Intensity Quotes - Page 18

• My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?

  Saul Bellow

  Life, Mean, Mind

  Saul Bellow (1976). “Herzog”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people

  John Ruskin

  Art, Stupid, Eye

  John Ruskin (1872). “The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9”, p.38

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• We are all born to die—the difference is the intensity with which we choose to live.

  Gina Lollobrigida

  Differences, Born, Dies

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• In this life our sorrows are either not very long or not very great because nature either overcomes them by habits or puts an end to them by sinking under their weight. But in hell the torments cannot be overcome by habit, for while they are of terrible intensity they are at the same time of continual variety, each pain, so to speak, taking fire from another and re-endowing that which has enkindled it with a still fiercer flame.

  James Joyce

  Pain, Flames, Fire

  James Joyce (2013). “The Best of James Joyce”, p.268, Simon and Schuster

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• Do things with your whole heart, with as much intensity as you are capable of. Anything done halfheartedly never brings joy to life. It only brings misery, anxiety, torture, and tension, because whenever you do anything halfheartedly you are dividing yourself into two parts, and that is one of the greatest calamities that has happened to human beings - they are all split.

  Rajneesh

  Motivational, Heart, Two

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• What is a disease is wishing with an equal intensity what is needed and what is desirable, and suffer for not being perfect as you would suffer for not having bread. The romantic error is this wanting the moon as if there was a way to get it.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Moon, Errors, Perfect

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p.77, 1982.

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• When a man makes a poem, makes it, mind you, he takes words as he finds them interrelated about him and composes them - without distortion which would mar their exact significances - into an intense expression of his perceptions and ardors that they may constitute a revelation in the speech that he uses. It isn't what he says that counts as a work of art, it's what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity.

  William Carlos Williams

  Art, Men, Expression

  William Carlos Williams, A. Walton Litz, Christopher MacGowan (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962”, p.54, New Directions Publishing

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• I can look back . . . at two distinct periods of opinion whose foundations I have successively come to distrust - a period before 1919 or so, when the weight of classic authority unduly influenced me, and another period from 1919 to about 1925, when I placed too high a value on the elements of revolt, florid colour, and emotional extravagance or intensity.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Emotional, Two, Foundation

  Letter to August Derleth (1929), in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, (p. 307), 1996.

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• When one becomes for an instant one's former self, that is to say different from what one has been for some time past, one's sensibility, being no longer dulled by habit, receives from the slightest stimulus vivid impressions which make everything that has preceded them fade into insignificance, impressions to which, because of their intensity, we attach ourselves with the momentary enthusiasm of a drunkard.

  Marcel Proust

  Past, Self, Different

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.537, Modern Library

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• The village had institutionalized all human functions in forms of low intensity.... Participation was high and organization was low. This is the formula for stability.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Country, Organization, Village

  Marshall McLuhan (1964). “Understanding media: the extensions of man”

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• Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions.

  Denise Levertov

  Attitude, Moving, Poetry

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• The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation andsecurity. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.

  Hermann Hesse

  Fire, Self, Mind

  Hermann Hesse (1980). “Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays”

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• God created us so that the joy He has in Himself might be ours. God doesn't simply think about Himself or talk to Himself. He enjoys Himself! He celebrates with infinite and eternal intensity the beauty of who He is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we've been created to join the party!

  Sam Storms

  Inspiring, Music, Christian

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• Some things definitely work better on film than in books. Introspection is great in books but it doesn't work on film. Anything with high intensity, whether it's a love scene, a car chase, a fight scene - those things work so well on film and oftentimes they can tell a much broader part of the story.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Book, Fighting, Car

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• Sometimes it is quite surprising, the emotional intensity of it. I was in NY one day, in Barnes and Noble, and I could see this woman following me around and after a bit I stopped and said 'Hello' and she just looked at me and said: “PLEASE LET EDITH BE HAPPY!”

  Julian Fellowes

  Emotional, One Day, Noble

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• In my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very quickly, and I have to look for new ways.

  Paul Klee

  Goal, Looks, Way

  Paul Klee (2012). “Paul Klee”, p.115, Parkstone International

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• Structure ignites spontaneity. Limits yield intensity. When we play... by our self-chosen rules, we find that containment of strength amplifies strength.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  Yield, Self, Play

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• When I play my own music, or when I play new music, there's much more stress and intensity of thinking about how I'm going to make it work!

  Bela Fleck

  Stress, Thinking, Play

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• China has adopted and is implementing its national climate change program. This includes mandatory national targets for reducing energy intensity and discharge of major pollutants and increasing forest coverage and the share of renewable energy for the period of 2005 through 2010.

  Hu Jintao

  Energy, Climate, Target

  Hu Jintao’s Speech on Climate Change, www.nytimes.com. September 22, 2009.

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• Old Zen was very funny; there was a great deal of humor and happiness. Zen today seems much drier. While there's a certain amount of humor, it seems to lack that total intensity because humor is one of the primary tools for liberation.

  Frederick Lenz

  Tools, Today, Certain

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• When you train, you should train as if on the battlefield. Make your eyes glare, lower your shoulders and harden your body. If you train with the same intensity and spirit as though you are striking and blocking against an actual opponent, you will naturally develop the same attitude as on a battlefield

  Anko Itosu

  Attitude, Block, Eye

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• The sculptor must search with passionate intensity for the underlying principle of the organisation of mass and tension - the meaning of gesture and the structure of rhythm.

  Barbara Hepworth

  Principles, Sculpture, Passionate

  Dame Barbara Hepworth (1970). “A Pictorial Autobiography”

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• "Very" is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of "I love you very much" or the heart-slamming intensity of "I love you"?

  Florence King

  Love You, Writing, Heart

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• I never wanted to do away with my intensity because I felt it was a gift that helped put fuel in my engine, giving me exceptional drive and energy.

  Paul J. Meyer

  Giving, Fuel, Energy

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• In Globetrotter, David Albahari explores the consciousness of emigres from the former Yugoslavia, Croatia and Serbia, showing that while abroad, many of us are even more intensely preoccupied with our histories than we were while living in Yugoslavia. His narrative structured out of realistic details and perceptions with self-conscious meditation blending history, civilization and its discontents, and personal experience reaches a density and intensity akin to Krasznahorkai's and Thomas Bernhard's. An intensely idiosyncratic narrative, enjoyable and thoughtful.

  Josip Novakovich

  Thoughtful, Self, Yugoslavia

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