Fixed Quotes - Page 15

• In this initial illimitableness of possibilities that characterizes one who has no nature there stands out only one fixed, pre-established, and given line by which he may chart his course, only one limit: the past.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Past, Lines, May

  "History as a System". Book by José Ortega y Gasset, transleted by ‎Helene Weyl. Chapter "Man has no nature", 1962.

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• Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self. Only he would never quite put the knife in the heart of his paradisal ideal. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, love should be a fulfillment, and life should be a thing of bliss. That was his fixed ideal. Fata Morgana. That was the pin he tortured himself on, like a pinned-down butterfly.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Heart, Butterfly, Fighting

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.8283, Delphi Classics

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• As a beast of toil an ox is fixed capital. If he is eaten, he no longer functions as an instrument of labour, nor as fixed capital either.

  Karl Marx

  Toil, Beast, Instruments

  Karl Marx, Samuel Moore, Edward Bibbins Aveling, Friedrich Engels (1961). “Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production”

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• Is a fixed income not a good thing? Does not everyone love to count on a sure thing? Especially every petty-bourgeois, narrow-minded Frenchman? the 'ever needy' man?

  Karl Marx

  Men, Doe, Income

  "Grundrisse". Book by Karl Marx (pp. 809 - 810), 1857-1858.

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• If one starts with the assumption that, in the absence of specific Congressional authority, a fixed rule of law precludes contracting officers from providing in a Government contract terms reasonably calculated to assure its performance even though there be no money loss through a particular default, there is no problem. But answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question, and thereby begging the real one.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Real, Loss, Government

  "Priebe & Sons., Inc. v. United States, 332 U.S. 407". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. November 17, 1947.

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• I was a bicycle messenger when Alkaline Trio was formed as a way to make ends meet and I've just always been a cyclist and then I got really into - through messengering - I got really into road bikes and fixed gears.

  Matt Skiba

  Gears, Way, Messengers

  "Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio and Blink-182 on staying young through BMX". Interview with David Anthony, music.avclub.com. May 27, 2015.

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• In general, my paintings are multifocal. You can't call it unfocused space, but not being fixed to a single focus is very much of our time.

  Bridget Riley

  Space, Focus, Painting

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• I am not dead yet! I can still call forth a piece of soul and set it down in color, fixed forever.

  Keri Hulme

  Color, Forever, Soul

  Keri Hulme (2005). “The Bone People: A Novel”, p.74, LSU Press

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• Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Champion, Doubt, Opinion

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1859). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence”, p.476

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• The talker has found a hearer but not a listener; and though he may talk his very best for his own sake, you will find that his mental movements are erratic: they have no fixed centre and no definite object. His talk is like the water of a canal whose banks have given way, which rolls aimlessly hither and thither, without fulfilling any useful function, though it is the same water which was so helpful and serviceable, when it was confined within clearly marked limits by the restraining force of its earthy boundaries.

  Charles Dickens

  Water, Listening, May

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• What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Reality, Thinking, Data

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• Mark what unvary'd laws preserve each state, Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.

  Alexander Pope

  Wise, Fate, Law

  Alexander Pope (1776). “An essay on man. Enlarged and improved by the author. With notes, critical and explanatory”, p.21

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• It is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," "ravenous billows," etc.; and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the pure fact , out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one.

  John Ruskin

  Eye, Talking, Sea

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.69, University of Virginia Press

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• It pains me to see my old company, which has meant so much to America, on the ropes. But Chrysler has been in trouble before, and we got through it, and I believe they can do it again... Let's face it, if your car breaks down, you're not going to take it to the White House to get fixed. But, if your company breaks down, you've got to go to the experts on the ground, not the bureaucrats.

  Lee Iacocca

  Pain, Believe, White

  "Lee Iacocca On Chrysler's Bankruptcy" by Julie Halpert, www.newsweek.com. April 29, 2009.

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• It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable.

  Frank Herbert

  Events, Fool, Form

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Children of Dune”, p.286, Penguin

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• Thanks to the scientific method, most people in "developed" countries have an outlook of mild deism. We assume things like weather and disease operate according to fixed natural laws. Every so often, though, problems impinge on us so directly that we stretch beyond that mildly deistic stance and ask God to intervene. When a drought drags on too long, we pray for rain. When a young mother gets a diagnosis of cervical cancer, we solicit prayers for her healing. We beseech God as if trying to talk God into something God otherwise might not want to do.

  Philip Yancey

  Country, Mother, Prayer

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• Trust arises from the mind's instinctive feeling after fixed realities, after the substance of every shadow, the base of all appearance, the everlasting amid change.

  James Martineau

  Reality, Feelings, Mind

  James Martineau (1879). “Hours of thought on sacred things, sermons”

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• The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth...these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Stars, Flower, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.89, BookBaby

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• Men's fundamental attitudes toward the world are fixed by the scope and qualities of the activities in which they partake.

  John Dewey

  Attitude, Men, Quality

  John Dewey (2012). “Democracy and Education”, p.130, Courier Corporation

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• You are now fixed at the mercy of no governor that comes to make his fortune great; you shall be governed by laws of your own making and live a free, and if you will, a sober and industrious life. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution and has given me his grace to keep it.

  William Penn

  Law, Grace, Sober

  Letter to those already residing in Pennsylvania, 1681.

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• The words that bore the deathless verse of Homer from bard to a group of fascinated hearers, and with whose fading sounds the poems passed beyond recall, are fixed on the printed page in a hundred tongues. They carry to a million eyes what once could reach but a hundred ears.

  Nicholas Murray Butler

  Eye, Ears, Pages

  Nicholas Murray Butler (1911). “Philosophy”

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• If you vent anger with the object of spreading your toxic feelings, the result will have nothing to do with healing. Your anger is your weapon. On the other hand, if you release anger the way you'd expel a rock from your shoe, your intention clearly has healing behind it. Once the anger starts flowing, both of these alternatives might feel the same. Anger is anger. But if you have a healing intention, two things will happen: you will feel more peaceful after your anger has been released, and you will feel like an old, fixed belief in enemies and injustice has started to move.

  Deepak Chopra

  Moving, Anger, Healing

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• Since freedom is not a fixed thing that can be grasped and held once for all, but a growth, any particular society, such as our own, always appears partly free and partly unfree. In so far as it favors, in every child, the development of his highest possibilities, it is free, but where it falls short of this it is not.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Children, Freedom, Fall

  Charles Horton Cooley (1909). “Two Major Works: Social Organization. Human Nature and the Social Order”, Glencoe, Ill., Free P

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• In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.

  David Hume

  Ambition, Thinking, Government

  David Hume (2016). “Essays Moral, Political, Literary: Revision of Great Book”, p.50, VM eBooks

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• It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be improper to see in them a guide, a way of life? To learn the art of remaining motionless amid the agitation of the whirlwind, to learn to remain still and to be as transparent as this fixed light amid the frantic branches this may be a program for life.

  Octavio Paz

  Art, Passion, Light

  "The Monkey Grammarian". Book by Octavio Paz, Ch. 2, 1974.

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