Extremity Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Let brothers and sisters from one end of the world, speak in all brotherly love, all affection, and one sweetness, to their brothers and sisters in the other extremity of the world. Then we shall succeed in rearing up one vast cathedral in this world, where men of all nations and races shall glorify the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.

  Keshub Chandra Sen

  Brother, Men, Race

  Sermon preached at Mill-hill Chapel, Leeds, August 28, 1870.

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• The night ... it is filled with bestial watchmen, trammeling the extremities and the interstices of the timeless city, portents fallen, constellated deities plummeting in ash and smoke, roaming the apocryphal cities, the cities of speculation and reconstituted disorder, of insemination and incipience, swept round with the dark.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Dark, Night, Cities

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• Take courage; pain's extremity soon ends.

  Aeschylus

  Pain, Ends

  Aeschylus (1873). “The Tragedies of Æschylos: A New Translation, with a Biographical Essay, and an Appendix of Rhymed Choral Odes”, p.343

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• The barbarian chieftain, who defended his country against the Roman invasion, driven to the remotest extremity of Britain, and stimulating his followers to battle, by all that has power of persuasion upon the human heart, concludes his exhortation by an appeal to these irresistible feelings - "Think of your forefathers and of your posterity."

  John Quincy Adams

  Country, Heart, Thinking

  John Quincy Adams's Oration delivered at Plymouth at The Anniversary Commemoration of The Landing Of The Pilgrims, December 22, 1802.

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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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• 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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• Extremity is the trier of spirits.

  William Shakespeare

  Spirit, Extremes

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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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• 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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• Between extremities
  Man runs his course;
  A brand, or flaming breath,
  Comes to destroy
  All those antinomies
  Of day and night.

  William Butler Yeats

  Running, Night, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.254, Simon and Schuster

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• I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Daughter, Father, Son

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.81

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• I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.

  Henry David Thoreau

  God, Country, Catholic

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “The Most Alive is the Wildest – Thoreau’s Complete Works on Living in Harmony with the Nature: Walden, Walking, Night and Moonlight, The Highland Light, A Winter Walk, The Maine Woods, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples…”, p.274, e-artnow

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• Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light--instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Running, Book, Writing

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• I find titles the hardest thing. I was worried that 'Waste Land' was too much of a downer. For me, 'The Crash Reel' confronts what the film is about: it's not just about the reality of a crash, it's about the extremity we all face, and what happens when life crashes on you.

  Lucy Walker

  Reality, Land, Titles

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• Very often the law of extremity demands an attention to irrelevance.

  Janet Frame

  Irrelevance, Law, Attention

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• At the extremity of hardship comes relief and at the tightening of the chains of trials and tribulations comes ease.

  Boonaa Mohammed

  Relief, Trials, Hardship

  Twitter post from Aug 20, 2015

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• A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.

  Blaise Pascal

  Greatness, Men, Touching

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• In man's most dark extremity Oft succour dawns from Heaven.

  Walter Scott

  Dark, Men, Heaven

  Walter Scott (1847). “The Poetical Works of Walter Scott: Complete in One Volume with All His Introductions and Notes Also Various Readings and the Editor's Notes”, p.414

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• While women may look different, as some wear suits and others wear saris, or some cover their hair while others wear their hair loose, women need to stand together because they all face the central point of discrimination, although the extremity of which may be different from Kigali to Kabul.

  Zainab Salbi

  Hair, Together, May

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• At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it.

  Whittaker Chambers

  Men, Civilization, Issues

  Whittaker Chambers (2014). “Witness”, p.4, Regnery Publishing

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• Where is your ancient courage? You were used to say extremities was the trier of spirits; That common chances common men could bear; That when the sea was calm all boats alike showed mastership in floating.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Sea, Floating

  William Shakespeare, Joseph Dennie, Isaac Reed, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1809). “The plays of William Shakespeare: With the corrections and illustrations of various commentators”, p.123

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