Objects Quotes - Page 29

• For many years, Sierra had compared the Holy Spirit to the wind, as it said the the Bible, noting that it was always there, no matter how faint the breeze. The wind went where it wanted to go, and its path was easy to detect because it moved objects and people. But no one had ever seen the wind.

  Robin Jones Gunn

  Years, Wind, People

  Robin Jones Gunn (2009). “Sierra Jensen Collection”, p.89, Multnomah

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• What is literature, and why do I try to write about it? I don’t know. Likewise, I don’t know why I go on living, most of the time. But this not knowing is precisely what I want to preserve. As readers, the closest way we can engage with a literary work is to protect its indeterminacy; to return ourselves and it to a place that precludes complete recognition. Really, when I’m reading, all I want is to stand amazed in front of an unknown object at odds with the world.

  M. John Harrison

  Reading, Writing, Knowing

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• That all opposites—such as mass and energy, subject and object, life and death—are so much each other that they are perfectly inseparable, still strikes most of us as hard to believe. But this is only because we accept as real the boundary line between the opposites. It is, recall, the boundaries themselves which create the seeming existence of separate opposites. To put it plainly, to say that "ultimate reality is a unity of opposites" is actually to say that in ultimate reality there are no boundaries. Anywhere.

  Ken Wilber

  Real, Believe, Opposites

  Ken Wilber (1979). “No Boundary, Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth”, Great Eastern Book Company

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• A half finished shawl left on the coffee table isn't a mess; it's an object of art.

  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

  Art, Coffee, Knitting

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• There are certain truths which stand out so openly on the roadsides of life, as it were, that every passer-by may see them. Yet, because of their obviousness, the general run of people disregard such truths or at least they do not make them the object of any concious knowledge. People are so bliend to some of the simplest facts in everyday life that they are highly surprised when somebody calls attention to what everybody ought to know.

  Adolf Hitler

  Running, People, Everyday

  Adolf Hitler (1939). “Mein Kampf”

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• The object of the Bible is not to tell how good men are, but how bad men can become good.

  Dwight L. Moody

  Inspiring, Men, Good Man

  Dwight L Moody (2013). “Experiencing Pleasure and Profit in Bible Study”, p.75, Moody Publishers

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• Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Atheist, Passion, Eye

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1810, Delphi Classics

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• It is a great mistake to regard a certain object as pleasurable in itself and to store the idea of it in the mind in hope of fulfilling a want by its actual presence in the future. If objects were pleasurable in themselves, then the same dress or food would always please everyone, which is not the case.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Mistake, Ideas, Mind

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• Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) - how rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at see, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us. Catastrophe has become art; but this is no reducing process. It is freeing, enlarging, explaining. Catastrophe has become art: that is, after all, what it is for.

  Julian Barnes

  Art, Ambition, Dark

  Julian Barnes (2010). “A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters”, p.137, Random House

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• If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy

  Milan Kundera

  Laughter, Echoes, Games

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• Nothing you will object to," James replied in a soothing tone. I cannot think how he came to imagine that he would know what I might or might not object to.

  Patricia C. Wrede

  Thinking, Might, Tone

  Patricia C. Wrede, Caroline Stevermer (2014). “The Cecelia and Kate Novels: Sorcery & Cecelia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician”, p.133, Open Road Media

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• Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its " content," its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses.

  Martin Buber

  Love Is, Men, Feelings

  Martin Buber (2004). “I and Thou”, p.19, A&C Black

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• It's different when the person you love dies. There's an awful finality to death. But it is final. The end. And there's the funeral, family gatherings, grieving, all of those necessary rituals. And they help, believe me. When the object of your love just disappears, there's no way to deal with the grief and pain.

  Barbara Taylor Bradford

  Pain, Believe, Grief

  Barbara Taylor Bradford, Sue Monk Kidd (2001). “Of love and life: three novels selected and condensed by Reader's Digest”

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• Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.

  Bette Davis

  Mistake, Doe, Bugs

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• For the first time, the object of what I want is more important than fulfilling my desires.

  Abbi Glines

  Important, Desire, Want

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• A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Jesus, Real, Responsibility

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2012). “God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas”, p.34, Westminster John Knox Press

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• So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.

  Amy Tan

  Forever, Way, Mysterious

  Amy Tan (2001). “The Bonesetter's Daughter”, p.248, Penguin

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• the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspiring, New Year, Inspiration

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• It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.

  B. F. Skinner

  Effort, Mind, Behaviour

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• The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Memories, Past, Reality

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• No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Music, Symphony

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• There's nothing sweeter than a real friend: Not only is he prompt to lend— An angler delicate, he fishes The very deepest of your wishes, And spares your modesty the task His friendly aid to ask. A dream, a shadow, wakes his fear, When pointing at the object dear.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Dream, Real, Wish

  Jean de La Fontaine (1841). “Fables of La Fontaine”, p.82

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• Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.

  Alain de Botton

  Blessed, Sadness, Perspective

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• Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again....Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Eye, Play, Soul

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1957). “Hadrian's Memoirs”

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• She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man.

  Jane Austen

  Men, Admiration, Pride And Prejudice Pride

  Jane Austen (1853). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.44

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