Abyss Quotes - Page 15

• The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.

  Cesare Pavese

  Depression, Sound, Gauges

  20 Copy quote

• For as long as I am alive, I will not rest in my desire to lead my people out of an abyss of corruption and poverty.

  Fawzia Koofi

  Long, People, Desire

  "Will Fawzia Koofi Be Afghanistan's First Female President?" by Fawzia Koofi, www.thedailybeast.com. January 6, 2012.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence, --the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all.

  Emma Goldman

  Struggle, Mean, Men

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.25, Sheba Blake Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Shut your eyes, wait, think of nothing. Now, open them ... one sees nothing but a great coloured undulation. What then? An irradiation and glory of colour. This is what a picture should give us ... an abyss in which the eye is lost, a secret germination, a coloured state of grace ... loose conciousness. Descend with the painter into the dim tangled roots of things, and rise again from them in colours, be steeped in the light of them.

  Paul Cezanne

  Eye, Thinking, Light

  11 Copy quote

• [For men] to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.

  John Ruskin

  Men, Long, Political

  John Ruskin (2012). “Selections From the Works of John Ruskin”, p.215, tredition

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• God is infinite and without end, but the soul's desire is an abyss which cannot be filled except by a Good which is infinite; and the more ardently the soul longeth after God, the more she wills to long after him; for God is a Good without drawback, and a well of living water without bottom, and the soul is made in the image of God, and therefore it is created to know and love God.

  Johannes Tauler

  God, Long, Water

  Gottesfreund (im Oberland.), Rulman Merswin, Johannes Tauler (1857). “The history and life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler of Strasbourg: with twenty-five of his sermons (Temp. 1340)”, p.293

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have seen a place-its name is Eternal Hatred It is built in the deepest abyss of the stones of mortal sin. Pride was the first stone-this was seen in Lucifer.

  Mechthild of Magdeburg

  Pride, Names, Hatred

  28 Copy quote

• Oh you who have been removed from God in his solitude by the abyss of time, how can you expect to reach him without dying?

  Mansur Al-Hallaj

  Death, Solitude, Dying

  127 Copy quote

• I see many black males grasping for some thread of hope. There are so many destructive practices, glimpses into a psychic abyss. That must be very frightening.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Psychics, Practice, Black

  8 Copy quote

• If you feel uncomfortable on stage, you can very easily descend into a sort of abyss, convinced you're the worst actor ever, that you're a disgrace to the profession, that you're a disgrace to yourself. It's an awful feeling.

  Stephen Dillane

  Feelings, Actors, Awful

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men. Every valuable thing that has been added to the store of man's possessions has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by them when they had the power. They have fought every new truth ever heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their hands.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Hands, Progress

  "Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun". "The Impossible Mencken" by H. L. Mencken, June 29, 1925.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is it not better to intimate our astonishment as we pass through this world if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yeast of the abyss? I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Hands, World

  "Emerson: The Mind on Fire". Book by Robert D. Richardson, p. 122, March 6, 1995.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• KILL ME!" And then Newt's eyes cleared, as if he'd gained one last trembling gasp of sanity, and his voice softened. "Please, Tommy. Please." With his heart falling into a black abyss, Thomas pulled the trigger.

  James Dashner

  Fall, Heart, Eye

  James Dashner (2013). “Maze Runner 3: The Death Cure”, p.191, Chicken House

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

  Charles Dickens

  Beautiful, Heart, Cities

  'A Tale of Two Cities' (1859) bk. 3, ch. 15 (Sydney Carton's thoughts on the scaffold)

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.

  David Mitchell

  Two, Firsts, Steps

  David Mitchell (2012). “Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel”, p.330, Random House Group

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

  Dodie Smith

  Long, Insanity, May

  Dodie Smith (2017). “I Capture the Castle: Young Adult Edition”, p.345, St. Martin's Griffin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Animal, Men, Rope

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA - A Book for All and None (World Classics Series): Philosophical Novel”, p.22, e-artnow

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• For it is only in accepting death that one can truly live, and for the human animal, death has always been the great black beast from the abyss to be dreaded or defeated or avoided or hated - but never looked upon clearly face to face.

  David Zindell

  Animal, Black, Faces

  "The Wild". Book by David Zindell, 1995.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mad, malevolent, and incantatory, The Orphan Palace reads like the hagridden fever dream of one who has not only stared the Abyss in Its black and fathomless face, but welcomed Its gaze in return . . . and become Its living embodiment. It is a journey to be taken by none but the bravest of readers, and by souls with an ardent desire to savor their own damnation.

  Robin Spriggs

  Dream, Taken, Journey

  5 Copy quote

• My abyss speaks, I have turned my ultimate depth inside out into the light.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Light, Depth, Speak

  "The Portable Nietzsche".

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Put a man on the brink of the abyss and - in the unlikely event that she doesn't fall into it - he will become a mystic or a madman... Which is probably the same thing!

  Apostolos Doxiadis

  Fall, Men, Events

  4 Copy quote

• We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial -whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.

  Anna Politkovskaya

  Dog, Ignorance, Special

  "Poisoned by Putin: The horror of Beslan was made still worse by the intimidation of Russia's servile media". www.theguardian.com. September 9, 2004.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war.

  Paul Fussell

  Dream, War, Past

  Paul Fussell (1990). “Thank God for the Atom Bomb, and Other Essays”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mind led body
  to the edge of the precipice.
  They stared in desire
  at the naked abyss.
  If you love me, said mind,
  take that step into silence.
  If you love me, said body,
  turn and exist.

  Anne Stevenson

  Silence, Mind, Desire

  Anne Stevenson (2005). “Poems 1955-2005”, Bloodaxe Books Limited

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have nothing but contempt for the deceitful thing men call 'happiness,' and find myself with no choice but to push my characters, whom I pour my heart and soul out to create, into the abyss of tragedy.

  Gen Urobuchi

  Happiness, Writing, Heart

  80 Copy quote