Concrete Quotes - Page 9

• Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails.

  Aberjhani

  Civilization, Humanity, Foundation

  Aberjhani (2014). “Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry”, p.17, Lulu.com

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• HOW do you define a word without concrete meaning? To each his own, the saying goes, so WHY push to attain an ideal state of being that no two random people will agree is WHERE you want to be? Faultless. Finished. Incomparable. People can never be these, and anyway, WHEN did creating a flawless facade become a more vital goal than learning to love the person WHO lives inside your skin? The outside belongs to others. Only you should decide for you - WHAT is perfect.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Two, Creating, People

  Ellen Hopkins (2013). “Perfect”, p.1, Simon and Schuster

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• We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.

  William James

  Effort, Digging, Littles

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.62, Nuvision Pubns

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• What is less often noticed is that it is precisely the kind of moral instruction that parents are constantly trying to give their children — concrete, imaginative, teaching general principles from particular instances, and seeking all the time to bring the children to appreciate and share the parent's own attitudes and view of life… The all-embracing principles of conduct

  J. I. Packer

  Children, Attitude, Teaching

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• Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

  Alan Watts

  Eye, Past, Reality

  Alan Watts (1989). “The way of Zen”, Vintage

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• New York is a nice place." "If you like concrete, crowds, and that claustrophobic, closed-in feeling.

  Janette Rallison

  New York, Nice, Feelings

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• The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.

  Leon Trotsky

  Philosophy, Mistake, Class

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• The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Christian, Prayer, Children

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2015). “The Cost of Discipleship”, p.111, SCM Press

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• And she loved a man who was made out of nothing. A few hours without him and right away she’d be missing him with her whole body, sitting in her office surrounded by polyethylene and concrete and thinking of him. And every time she’d boil water for coffee in her ground-floor office, she’d let the steam cover her face, imagining it was him stroking her cheeks, her eyelids and she’d wait for the day to be over, so she could go to her apartment building, climb the flight of stairs, turn the key in the door, and find him waiting for her, naked and still between the sheets of her empty bed.

  Etgar Keret

  Coffee, Missing Him, Men

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• We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom.

  Thomas Harris

  Heart, Short Notice, Cafes

  Thomas Harris (2009). “The Silence of the Lambs”, p.159, Macmillan

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• I can pinpoint that as the single happiest moment of my life, because I realized then that Mom would always have my back. It made me feel giant. I raced back down the concrete ramp, faster than I ever had before, so fast I should have fallen, but I didn't fall, because Mom was in the world.

  Maria Semple

  Mom, Fall, Should Have

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• Gotham City. Clean shafts of concrete and snowy rooftops. The work of men who died generations ago. From here, it looks like an achievement. From here, you can't see the enemy.

  Frank Miller

  Men, Cities, Enemy

  "Fictional character: Bruce Wayne". "Batman: Year One", www.imdb.com. 2011.

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• He was the first to reach the aircraft, and he went for the door that by some miracle was facing outward and not into the concrete wall. Wrenching the thing open, and getting out his flashlight, he didn’t know what to expect inside—smoke? Fumes? Blood and body parts? Zsadist was sitting rigid in a backward-facing seat, his big body strapped in, both hands locked on the armrests. The Brother was staring straight ahead and not blinking. “Have we stopped moving?” he said hoarsely

  J.R. Ward

  Brother, Wall, Moving

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• To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.

  Brené Brown

  Gratitude, Mean, Blessing

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• Without difficulties, life would be like a stream without rocks and curves – about as interesting as concrete. Without problems, there can be no personal growth, no group achievement, no progress of humanity. But what mattes about problems is what one does with them.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Curves, Rocks, Interesting

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• The thing is, you can’t always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns.

  Sarah Dessen

  Beach, Real, Needs

  Sarah Dessen (2013). “The Moon and More”, p.230, Penguin

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• Wise men don't need concrete answers. By definition, they need wisdom." ~ Geraki

  Richelle Mead

  Wise, Men, Answers

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• I believe it doesn't matter what it is, as long as you can find something concrete to keep you busy while you are living your meaningless life.

  Ruth Ozeki

  Believe, Long, Matter

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• Agape's object is always the concrete individual, not some abstraction called humanity. Love of humanity is easy because humanity does not surprise you with inconvenient demands. You never find humanity on your doorstep, stinking and begging.

  Peter Kreeft

  Life, Humanity, Doe

  "Love". Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics, www.peterkreeft.com. 1988.

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• The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete. It marks the triumph of the carnal.

  Albert Camus

  Art, Design, Triumph

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.97, Vintage

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• To begin with, I wanted that truth to life to possess a concrete reliability, and rejoiced most when the poem seemed most direct, an upfront representation of the world it stood in for or stood up for or stood its ground against.

  Seamus Heaney

  Reliability, World, Stood Up

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture”, p.10, Macmillan

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• Grit is not synonymous with hard work. It involves a certain single-mindedness. An ungritty prison inmate will mount a daring new escape attempt every month, but a gritty prison inmate will tunnel his way out one spoonful of concrete at a time. Grit

  Chip Heath

  Hard Work, Tunnels, Months

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• It is the transcendent (or 'abstract' or 'self-contained') nature of music that the new so called concretism--Pop Art, eighteen-hour slices-of-reality films, musique concrete--opposes. But instead of bringing art and reality closer together, the new movement merely thins out the distinction.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Art, Reality, Self

  Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft (1969). “Retrospectives and Conclusions”

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• To arrive at abstraction, it is always necessary to begin with a concrete reality.

  Pablo Picasso

  Reality, Simplicity, Abstraction

  Pablo Picasso (1972). “Picasso on art: a selection of views”, Viking Adult

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• For one day, or for one day for a week, refrain from something you habitually do to run away, to escape. Pick something concrete, such as overeating or excessive sleeping or overworking or spending too much time texting or checking e-mails. Make a commitment to yourself to gently and compassionately work with refraining from this habit for this one day. Really commit to it. Do this with the intention that it will put you in touch with the underlying anxiety or uncertainty that you've been avoiding. Do it and see what you discover.

  Pema Chodron

  Running, Sleep, Commitment

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