Descending Quotes - Page 2

• What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your fingers, until your fingers are broken?

  Tennessee Williams

  Broken, Earth, Fingers

  Tennessee Williams (2012). “Orpheus Descending and Suddenly Last Summer”, p.27, New Directions Publishing

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• Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Hate, Cutting, Men

  "Loving Your Enemies". Speech delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, November 17, 1957.

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• The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Stars, Boys

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.299, Library of America

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• Only the phoenix rises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost.

  Neil Gaiman

  Phoenix, Doe, Lost

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• No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Life, Nature

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.331, New World Library

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• Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Love, Peace, Winning

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Alex Ayres (1993). “The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr”, Plume

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• Coffee comes in five descending stages: Coffee, Java, Jamoke, Joe, and Carbon Remover.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Coffee, Java, Stage

  Robert A. Heinlein (1982). “Glory Road”, Berkley

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• A mob is a society obodies, voluntarily bereaving themselves oreason, and traversing its work. The mob is man, voluntarily descending to the nature othe beast. Its fit hour oactivity is night; its actions are insane, like its whole constitution.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Night, Men, Insane

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• When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Children, Heart

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• To trace the history of a river . . . is to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Rain, Rivers, Water

  Gretel Ehrlich (1992). “Islands, the universe, home”, Penguin Group USA

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• But it's the wrestler who can put the fatigue out of his mind and break through the "wall," like a marathon runner after 18 or 20 miles, who will survive. The key to that survival is in hard workouts that develop mental confidence to the point where you won't submit to fatigue and pain descending upon you.

  Lou Banach

  Sports, Workout, Wall

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• Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happiest accidents- the rest you let float by.

  David Wroblewski

  Life, Rivers, Waiting

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• But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem: they might point to the catkins hanging from the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the rain descending on black earth in early spring. --- And we, who always think of happiness rising, would feel the emotion that almost baffles us when a happy thing falls.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Spring, Rain, Fall

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• The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre- To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire.

  T. S. Eliot

  Lying, Love Is, Fire

  Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 4 (1942)

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• I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Rain, Eye, Moon

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.37, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I had it together on Sunday. By Monday at noon it had cracked. On Tuesday debris Was descending on me. And by Wednesday no part was intact. On Thursday I picked up some pieces. On Friday I picked up the rest. By Saturday, late, It was almost set straight. And on Sunday the world was impressed With how well I had got it together.

  Judith Viorst

  Friday, Monday, Sunday

  Judith Viorst (2001). “Suddenly Sixty and Other Shocks of Later Life”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

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• Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Desire, One Day, Stories

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• Elizabeth’s entire body started to tremble as his lips began descending to hers. and she sought to forestall what her heart knew was inevitable by reasoning with him. “A gently bred Englishwoman,” she shakily quoted Lucinda’s lecture. “feels nothing stronger than affection. We do not fall in love.” His warm lips covered hers. “I’m a Scot,” he murmured huskily. “We do.

  Judith McNaught

  Falling In Love, Heart, Stronger

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• The night is darkening round me,
  The wild winds coldly blow;
  But a tyrant spell has bound me
  And I cannot, cannot go.
  The giant trees are bending
  Their bare boughs weighed with snow;
  The storm is fast descending,
  And yet I cannot go.
  Clouds beyond clouds above me,
  Wastes beyond wastes below;
  But nothing drear can move me;
  I will not, cannot go.

  Emily Bronte

  Moving, Night, Blow

  "The Night is Darkening Round Me". Poem by Emily Bronte, www.poetryfoundation.org. November 1837.

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• Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralyzed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Fear, Real, Believe

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• The bristling eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. Mesmerized. the boy watched them disappear under the hanging white thatch of hair. There, almost coyly, they remained just out of sight for a moment, before suddenly descending with a terrible finality and weight.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Boys, Hair, Sight

  "The Amulet of Samarkand". Book by Jonathan Stroud, September 30, 2003.

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• And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

  Khalil Gibran

  Children, Rain, Flower

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder lie; it doesn’t establish truth. Violence may even murder the dishonest man, but it doesn’t murder dishonesty. Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn’t murder hate. It may increase hate. It is always a descending spiral leading nowhere. This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn’t solve any problems.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Hate, Liars, Lying

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• grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Writing, Dark, Long Ago

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• Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Brotherhood, Church, Doe

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