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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• The sage avoids extremity, excess, and extravagance.

  Laozi

  Taoism, Extravagance, Excess

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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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• 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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• Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Greatness, Law, Individual

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.21

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• I hasten to say to snobs from the Surrey pine-and-sand country that no invention since the corn plaster or the electric toothbrush has brought greater balm to the extremities of the senior golfer than the golfmobile, a word that will have to do for want of a better.

  Alistair Cooke

  Senior, Country, Golf

  Alistair Cooke (1996). “Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements”, p.80, Arcade Publishing

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• Whenever fortune wishes to joke, she lifts people from what is humble to the highest extremity of affairs.

  Juvenal

  Forgiveness, Humble, People

  "Satires". Book by Juvenal, III, line 39, 1890.

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• The generation of seeds ... is therefore marvelous and analogous to the other productions of living things. For first of all an umbilicus appears. ... Its extremity gradually expands and after gathering a colliquamentous ichor becomes analogous to an amnion. ... In the course of time the seed or fetus begins to become visible.

  Marcello Malpighi

  Life, Science, Generations

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• About the greatest virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her tongue; and through this, like all virtues carried to extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible laxity and profligacy of speech which is a the root of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the world.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Real, Roots, Faults

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• Like Patience gazing on kings' graves, and smiling
  Extremity out of act.

  William Shakespeare

  Patience, Kings, Gazing

  William Shakespeare, Edmond Malone (1821). “The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare: Pericles. Titus Andronicus. Addenda. Indexes”, p.200

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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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• Of all the felicities, the most charming is that of a firm and gentle friendship. It sweetens all our cares, dispels our sorrows, and counsels us in all extremities. Nay, if there were no other comfort in it than the pare exercise of so generous a virtue, even for that single reason a man would not be without it; it is a sovereign antidote against all calamities - even against the fear of death itself.

  Seneca the Younger

  Real, Exercise, Men

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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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• When a client is driven to the utmost extremity, it is warmth and food and ease from pain he wants. Peace and justice come afterward. Rain symbolizes mercy and sunlight charity, but rain and sunlight are better than mercy and charity. Otherwise they would degrade the things they symbolize.

  Gene Wolfe

  Pain, Rain, Justice

  Gene Wolfe (2011). “The Citadel of the Autarch: Urth: Book of the New Sun”, p.119, Hachette UK

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• For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Sea, Soul

  Herman Melville (2015). “Pierre or The Ambiguities: Works of Melville”, p.295, 谷月社

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

  Polly Horvath

  Body, Floats

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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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• Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Death, Struggle, Men

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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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