Conditions Quotes - Page 7

To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Success, Creativity, Independent

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1945). “Hegel's Philosophy of right”

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This endured absence is nothing more or less than forgetfulness. I am, intermittently, unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival.

Roland Barthes

Survival, Unfaithful, Absence

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The lights were off so that his heads could avoid looking at each other because neither of them was currently a particular engaging sight, nor had they been since he had made the error of looking into his soul. It had indeed been an error. It had been late one night-- of course. It had been a difficult day-- of course. There had been soulful music playing on the ship's sound system-- of course. And he had, of course, been slightly drunk. In other words, all the usual conditions that bring on a bout of soul searching had applied, but it had, nevertheless, clearly been an error.

Douglas Adams

Night, Errors, Light

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This symmetrical composition--the same motif at the beginning and at the end--may seem quite "novelistic" to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as "fictive," "fabricated," and "untrue to life" into the word "novelistic." Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.

Milan Kundera

Fashion, Reading, May

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Although she had resisted this knowledge all her life, had lived determinedly in the future focused there by ambition, she understood at last that this was the real condition of humanity: The dance of life occurred not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that was the present. This truth is simmple, sel-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment and in every waking hour dream of the future.

Dean Koontz

Dream, Real, Ambition

Dean Koontz (2007). “The Taking: A Novel”, p.193, Bantam

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..Such practices and beliefs, which interfere with happiness, are neither inevitable nor necessary; they evolved by chance, as a result of random responses to accidental conditions. But once they become part of the norms and habits of a culture, people assume that this is how things must be; they come to believe they have no other options.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Believe, Practice, People

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

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As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding.

Alan Moore

Understanding, Vietnam, Realizing

"The Transhuman Antihero: Paradoxical Protagonists of Speculative Fiction from Mary Shelley to Richard Morgan". Book by Michael Grantham, 2015.

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You are suffering from an ailment that affects ladies of romantic imaginations. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You'll survive.' " pg. 303

Diane Setterfield

Rain, Loss, Emotional

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Ultimately — or at the limit — in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. 'The necessary condition for an image is sight,'Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: 'We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

Roland Barthes

Photography, Eye, Sight

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... the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.

Malcolm X

Struggle, People, Evil

Malcolm X (1992). “By any means necessary”, Pathfinder Pr

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If there is something comforting - religious, if you want - about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.

Thomas Pynchon

Religious, Long, Comforting

Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.338, Penguin

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A broken heart is such a shabby thing, like poverty and failure and the incurable diseases which are also deforming. I hate it and am ashamed of it, and I must somehow repair this heart and put it back into its normal condition, as a tough somewhat scarred but operating organ.

Martha Gellhorn

Broken Heart, Hate, Disease

Martha Gellhorn, Caroline Moorehead (2006). “The letters of Martha Gellhorn”, Vintage

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Swathed in silk, I feel like a caterpillar in a cocoon awaiting metamorphosis. I always supposed that to be a peaceful condition. At first it is. But as I journey into the night, I feel more and more trapped, suffocated by the slippery bindings, unable to emerge until I have transformed into something of beauty. I squirm, trying to shed my ruined body and unlock the secret to growing flawless wings. Despite enormous effort, I remain a hideous creature, fired into my current form by the blast from the bombs.

Suzanne Collins

Night, Journey, Wings

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There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still).

John Berryman

Wall, Humility, Important

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I think the function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed; what I’m doing is judging natural events in such a way that I am creating suffering within myself. For instance, you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur. And if you just say ‘ok, here I am, I’m going to experience the pain,’ you don’t suffer. The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering.

Hubert Selby, Jr.

Pain, Thinking, Here I Am

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When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species -- will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.

Eckhart Tolle

Nature, Survival, World

Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.30, Penguin

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When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut

Thinking, People, Slaughterhouse Five

KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

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Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

Sarah Hall

Solitude, Misunderstood

Sarah Hall (2009). “How to Paint a Dead Man”, p.16, Faber & Faber

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A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.

B. F. Skinner

Philosophy, Answers, May

B. F. Skinner (1974). “Walden Two”, p.120, Hackett Publishing

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Nothing could be more absurd than moral lessons at such a moment! Oh, self-satisfied people: with what proud self-satisfaction such babblers are ready to utter their pronouncements! If they only knew to what degree I myself understand all the loathsomeness of my present condition, they wouldn't have the heart to teach me.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Heart, Self, People

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To these people, unhappiness was a condition, an intolerable state of affairs. If pills could help, pills were taken. But pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you can´t have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren´t satisfied - before working some more.

Mitch Albom

Taken, Self Worth, Mirrors

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I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success.

Og Mandino

Inspirational, Mind, Action

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Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long lasting structures? Aren't the genuine functions of strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony? ... Besides, there is an attraction, a special charm in the colossal to which ordinary theories of art do not apply.

Gustave Eiffel

Beautiful, Art, Science

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Solitude is a condition of peace that stands in direct opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. loneliness is small, solitude is large. loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nodbody answers; solitude has it's roots in the great silence of eternity.

Kent Nerburn

Loneliness, Being Alone, Becoming One

Kent Nerburn (2010). “Simple Truths: Clear and Simple Guidance on the Big Issues in Life”, p.55, New World Library

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Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition.

Amelia Barr

Being Alone, Voice, Solitude

Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (2017). “All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography The Red Leaves of a Human Heart”, p.317, Library of Alexandria

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