love, human trust, are always perilous, because they break down. The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster. Because to place absolute trust on another human being is in itself a disaster, both ways, since each human being is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it go in company with another ship.... And yet, love is the greatest thing between human beings.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Love Is, Way, Ships

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “Kangaroo”, p.201, Jester House Publishing

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing.

  Herman Melville

  Eye, Heart, Men

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.108, Velvet Element Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can't give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality.

  Ann Druyan

  Powerful, Humility, Reality

  46 Copy quote

• Only with absolute fearlessness can we slay the dragons of mediocrity that invade our gardens.

  George Lois

  Fear, Business, Garden

  50 Copy quote

• Her nakedness was not absolute, for like Manet's _Olympia__, behind her ear she had a poisonous flower with orange petals, and she also wore a gold bangle on her right wrist and a necklace of tiny pearls. I imagined I would never see anything more exciting for as long as I lived, and today I can confirm that I was right.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Flower, Orange, Long

  59 Copy quote

• In recent years my understanding of God had evolved into increasingly remote abstractions. I'd come to think of God in terms like Divine Reality, the Absolute, or the One who holds us in being. I do believe that God is beyond any form and image, but it has grown clear to me that I need an image in order to relate. I need an image in order to carry on an intimate conversation with what is so vast, amorphous, mysterious, and holy that it becomes ungraspable. I mean, really, how to you become intimate with Divine Reality? Or the Absolute?

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Believe, Mean, Reality

  Sue Monk Kidd, Ann Kidd Taylor (2009). “Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France”, p.38, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source