Grasping Quotes

• One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Educational, Ideas, Shadow

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• You can free yourself from aging by reinterpreting your body and by grasping the link between belief and biology.

  Deepak Chopra

  Age, Links, Body

  FaceBook post by Deepak Chopra from Dec 13, 2011

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• If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  God, Believe, Spiritual Transformation

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• Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

  Aesop

  Reality, Focus And Concentration, Shadow

  "Aesop's Fables".

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• Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'

  Angela Davis

  Mean, Roots, Radical Islam

  Angela Y. Davis (2011). “Women, Culture & Politics”, p.14, Vintage

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• Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

  Robert Browning

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

  "Andrea del Sarto" l. 97 (1855)

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• I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature.

  Abigail Adams

  Men, Dangerous, Creatures

  Abigail Adams, John Adams (1840). “Letters of Mrs. Adams: The Wife of John Adams”, p.81

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• A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

  Francis Bacon

  Inspirational, Success, Graduation

  1625 Essays, no.52,'Of Ceremonies and Respects'.

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• A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

  Gautama Buddha

  Sweet, Men, Two

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• It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that's left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday's wind.

  Paul Ryan

  Tired, Wind, Yesterday

  Republican National Convention VP Nomination Acceptance, delivered 29 August 2012, Tampa, Florida

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• Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing.

  Thomas Fuller

  Memories, Order, Complaining

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• All species capable of grasping this fact manage better in the struggle for existence than those which rely upon their own strength alone: the wolf, which hunts in a pack, has a greater chance of survival than the lion, which hunts alone.

  Christian Lous Lange

  Struggle, Rely Upon, Survival

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• I think we lost a great deal of sympathy and support with the way in which the crisis was handled, most importantly I think when we appeared to be grasping for too much at one time instead of identifying our priorities in a much more responsible fashion.

  Billy Tauzin

  Fashion, Thinking, Support

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• I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'

  Abigail Adams

  Wisdom, Power, Men

  Abigail Adams, John P. Kaminski (2009). “The Quotable Abigail Adams”, p.185, Harvard University Press

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• The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

  Henry James

  Country, Writing, Yield

  Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 16 Jan. 1871

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• Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.

  T. S. Eliot

  Christmas, Children, Moving

  T.S. Eliot (2009). “Collected Poems 1909-1962”, p.95, Faber & Faber

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• Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

  Erich Fromm

  Intelligent, Men, Animal

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Sane Society Ils 252”, p.64, Routledge

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  Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Liberty, Arbitrary

  "Minority Report".

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• Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Disappointment, Opportunity, Occasions

  Ambrose Bierce (2004). “The Devil's Dictionaries: The Best of the Devil's Dictionary and the American Heretic's Dictionary”, p.34, See Sharp Press

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• I see many black males grasping for some thread of hope. There are so many destructive practices, glimpses into a psychic abyss. That must be very frightening.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Psychics, Practice, Black

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• I find that you learn from others. It's very much about watching TV and watching movies for me and grasping that way and watching other people act.

  Callan McAuliffe

  People, Watching Tv, Way

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• We need to learn to let go as easily as we grasp and we will find our hands full and our minds empty.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Letting Go, Hands, Mind

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• The next time you lose heart and you can’t bear to experience what you’re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering—yours, mine, and that of all living beings.

  Pema Chodron

  Change, Encouraging, Spiritual

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• When I put my pen to a blank sheet, black isn’t added but rather the white sheet is deprived of light. [] Thus I also grasped that the empty spaces are the most important aspect of a typeface.

  Adrian Frutiger

  Light, White, Space

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