Extremity Quotes

• So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.

  Matthew Henry

  Pain, Sigh, Anguish

  Matthew Henry (1839). “An Exposition of the Old and New Testament: Wherein Each Chapter is Summed Up in Its Contents: Job-Solomon's Song. 1839”, p.24

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• The integrity and self-esteem gained from winning the battle against extremity are the richest treasures in my life

  Diana Nyad

  Sports, Integrity, Self Esteem

  Twitter post from Apr 22, 2015

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• In that memorable year, 1822: Oersted, a Danish physicist, held in his hands a piece of copper wire, joined by its extremities to the two poles of a Volta pile. On his table was a magnetized needle on its pivot, and he suddenly saw (by chance you will say, but chance only favours the mind which is prepared) the needle move and take up a position quite different from the one assigned to it by terrestrial magnetism. A wire carrying an electric current deviates a magnetized needle from its position. That, gentlemen, was the birth of the modern telegraph.

  Louis Pasteur

  Moving, Memorable, Science

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• Perfect good sense shuns all extremity, content to couple wisdom with sobriety.

  Moliere

  Couple, Perfect, Sobriety

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• This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness; hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish, but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good--these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages.

  James Martineau

  Jesus, Heart, Invisible Hand

  James Martineau (1905). “A Martineau year book: Extracts from sermons”

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• Our extremities are God's opportunities.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Opportunity

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• I was taught as a young person that the far political right and the far political left aren't located on a spectrum but on a circle, where they inevitably meet in their extremity.

  C.E. Morgan

  Circles, Political, Taught

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• I wanted to lift the aspects of the lyrics and imagery that I found sincerely powerful and touching, plus the amazing musical extremities, and make my own thing. That's what making music has always been for me. Synthesizing a nonexistent kind of music that I wish existed because I wanted to listen to it.

  Phil Elvrum

  Powerful, Touching, Musical

  Interview with Brandon Stosuy, believermag.com. July 1, 2009.

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• Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa... Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty... whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies... whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die... we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained.

  St. George Tucker

  Son, Men, Land

  "A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it, in the State of Virginia". Book by St. George Tucker, 1796.

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• A fiery soul, which working out its way,
  Fretted the pygmy-body to decay:
  And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
  A daring pilot in extremity;
  Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
  He sought the storms...

  John Dryden

  Work Out, Soul, Storm

  John Dryden, “Absalom And Achitophel”

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• Life's extremities can bring God's proximity.

  Elaine A. Cannon

  Life, Proximity

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• Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

  H. Beam Piper

  Prayer, Waiting, Apathy

  H. Beam Piper (2010). “A Slave Is a Slave”, p.5, eStar Books

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• If our highly pointed triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our women. For if a soldier is a wedge, a women is a needle; being, so to speak, all point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with.

  Edwin A. Abbott

  Mean, Class, Two

  Edwin A. Abbott (2017). “Flatland”, p.17, BookRix

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• The sage avoids extremity, excess, and extravagance.

  Laozi

  Taoism, Extravagance, Excess

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• I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Men, Thinking, Heroism

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1957). “Hadrian's Memoirs”

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• I will only observe, that that ethereal sense - sight, and touch, which is at the other extremity of the scale, have from time acquired a very remarkable additional power.

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

  Sight, Scales, Remarkable

  Brillat Savarin (2015). “The Physyology of Taste”, p.49, Editorial MAXTOR

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• When ambitious desires arise in thy heart, recall the days of extremity thou have passed through. Forbearance is the root of all quietness and assurance forever.

  Ieyasu Tokugawa

  Heart, Roots, Forever

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• I'm interested in the dark side of man. I'm interested in taboos, and murder is the greatest taboo. Characters are fascinating in their extremity, not in their happiness.

  Elizabeth George

  Character, Dark, Men

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• Beating is the worst, and therefore the last means to be us'd in the correction of children, and that only in the cases of extremity, after all gently ways have been try'd, and proved unsuccessful; which, if well observ'd, there will very seldom be any need of blows.

  John Locke

  Children, Mean, Blow

  "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" by John Locke, (Sec. 84), 1693.

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• There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants.... The other type of drinker has imagination, vision. Even when most pleasantly jingled he walks straight and naturally, never staggers nor falls, and knows just where he is and what he is doing. It is not his body but his brain that is drunken.

  Jack London

  Stupid, Fall, Men

  "John Barleycorn" by Jack London, (Ch. II), 1913.

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• When you conceal inner reality, this pressure builds. You often don't expose yourself until it reaches extremity, a breaking point, and what emerges is a dramatic shift - at least in the eyes of others, from whom you've hidden the truth. So, dropping out of high school was like that for me. I was fine, I got straight As, I had friends, and then boom, I was like, I'm done.

  Melissa Febos

  School, Eye, Reality

  Source: therumpus.net

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• A biologist, if he wishes to know how many toes a cat has, does not "frame the hypothesis that the number of feline digital extremities is 4, or 5, or 6," he simply looks at a cat and counts. A social scientist prefers the more long-winded expression every time, because it gives an entirely spurious impression of scientificness to what he is doing.

  Anthony Standen

  Cat, Science, Expression

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• I don't know if it's a male thing, but I've always been interested in how people respond to the stresses and dangers of war, how they react under fire. In the extremity of war, character is revealed.

  George Packer

  Stress, War, Character

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• The horrors have made the legend of Mandelstam and are inevitably the lens through which we read his work and life. But if there had been no Stalin and no purge, Mandelstam still would have been a poet of severe emotional and existential extremity.

  Christian Wiman

  Emotional, Lenses, Work And Life

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Stories about vicars are always being told because they're at the heart of our society. Vicars touch all parts of the community and see life in all its extremity.

  Tom Hollander

  Heart, Community, Stories

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