Obscure Quotes - Page 14

• When the artist ... intends from the beginning to be obscure and take obscurity as his objective or goal for its own sake and wishes to astonish, shock, and seem mysterious, that is a swindle.

  Tawfiq al-Hakim

  Artist, Goal, Wish

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• Rock roll is not obscure, it's really easy to understand. So is my painting.

  Grace Slick

  Rocks, Painting, Easy

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• The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Book, Inspiration, Names

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”

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• All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They're obliged to overstate their own importance.

  Francois Truffaut

  Lying, Misunderstood, Directors

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• In labouring to be brief, I become obscure.

  Horace

  Work, Recreation

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• Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Talent

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• Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek it if it be obscure, should be deprived of it.

  Blaise Pascal

  Math, Religion, Trouble

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pascal's Pensees”, p.162, Simon and Schuster

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• All beginnings are somewhat strange; but we must have patience, and little by little, we shall find things, which at first were obscure, becoming clearer.

  Vincent de Paul

  Littles, Firsts, Becoming

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• At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God's own heart?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Atheist, Kings, Believe

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Roger Ingpen, Walter Edwin Peck (1965). “Complete Works: Newly Edited by Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck”

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• [They let] friendship with the leaders in China obscure our devotion to freedom and democracy when those kids set up in Tiananmen Square, and I think it was wrong.

  William J. Clinton

  Stupid, Humorous, Kids

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• You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have your news for free; you can only obscure the costs. If as a culture we can learn this lesson, and if we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way.

  Ryan Holiday

  Hard Work, Character, Culture

  Ryan Holiday (2012). “Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator”, p.201, Penguin

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• For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality. As a result we clutch on to happiness and suffering as real, and in our unskillful and ignorant actions go on sowing the seeds of our next birth. Our actions keep us bound to the continuous cycle of worldly existence, to the endless round of birth and death. So everything is at risk in how we live now at this very moment: How we live now can cost us our entire future.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Death, Karma, Real

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• How about a new game show called 'Battle Begala?' Contestants would pick any obscure bad thing that happened anywhere in the world, and Paul would have 10 seconds to explain why it is President Bush's fault.

  Ann Coulter

  Games, Battle, President

  "CNN Crossfire", www.cnn.com. August 5, 2002.

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• [P]olitical and social and scientific values ... should be correlated in some relation of movement that could be expressed in mathematics, nor did one care in the least that all the world said it could not be done, or that one knew not enough mathematics even to figure a formula beyond the schoolboy s=(1/2)gt2. If Kepler and Newton could take liberties with the sun and moon, an obscure person ... could take liberties with Congress, and venture to multiply its attraction into the square of its time. He had only to find a value, even infinitesimal, for its attraction.

  Henry Adams

  Science, Moon, Squares

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• My fashion is about the urban woman in the year 3000. I think about obscure, weird things and try to create a world around them.

  Lady Gaga

  Fashion, Thinking, Years

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• Newton advanced, with one gigantic stride, from the regions of twilight into the noon day of science. A Boyle and a Hooke, who would otherwise have been deservedly the boast of their century, served but as obscure forerunners of Newton's glories.

  Thomas Young

  Twilight, Science, Noon

  Thomas Young (1807). “A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts: In Two Volumes”, p.7

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• Students may feel the criticism is harsh, but I think it's possible they haven't had criticism before. It's my job to point out when something is badly done, or when there's no point of view. To build a brand you have to have something about you. If not personality, then some thought process. I'm 40, and they're young, so they're meant to be informing me. They should be bringing me a book or something that I haven't seen, not like some obscure chant book by Dominican monks, but an image of the way they see the world.

  Louise Wilson

  Fashion, Jobs, Book

  Interview with Lee Carter, www.hintmag.com.

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• You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all you experience to highest advantage to others. Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Spiritual, Forever, Humanity

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• We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavors in it, may also become clearer.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Wise, Distance, Character

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.13, Lulu.com

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• One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Practice, Silence

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• The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dream, Emotional, Ideas

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.690, GENERAL PRESS

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• Not only in antiquity but in our own times also laws have been passed...to secure good conditions for workers; so it is right that the art of medicine should contribute its portion for the benefit and relief of those for whom the law has shown such foresight...[We] ought to show peculiar zeal...in taking precautions for their safety. I for one have done all that lay in my power, and have not thought it beneath me to step into workshops of the meaner sort now and again and study the obscure operations of mechanical arts.

  Bernardino Ramazzini

  Art, Health, Science

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• Dog! When we first met on the highway of life, we came from the two poles of creation.... What can be the meaning of the obscure love for me that has sprung up in your heart?

  Anatole France

  Friendship, Dog, Heart

  Anatole France (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Anatole France (Illustrated)”, p.1266, Delphi Classics

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• There are many things akin to highest deity that are still obscure. Some may be too subtle for our powers of comprehension, others imperceptible to us because such exalted majesty conceals itself in the holiest part of its sanctuary, forbidding access to any power save that of the spirit. How many heavenly bodies revolve unseen by human eye!

  Seneca the Younger

  Eye, Science, Power

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• The joy of life is made up of obscure and seemingly mundane victories that give us our own small satisfactions.

  Billy Joel

  Life, Giving, Joy

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