Oblivion Quotes - Page 12

• Death is the stone into which our oblivion hardens.

  Pablo Neruda

  Death, Stones

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• Though I be shut in darkness, and become insentient dust blown idly here and there, I count oblivion a scant price to pay for having once had held against my lip life's brimming cup of hydromel and rue--for having once known woman's holy love and a child's kiss, and for a little space been boon companion to the Day and Night, Fed on the odors of the summer dawn, and folded in the beauty of the stars. Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay, and serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank Thee for the gracious gift of tears!

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Life, Summer, Stars

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Poems”

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• I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend — perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Marriage, Wise, Home

  'Epipsychidion' (1821) l. 149

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• But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel , when by the hand of God, every man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Hands, Towers

  Thomas Hobbes (1750). “The Moral and Political Works To which is Prefixed the Autors Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself ... Illustr. by the Ed. - London 1750”, p.107

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• The constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of such a silence.

  Michel Foucault

  Broken, Silence, Syntax

  Michel Foucault, Keith Hoeller, Ludwig Binswanger, Jacob Needleman (1984). “Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry”

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• I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion. Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Thinking, Comfort, Pieces

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• I would like to save all books, those that are banned, those that are burned, or forgotten with contempt by the mandarins who want to tell us what is good and what is bad. Every book has a soul ... and I believe every book is worth saving from either bigotry or oblivion.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Believe, Book, Soul

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• I have, at times, been absorbed in my work to the point of complete self-oblivion. Once I worked for thirty-six hours without a break - to complete exhaustion; and while I was in the middle of it I didn't even notice.

  Alton Tobey

  Self, Six, Obsession

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• Just because you're living in blissful oblivion doesn't mean you're not responsible.

  Arthur M. Jolly

  Mean, Responsible

  "Trash". Book by Arthur M. Jolly, 2013.

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• If man chooses oblivion, he can go right on leaving his fate to his political leaders. If he chooses Utopia, he must initiate an enormous education program - immediately, if not sooner.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Wisdom, Fate, Men

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• This I hold to be the chief office of history, to rescue virtuous actions from the oblivion to which a want of records would consign them, and that men should feel a dread of being considered infamous in the opinions of posterity, from their depraved expressions and base actions.

  Tacitus

  Men, Expression, History

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• Death! It is rest to the aged, it is oblivion to the atheist, it is immortality to the poet!

  Ouida

  Death, Atheist, Poet

  Ouida (2016). “Wisdom, Wit and Pathos of Ouida”, p.92, Ouida

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• Lay silently the injuries you receive upon the altar of oblivion.

  Hosea Ballou

  Injury, Lays, Altars

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• I respond, thoughts dropping away, like pebbles plopping one by one in water, sinking down, down into dark oblivion.

  Sophie Jordan

  Dark, Water, Pebbles

  Sophie Jordan (2011). “Firelight”, p.123, Oxford University Press - Children

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• I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better, stronger. I want to be the bird that flies away.

  Tahereh Mafi

  Bird, Stronger, World

  Tahereh Mafi (2011). “Shatter Me”, p.13, Harper Collins

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• Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self?

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Self, Swallowing, Enthusiasm

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1839). “On the Constitution of the Church and State According to the Idea of Each”, p.223

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• That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine.

  David Foster Wallace

  Fire, Trying, Imagine

  "The Pale King". Book by David Foster Wallace, April 15, 2011.

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• One must console oneself with the thought that time has a sieve through which most of these important things run into the ocean of oblivion and what remains after this selection is often still trite and bad.

  Albert Einstein

  Running, Ocean, Important

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives”, p.21, Princeton University Press

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• For I often please myself with the fancy, now that I may have saved from oblivion the only striking passage in a whole volume, and now that I may have attracted notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  May, Fancy, Forgotten

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1854). “The complete works: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions. Ed. by [William Greenougl Thayer] Shedd in 7 Vol”, p.57

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• Come, evening, once again, season of peace;
  Return, sweet evening, and continue long!
  Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,
  With matron step, slow moving, while the night
  Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employ'd
  In letting fall the curtain of repose
  On bird and beast, the other charged for man
  With sweet oblivion of the cares of day.

  William Cowper

  Sweet, Moving, Fall

  William Cowper, James Montgomery (1859). “Poems ... With an introductory essay by James Montgomery. [With plates.]”, p.215

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• Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls his watery labyrinth, which whoso drinks forgets both joy and grief.

  John Milton

  Grief, Rivers, Joy

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• My mother is currently associating with some undesirables who are attempting to transform her into an athlete of sorts, deprave specimens of mankind who regularly bowl their way to oblivion.

  John Kennedy Toole

  Mother, Athlete, Way

  John Kennedy Toole (2004). “A Confederacy of Dunces”, p.152, LSU Press

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• Staring in the darkness, trying to sleep. My body was aching with tiredness. My limbs were numb. My sightless eyes were crazed with light/ I was dying of oblivion, but it wouldn't come. I didn't think I've ever sleep again.

  Kevin Brooks

  Eye, Sleep, Thinking

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• I sleep all day. Noises flit around the house- garbage truck in the alley, rain, tree rapping against the bedroom window. I sleep. I inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing, refusing. Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion. [...] It is afternoon, it is night, it is morning. Everything is reduced to this bed, this endless slumber that makes the days into one day, makes time stop, stretches and compacts time until it is meaningless.

  Audrey Niffenegger

  Dream, Morning, Rap

  Audrey Niffenegger (2014). “The Time Traveler's Wife”, p.513, Simon and Schuster

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• I stared into her eyes, wide under the thick fringe of lashes, and yearned for sleep. Not for oblivion, as I had before, not to escape boredom, but because I wanted to *dream*. Maybe, if I could be unconscious, if I could dream, I could live for a few hours in a world where she and I could be together. She dreamed of me. I wanted to dream of her.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Dream, Sleep, Eye

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