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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• Juliana?” the words were low and far—too calm for her husband, who had found that he rather enjoyed the full spectrum of emotion now that he had experienced it. “Yes?” “What are you doing twenty feet in the air?” “Looking for a book.” “Would you mind very much returning to the earth?” “What are you thinking, climbing to the rafters in your condition?” “I am not an invalid, Simon, I still have use of all my extremes.” “You do indeed—particularly your extreme ability to try my patience—I believe, however, that you mean extremities.

  Sarah MacLean

  Husband, Believe, Book

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• The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue.

  Albert Camus

  Adventure, Sea, Long

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.303, Vintage

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• I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it. How sweet to think of! my extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thanksgiving, Running, Sweet

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.373, Penguin

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• The plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.

  Nick Hornby

  Needs, Dramatic, Being Human

  "How does it feel to be a woman? First, the Good News..." by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. May 27, 2001.

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• The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.' - Traveller

  Steven Erikson

  War, Civilization, Effort

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• The capital is become an overgrown monster; which, like a dropsical head, will in time leave the body and extremities without nourishment and support.

  Tobias Smollett

  Time, Support, Monsters

  'The Expedition of Humphry Clinker' (1771) vol. 1, letter from Matthew Bramble, 29 May

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• For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.

  Mark Haddon

  Light, Difficult Situations, People

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• I am not in the body of life. I hover on the extremities. I float.

  Polly Horvath

  Body, Floats

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• Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chilliest land And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

  Emily Dickinson

  Sea, Land, Bird

  c.1860 Complete Poems, no.254 (first published 1891).

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• she committed suicide by putting her extremities down the garbage disposal-first one arm and then, kind of miraculously if you think about it, the other arm.

  David Foster Wallace

  Suicide, Thinking, Garbage Disposal

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• When a woman is frozen of feeling, when she can no longer feel herself, when her blood, her passion, no longer reach the extremities of her psyche, when she is desperate; then a fantasy life is far more pleasurable than anything else she can set her sights upon. Her little match lights, because they have no wood to burn, instead burn up the psyche as though it were a big dry log. The psyche begins to play tricks on itself; it lives now in the fantasy fire of all yearning fulfilled. This kind of fantasizing is like a lie: If you tell it often enough, you begin to believe it.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Lying, Believe, Passion

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• The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallow subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.

  Neal Stephenson

  Book, Night, Light

  Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.1, Spectra

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• Remember laughing? Laughter enhances the blood flow to the body’s extremities and improves cardiovascular function. Laughter releases endorphins and other natural mood elevating and pain-killing chemicals, improves the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to internal organs. Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases!

  Patch Adams

  Laughter, Pain, Cancer

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• If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Sweet, Heart

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.70, Xist Publishing

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• How like a railway tunnel is the poor man's life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Men, Tunnels, Light

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.13

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

  Moliere

  Couple, Perfect, Sobriety

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• God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?

  Blaise Pascal

  God, Distance, Games

  Pensees no. 680 (1658). Popularly known as "Pascal's wager."

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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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• He who loathes war, and will do everything in his power to avert it, but who will, in the last extremity, encounter its perils, from love of country and of home--who is willing to sacrifice himself and all that is dear to him in life, to promote the well-being of his fellow-man, will ever receive a worthy homage.

  John Stevens Cabot Abbott

  Country, War, Home

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• You know that it never has been easy
  Whether you do or do not resign
  Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities
  Or stick to some straighter line.

  Joni Mitchell

  Lines, Sticks, Easy

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• Extremity is the trier of spirits.

  William Shakespeare

  Spirit, Extremes

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• I look upon the vulgar observation, 'That the devil often deserts his friends, and leaves them in the lurch,' to be a great abuse on that gentleman's character. Perhaps he may sometimes desert those who are only his cup acquaintance; or who, at most, are but half his; but he generally stands by those who are thoroughly his servants, and helps them off in all extremities, till their bargain expires.

  Henry Fielding

  Character, Gentleman, Abuse

  Henry Fielding (1975). “The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling”, p.933, Wesleyan University Press

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• But there are still many who continue to marvel at the wisdom of God in so planning the universe that big rivers run by great towns, and that death comes at the end of life instead of in the middle of it. Divest pleas ... of their semi-philosophic jargon, reduce his illustrations to homely similes, and he is marvelling at the wisdom of God who so planned things that the two extremities of a piece of wood should come at the ends instead of in the middle.

  Chapman Cohen

  Running, Illustration, Two

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