Abstract Quotes - Page 19

• But nobody is visually naive any longer. We are cluttered with images, and only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the divine.

  Dominique de Menil

  Art, Divine, Threshold

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• Everybody enjoys the freedom he deserves, which is measured by the stature and dignity of his person or by his function, and not by the abstract and elementary fact of merely being a 'human being' or a 'citizen'.

  Julius Evola

  Citizens, Facts, Dignity

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• While it may be impossible to 'disprove' the existence of some 'Higher Power' or abstract Creator, it is entirely possible — through analysis and research — to find discrepancies within the ancient, organized religious traditions that support the idea of a specific God.

  David G. McAfee

  Religious, Ideas, Support

  FaceBook post by David G. McAfee from Dec 30, 2013

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• Passion isn't something that lives way up in the sky, in abstract dreams and hopes. It lives at ground level, in the specific details of what you're actually doing every day.

  Marcus Buckingham

  Dream, Passion, Sky

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• A man's knowledge may be said to be mature, in other words, when it has reached the most complete state of perfection to which he, as an individual, is capable of bringing it, when an exact correspondence is established between the whole of his abstract ideas and the things he has actually perceived for himself. His will mean that each of his abstract ideas rests, directly or indirectly, upon a basis of observation, which alone endows it with any real value; and also that he is able to place every observation he makes under the right abstract idea which belongs to it.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Real, Mean, Men

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.256, Simon and Schuster

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• An old essay by John Updike begins, 'We live in an era of gratuitous inventions and negative improvements.' That language is general and abstract, near the top of the ladder. It provokes our thinking, but what concrete evidence leads Updike to his conclusion ? The answer is in his second sentence : 'Consider the beer can.' To be even more specific, Updike was complaining that the invention of the pop-top ruined the aesthetic experience of drinking beer. 'Pop-top' and 'beer' are at the bottom of the ladder, 'aesthetic experience' at the top.

  John Updike

  Drinking, Beer, Thinking

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• We think about the world in all ways we experience it ; we think visually, we think in sign, we think kinesthetically, we think in abstract term, we think in movement. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.

  Ken Robinson

  Creativity, Thinking, Ideas

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• It's not about facts, it's about feelings. It's about remembering feelings and happiness. A definition of art is that it makes concrete our most subtle emotions. I think the highest form of art is music. It's the most abstract of all art expression.

  Agnes Martin

  Happiness, Art, Thinking

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• But there's a fourth interpretation: Obama can't leave his comfort zone. No president since Woodrow Wilson has been as enamored of abstract ideas or more sure that disagreement with him is proof of ignorance, bad faith or dogmatism. As a candidate, he insisted his real opponent was 'cynicism,' and in his address last week, he returned to this trite formulation, insisting again he was bravely battling the cynics.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Real, Ignorance, Ideas

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• We must cultivate and defend particularity, individuality, and irregularity-life. Human beings do not have a future in the collectivism of bureaucratic states or in the mass society created by capitalism. Every system, by virtue as much of its abstract nature as of its pretension to totality, is the enemy of life. As a forgotten Spanish poet, José Moreno Villa, put it with melancholy wit: "I have discovered in symmetry the root of much iniquity."

  Octavio Paz

  Life, Roots, Individuality

  Octavio Paz (1987). “1904-1912”, San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

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• If our minds could get hold of one abstract truth, they would be immortal so far as that truth is concerned. My trouble is to find out how we can get hold of the truth at all.

  Henry Adams

  Truth, Mind, Would Be

  Henry Adams (2015). “Esther”, p.128, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Believe, Dark, Destiny

  Friedrich Schiller (1884). “Works”

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• Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  School, Political, Doctrine

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• The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one?s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Thinking, Self, Light

  Kenneth E. Boulding (1990). “Three Faces of Power”, p.259, SAGE

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• Because there's just so much in a day now, I keep writing in much more abstract terms, like I don't try to write about what happened anymore. It would be impossible.

  Feist

  Writing, Trying, Would Be

  Interview with Seth Berkman, Stylus Magazine, December 20, 2005.

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• Know what your sin is and confess it; but do not imagine that you have approved yourself a penitent by confessing sin in the abstract.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  Sin, Imagine, Penitence

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 449), 1895.

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• All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Self, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.90, Рипол Классик

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• ... my whole existence is governed by abstract ideas.... the ideal must be preserved regardless of fact.

  Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

  Ideas, Facts, Existence

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• In abstract mathematics, of course operations alter those particular relations which are involved in the considerations of number and space, and the results of operations are those peculiar results which correspond to the nature of the subjects of operation.

  Ada Lovelace

  Numbers, Space, Peculiar

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• The Peloponnesian War turns out to be no dry chronicle of abstract cause and effect. No, it is above all an intense, riveting, and timeless story of strong and weak men, of heroes and scoundrels and innocents too, all caught in the fateful circumstances of rebellion, plague, and war that always strip away the veneer of culture and show us for what we really are.

  Thucydides

  Strong, War, Hero

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• Relativity is inherently convergent, though convergent toward a plurality of centers of abstract truths.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Relativity

  R. Buckminster Fuller (2009). “Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure”, p.155, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• The idea of abstract power only exists for academics, not in real life.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Real, Real Life, Ideas

  "Obama Is Like a Chess Player". Interview with Jan Fleischhauer and Gabor Steingart, www.spiegel.de. July 6, 2009.

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• I loved surrealism and abstract painting, and anything related to those. I always thought painting was the highest form of art. What led me to drawing was seeing so much self-important, pretentious, conceptual-type art in university. I wanted to reject that by making quick, fun art.

  Neil Farber

  Art, Fun, Drawing

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I know a lot of choreographers prefer to do abstract dance and not be bothered with a story, but even when I'm asked to do classical ballet or a modern piece, I still want to tell a story.

  Susan Stroman

  Ballet, Stories, Pieces

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Simple, Differences

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Strong Opinions”, p.34, Penguin UK

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