Incapable Quotes - Page 3

• When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.

  Umberto Eco

  Writing, Remember, Poet

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• Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.

  Rachel Cusk

  Mother, Feelings, Would Be

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• Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Real, Exercise, Censorship In Books

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• I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Funny, Giving, Advice

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• The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed.

  Alexis Carrel

  Destiny, Giving, Firsts

  "Reflections On Life". Book by Alexis Carrel, 1952.

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• I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

  Albert Camus

  Accepting, Made, Adversaries

  Albert Camus (1965). “Notebooks, 1942-1951”

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• Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating.

  William S. Burroughs

  Art, Writing, Pages

  William S. Burroughs (2001). “Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, 1960-1997”, Semiotext

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• He who is incapable of feeling strong passions, of being shaken by anger, of living in every sense of the word, will never be a good actor.

  Sarah Bernhardt

  Strong, Anger, Passion

  Sarah Bernhardt (1924). “The Art of the Theatre”

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• While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, War, Ideas

  "Science Must Destroy Religion" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 2, 2006.

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• A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Sad, Jealousy, Knowledge

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.236, Penguin

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• Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Childhood, Kind, Scene

  "On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, 1841.

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• The most innocent man, pressed by the awful solemnities of public accusation and trial, many be incapable of supporting his own cause. He may be utterly unfit to cross-examine the witnesses against him, to point out the contradictions or defects of their testimony. And to counteract it by properly introducing it and applying his own.

  William Rawle

  Men, Innocent Man, Trials

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• Those indoctrinated by leftist thinking become largely incapable of making accurate moral judgments.

  Dennis Prager

  Thinking, Moral, Judgment

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• I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Understanding, Spheres

  Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel (2011). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition”, p.22, Harvard University Press

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• In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Believe, Blessing, Thinking

  On the Constitution (1787)

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• A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

  Constantin Stanislavski

  Artist, Feelings, Acting

  Constantin Stanislavski (2013). “Building a Character”, p.216, A&C Black

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• Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.

  Stefan Zweig

  Psychology, Understanding, Intellectual

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• The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. . . .

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Spring, Thinking, Musical

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• There has been in our time a lack of reliance on language and a lack of experimentation which are frightening to anyone who sees them as symptoms. We know the phenomenon of stage-fright: it holds the player shivering, incapable of speech or action. Perhaps there is an audience-fright which the play can feel, which leaves him with these incapacities.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Player, Speech, Action

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• The style, which is something I take to heart, is getting on my nerves horribly. It frustrates and torments me. I have days when Iam sick about it and nights when it gives me a fever. The more I go at it the more I find myself incapable of conveying the Idea.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Work, Heart, Night

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• Creativity is very much like literacy. We take it for granted that nearly everybody can learn to read and write. If a person can't read or write, you don't assume that this person is incapable of it, just that he or she hasn't learned how to do it. The same is true of creativity.

  Ken Robinson

  Motivational, Writing, Learning

  Ken Robinson Ph.D., Lou Aronica (2009). “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything”, p.43, Penguin

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• More than a decade after our fellow citizens began bedding down on the sidewalks, their problems continue to seem so intractable that we have begun to do psychologically what government has been incapable of doing programmatically. We bring the numbers down--not by solving the problem, but by deciding it's their own damn fault.

  Anna Quindlen

  Numbers, Government, Faults

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• Perhaps I overemphasized the value of keeping busy.... I liked to imagine that I was incapable of doing nothing for afternoons myself, but maybe what disturbed me was that I was capable of it. I feared this was a knack one could get the hang of rather readily, and it was therefore now lurking in my house waiting for me to pick it up like a winter flu.

  Lionel Shriver

  Winter, Waiting, House

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• In our common parlance we speak of the man "with no tea" in him, when he is insusceptible to the serio-comic interests of the personal drama.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Men, Understanding, Tea

  "The Book of Tea". Book by Okakura Kakuzo, 1906.

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• For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God.

  Lactantius

  Perfect, Suffering, Titles

  Lactantius (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Lactantius (Annotated Edition)”, p.25, Jazzybee Verlag

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