Objects Quotes - Page 6

• we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things.

  Sherry Turkle

  Giving, Quality, Determined

  Sherry Turkle (2011). “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other”, p.14, Basic Books

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• ...my boredom might be described as a malady affecting external objects and consisting of a withering process; an almost instantaneous loss of vitality--just as though one saw a flower change in a few seconds from a bud to decay and dust.

  Alberto Moravia

  Flower, Loss, Dust

  Alberto Moravia (2011). “Boredom”, p.5, New York Review of Books

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• I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Lonely, Memories, Men

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• If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment.

  Jane Austen

  Gratitude, Attachment, Two

  Jane Austen (2008). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.371, Waking Lion Press

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• What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.

  Elizabeth von Arnim

  Educational, Book, Healing

  Elizabeth von Arnim (2016). “The Solitary Summer”, p.16, Elizabeth von Arnim

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• No, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low.

  Virginia Woolf

  Moments, Sideways, Mark

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “To the Lighthouse”, p.166, Tyché

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• And if you had no tongue, no celebrating language, you’d do this: cross your hands at the wrist with palms facing towards you; place your crossed wrists over your heart (the middle of your chest, anyway); then move your hands outwards a short distance, and open them towards the object of your love. It’s just as eloquent as speech.

  Julian Barnes

  Love, Distance, Moving

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• There are significant relationships, of course, between wanting things and caring about them..The notion of caring is in large part constructed out of the notion of desire. Caring about something may be, in the end, nothing more than a certain complex mode of wanting it. However, simply attributing desire to a person does not in itself convey that the person cares about the object he desires.

  Harry Frankfurt

  Caring, Desire, Care

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• Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this--dog days--that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders.

  Tove Jansson

  Running, Dog, Grandmother

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• Distance... is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Distance, Soul, Mind

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2017). “The Sorrows of Young Werther (English German Edition, illustrated): Die Leiden des jungen Werther (Englisch Deutsch Ausgabe illustriert)”, p.51, Clap Publishing, LLC.

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• We all know that a book is not really a person. It isn’t a human being. But if you are a lover of books as books – as objects, that is – and ignore the human element in them – that is, their voices – you will be committing an error of the soul, because you will be an idolator, or else a fetishist.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Errors, Voice

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• ..bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation-to make a point-than to further the cause of truth." Dupin in "The Mystery of Marie Roget

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Mind, Causes, Bears

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• I am so afraid of people's words.They describe so distinctly everything: And this they call dog and that they call house, here the start and there the end. I worry about their mockery with words, they know everything, what will be, what was; no mountain is still miraculous; and their house and yard lead right up to God. I want to warn and object: Let the things be! I enjoy listening to the sound they are making. But you always touch: and they hush and stand still. That's how you kill.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Dog, People, Worry

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2005). “Pictures of God: Rilke's Religious Poetry Including "The Life of the Virgin Mary"”, Annmarie s Kidder

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• Inanimate objects are harmless indeed, Mr. Mortmain. But one cannot always say the same of the men who use them.

  Cassandra Clare

  Men, Inanimate Objects, Use

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

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• All objects exist in a moment of time.

  Amy Tan

  Moments, Existence

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

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• Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Powerful

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• Will moved to object, but it was too late; Henry had already pressed the button. There was a blinding flare of light and a whooshing sound, and the room was plunged into blackness. Tessa gave a yelp of surprise, and Jem laughed softly. "Am I blind?" Will's voice floated out of the darkness, tinged with annoyance. "I'm not going to be at all pleased if you've blinded me, Henry.

  Cassandra Clare

  Light, Voice, Darkness

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.162, Simon and Schuster

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• The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.

  Milan Kundera

  Heart, Feelings, Mind

  "Light but sound" by John Banville, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2004.

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• The memory of an absent person shines in the deepest recesses of the heart, shining the more brightly the more wholly its object has vanished: a light on the horizon of the despairing, darkened spirit; a star gleaming in our inward night.

  Victor Hugo

  Stars, Memories, Heart

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• The technique of a great seducer requires a facility and an indifference in passing from one object of affection to another which I could never have; however that may be, my loves have left me more often than I have left them, for I have never been able to understand how one could have enough of any beloved. The desire to count up exactly the riches which each new love brings us, and to see it change, and perhaps watch it grow old, accords ill with multiplicity of conquests.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Desire, Technique, Watches

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• The loss of quality that is so evident at every level of spectacular language, from the objects it glorifies to the behavior it regulates, stems from the basic nature of a production system that shuns reality. The commodity form reduces everything to quantitative equivalence. The quantitative is what it develops, and it can develop only within the quantitative.

  Guy Debord

  Loss, Reality, Quality

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• As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the “sacredness of human life” remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.

  Leon Trotsky

  Lying, Long, Principles

  Leon Trotsky, Slavoj Žižek, Henry Noel Brailsford (2007). “Terrorism and communism: a reply to Karl Kautsky”, Verso Books

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• It is wrong to turn a man (a subject) into a thing (an object). By means of spiritual dialogue, the I-It relationship becomes an I-Thou relationship. God comes and goes in man's soul. And men come and go in each other's souls. Sometimes they come and go in each other's beds, too.

  Saul Bellow

  Spiritual, Mean, Men

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

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• Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Love Is, What Matters, Grace

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.209, Macmillan

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• There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up.

  Albert Camus

  Light, Essence, Ideas

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.45, Vintage

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