Incessant Quotes - Page 5

• The will to incessant creation is vulgar, betraying jealousy, envy, and ambition. Assuming that you are something, there is really nothing that you need to do-and yet you do a great deal. Above the "productive" man there is still a higher type.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Ambition, Men, Envy

  17 Copy quote

• Some flag waving is good, a lot of flag waving is tolerable, incessant flag waving is crazy and dangerous and easily manipulated by the war party to get people bubbling at the mouth in fear and rage.

  Nicholas von Hoffman

  Crazy, War, Party

  15 Copy quote

• War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. ... war is the realm of chance. No other human activity gives it greater scope; no other has such incessant and varied dealings with this intruder. Chance makes everything more uncertain and interferes with the whole course of events.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  War, Fog, Giving

  Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Howard, Peter Paret (1989). “On War”, p.101, Princeton University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Neither let mistakes and wrong directions - of which every man, in his studies and elsewhere, falls into many - discourage you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding that we are wrong. Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right, he will grow daily more and more right. It is, at bottom, the condition which all men have to cultivate themselves. Our very walking is an incessant falling - a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement! - it is emblematic of all things a man does.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Mistake, Fall, Men

  7 Copy quote

• I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it; but I ascribe to years their share in it also.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Memories, Years, Faithful

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1859). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence”, p.403

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mind is a mill which can incessant turn, 'til its mere operation focus the stress inward and the stones grind themselves to dust.

  David Mamet

  Stress, Dust, Focus

  David Mamet (2009). “Faustus”, p.16, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  War, Men, Tasks

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.11, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Washington is nicknamed "The Evergreen State" because it sounds better than "The Incessant Nagging Drizzle State."

  Dave Barry

  Nagging, Sound, Drizzle

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need”, p.97, Ballantine Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Incessant company is as bad as solitary confinement.

  Virginia Woolf

  Solitary, Confinement, Company

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.341, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• The dancer's trembling heart must bring everything into harmony, from the tips of her shoes to the flutter of her eyelashes, from the ruffles of her dress to the incessant play of her fingers.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Heart, Eyelashes, Play

  7 Copy quote

• Even though in principle we may "know better", we routinely succumb all the same to the incessant, often frantic and unexamined busyness of thinking we have to get somewhere else first before we can rest; thinking we need to get certain things done to feel we have accomplished something before we can be happy.

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

  Thinking, Somewhere Else, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• I'd go to conference after conference and it would essentially be the talking points. Either pro or con. It's amazing how polarized the tech conversation is. There's also this neurological fixation, the incessant wondering what the Internet's doing to our brain: "Does it make us stupid, does it make us distracted?" And then the other guys say, "No, it's making us smarter than ever, and better than ever, and more connected." And it's like, where is the economic and social context? Why is that rarely considered?

  Astra Taylor

  Stupid, Talking, Guy

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The incessant struggle of the mind to be true to itself, to absorb new truths, to grow, to overcome pressures--these are the painful portion of the independent thinker. Almost his sole reward is the satisfaction of integrity.

  Howard Mumford Jones

  Integrity, Struggle, Independent

  6 Copy quote

• The imbalances in the climate have been brought on by the incessant push for more and more immediate wealth.

  Jayni Chase

  Climate, Imbalance, Wealth

  "Jayni Chase: Founder, Center for Environmental Education Interview: Chip Comins". Interview with Chip Comins, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Novelty, Sitting, Afternoon

  4 Copy quote

• Of course, the toxic bullshit of incessant advertising and show biz for nearly a century has stripped us of cognitive abilities for dealing with reality that used to be part of the normal equipment of adulthood - for instance, knowing the difference between wishing for stuff and making stuff happen. We bamboozled ourselves with too much magic.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Reality, Differences, Knowing

  Interview With Simmons B. Buntin, www.terrain.org.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anyone who lives with poor health or chronic pain, or who has endured poverty - real poverty - knows what it is to live with lack and a resulting fear so incessant that it becomes thoroughly normalized, invisible in its ubiquity. If you're lucky enough to have that fear begin to ease, it's an odd experience. A stranglehold eases off your entire body, one you never fully realized was there.

  C.E. Morgan

  Pain, Real, Ubiquity

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jesus, Taken, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• To be still means to empty yourself from the incessant flow of thoughts and create a state of consciousness that is open and receptive.

  John Daido Loori

  Mean, Flow, Emptiness

  19 Copy quote

• Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall, and do not daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. When that is spoken which has a right to be spoken, the chatter and the criticism will stop. Set down nothing that will not help somebody.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wall, Rejection, Criticism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.104, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Prayer is innocence's friend; and willingly flieth incessant 'twist the earth and the sky, the carrier-pigeon of heaven.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Prayer, Sky, Heaven

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sir John Gilbert (1858). “The Poetical Works of H. W. Longfellow ... A Complete Edition, Including the Song of Hiawatha. With Illustrations by J. Gilbert, Etc”, p.73

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If by prayer
  Incessant I could hope to change the will
  Of him who all things can, I would not cease
  To weary him with my assiduous cries;
  But prayer against his absolute decree
  No more avails than breath against the wind
  Blown stifling back on him that breathes it forth:
  Therefore to his great bidding I submit.

  John Milton

  Prayer, Wind, Bidding

  John Milton (1844). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: With a Memoir, and Seven Embellishments”, p.247

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... people are growing up in the slack flicker of a pale light which lacks the concentrated burn of a candle flame or oil wick or the bulb of a gooseneck desk lamp: a pale, wavering, oblong shimmer, emitting incessant noise, which is to real knowledge or discourse what the manic or weepy protestations of a drunk are to responsible speech. Drunks do have a way of holding an audience, though, and so does the shimmery ill-focused oblong screen.

  Adrienne Rich

  Growing Up, Real, Flames

  4 Copy quote

• The original necessity for the ceaseless presence of the woman to maintain that altar fire - and it was an altar fire in very truth at one period - has passed with the means of prompt ignition; the matchbox has freed the housewife from that incessant service, but the feeling that women should stay at home is with us yet.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Home, Mean, Fire

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (2015). “The Humanness of Women: Theory and Practice of Feminism (Essays and Sketches): Studies and thoughts by the famous American writer, feminist, social reformer and deeply respected sociologist who holds an important place in feminist fiction, known for The Yellow Wallpaper story”, p.167, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Under all of the factors that make up the art world, it's up to the individual artist to discern which of those influences are present and at what time and what really serves the deeper process that is constantly running like a stream underground. Influence is incessant. Influence is a fact. But, carry a big shovel and dig constantly to clear away all the unessentials so that the origins of mystery and the poetic force of life can get into and inspire the work.

  Paul Caponigro

  Running, Art, Inspire

  4 Copy quote