Fleeting Quotes - Page 14

• Ah, fortune and fame shall follow me ... and I shall dwell in the world of the chosen for a few moments of fleeting ecstasy; ere the seven burly lads turn into creditors and hustle me off to debtors' prison at last.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Hustle, World, Lasts

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967”, p.44, Ballantine Books

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• Good theories of the mind must span at least three different scales of time: slow, for the billions of years in which our brains have survivied; fast, for the fleeting weeks and months of childhood; and in between, the centuries of growth of our ideas through history.

  Marvin Minsky

  Years, Ideas, Childhood

  "The Society of Mind". Book by Marvin Minsky, 1986.

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• The great difficulty with large canvases is that they should by right be painted as fast as a sketch. By speed only can you gain an appearance of fleeting effect. But to paint a three yard canvas with the same dispatch as one of ten inches is well-nigh impossible.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Gains, Yards, Three

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• The fatal mistake we make is looking for a paradise that endures...This obsession with what lasts causes us to overlook many a fleeting paradise.

  Andreï Makine

  Mistake, Paradise, Lasts

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• There are as many forms of happiness as sorrow, though most prove fleeting.

  Felix Dennis

  Sorrow, Form, Prove

  Interview with Rosanna Greenstreet, www.theguardian.com. May 7, 2010.

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• Art is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement.

  John Galsworthy

  Art, Real, Men

  John Galsworthy (2008). “The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition”, p.338, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.

  Stefan Zweig

  Encounters, Add, Nerves

  Stefan Zweig (2008). “The Post-office Girl”, New York Review of Books

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• When you're creating you have to descend to depths. You've just got to go there - to the boredom, the banality, the loneliness and all that. Those moments of really feeling in the flow are fleeting.

  Errollyn Wallen

  Loneliness, Creating, Boredom

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• Although people who had achieved a great deal in science and technology talked
  of the inscrutability of creativity, I was not convinced and disbelieved them immediately and without argument. Why should everything but creativity be open
  to scrutiny? What kind of process can this be which unlike all others is not subject
  to control?…What can be more alluring than the discovery of the nature of
  talented thought and converting this thinking from occasional and fleeting flashes
  into a powerful and controllable fire of knowledge.

  Genrich Altshuller

  Powerful, Creativity, Technology

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• Zen is to religion what a Japanese "rock garden" is to a garden. Zen knows no god, no afterlife, no good and no evil, as the rock-garden knows no flowers, herbs or shrubs. It has no doctrine or holy writ: its teaching is transmitted mainly in the form of parables as ambiguous as the pebbles in the rock-garden which symbolise now a mountain, now a fleeting tiger. When a disciple asks "What is Zen?", the master's traditional answer is "Three pounds of flax" or "A decaying noodle" or "A toilet stick" or a whack on the pupil's head.

  Arthur Koestler

  Flower, Teaching, Garden

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• How fragile life was, how fleeting their days on earth, and how fickle was Death, claiming the young as often as the old, the healthy as often as the ailing, cruelly stealing away a baby's first breath, a mother's fading heartbeat.

  Sharon Kay Penman

  Mother, Baby, Healthy

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• Thus heavenly hope is all serene,But earthly hope, how bright soe'er,Still fluctuates o'er this changing scene,As false and fleeting as 't is fair.

  Reginald Heber

  Scene, Serene, Heavenly

  Reginald Heber (1841). “The poetical works of Reginald Heber”, p.371

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• Read heavily in the area where you want to write. Be aware of what's selling and what's doing well but don't try to write to market trends; they are fleeting.

  Jeff Abbott

  Writing, Trying, Trends

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• Daughters of the attitude that produced them, certain women will not appeal to us without the double bed in which we find peace by their side, while others, to be caressed with a more secret intention, require leaves blown by the wind, water rippling in the dark, things as light and fleeting as they are.

  Marcel Proust

  Daughter, Attitude, Women

  Marcel Proust (2003). “In Search of Lost Time Volume III The Guermantes Way”, Modern Library

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• Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Unique, Shapes, Moments

  Nixon, Richard M. (1971). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1969”, p.1, Best Books on

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• Can storied urn, or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

  Thomas Gray

  Dust, Voice, Ears

  'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' (1751) l. 41

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• Affect not to despise beauty: no one is freed from its dominion; But regard it not a pearl of price--it is fleeting as the bow in the clouds.

  Roger Scruton

  Beauty, Clouds, Pearls

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• A young man's ambition, can there be a more fleeting prospect?

  David Baldacci

  Ambition, Men, Young

  "Stone Cold". Book by David Baldacci, 2007.

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• What really interests me about capturing and suspending movement is that I get to experience something invisible and inaudible, as elusive and fleeting as thought itself, and give it form... Maybe my paintings are all just little fragments of the Cosmic Dance suspended in time.

  James Nares

  Giving, Movement, Littles

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• There is no better feeling than the feeling that I have done something right. That feeling comes so rarely and is so fleeting that I can never really enjoy it. So in a way, it's not a good feeling at all.

  John S. Hall

  Feelings, Done, Way

  "Daily Negations". Book by John S. Hall, 2007.

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• If the Fleeting World is but a long dream, it does not matter whether one is young or old.

  Bai Juyi

  Dream, Fleeting World, Long

  Bai Juyi, “At The End Of Spring”

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• Experience is primarily the ability to restrain our fleeting impulses.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Impulse, Ability

  "Day Watch". Book by Sergei Lukyanenko, Vladimir Vasilyev, 2000.

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• If being a spokesman for a generation is a fleeting occupation, being a symbol of an era is downright dangerous for anyone who has the bad luck to outlive it.

  Jay McInerney

  Luck, Generations, Occupation

  "The butterfly crusher" by Jay McInerney, www.theguardian.com. September 18, 2007.

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• There's a war on. We don't know how anything's going to end. We just have to grasp each fleeting moment of joy as it whizzes by.

  Rosamunde Pilcher

  War, Joy, Moments

  Rosamunde Pilcher (2013). “The Shell Seekers”, p.402, Macmillan

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• We are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial.

  Jennifer Niven

  Mind, Body, Life Is

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