Obscure Quotes - Page 17

• The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.

  Jacques Delors

  Thinking, Creating, Issues

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• The world is now aware that the most unavoidable and most dangerous weapon that exists is the blind decisiveness of a man ready to sacrifice his life for an obscure cause.

  Omar Bongo

  Sacrifice, Men, World

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• Our God is a God of love. He waits with open arms, and the unfolding of His merciful plan of salvation is not only therefore the mark of divine power but also the mark of God's relentless, redeeming love. It is a point well worth pondering because, among other reasons, it will help us to understand better why God, through the prophets, denounces sin and corruption in such scalding terms. He loves all of us, His spirit sons and daughters, but hates our vices. His denunciation of those vices may, if we are not careful, seem to obscure the enormous and perfect love He has for us.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Love, Daughter, Hate

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• Autumn clouds, vague and obscure; The evening, lonely and chill. I felt the dampness on my garments, But saw no spot, and heard no sound of rain.

  Bai Juyi

  Summer, Lonely, Rain

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• People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Business, People, Society

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• Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve; we may give somewhat of novelty to that which was old, condensation to that which was diffuse, perspicuity to that which was obscure, and currency to that which was recondite.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Giving, May, Novelty

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.14

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• Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Writing, Expression, Authorship

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• When Nick At Nite is showing George Lopez, it's not doing what I'm thinking. But yes, I even write in the book about how MeTV went to Vince Gilligan and had him present an evening of his favorite television. So it can be done, but I think it can be done on a really large scale. The television of Dennis Potter, most of it hasn't been seen in this country. And that's just one example - it's a very obscure example. There's plenty of great TV out there. There's more crap - but there's great TV, too.

  David Bianculli

  Country, Book, Writing

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Riskier mortgage lending practices, imposed by government, were what set the stage for many mortgage payments to stop and thus for the financial disasters that followed. Political rhetoric, echoed in the media, seeks to obscure that painfully plain fact.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Media, Practice

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• Unlike some of my other dharma brothers who got names that were very long and obscure, and nobody could remember or pronounce, that they didn't like. They wanted to give their names back, but it wasn't like that, it wasn't transactional. He would name some people and say 'you're married', and then they were married, but you know it wasn't really transactional.

  Surya Das

  Brother, Names, Long

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• But that night as I drove back to Montreal, I at least discovered this: that there is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and that the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.

  Hugh MacLennan

  Simple, Night, Tragedy

  Hugh MacLennan (2009). “Watch that Ends the Night”, p.266, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

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• Every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and it is in the nature of things that he cannot really improve himself without in some degree improving other men.

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Evil, Groups

  Charles Dickens (2009). “Speeches: Literary and Social: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.236, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• That Francis Bacon retains his reputation gained, is not strange to any that knows him. The unusual words wherewith he had spangled his speech, were rather gracious for their propriety than strange for their novelty, and like to serve both for occasions to report and means to remember his argument. Certain sentences of his , somewhat obscure, and as it were presuming upon their capacities will, I fear, make some of them rather admire than commend him. In sum, all is as well as words can make it, and if it please Her Majesty to add deeds, the Bacon may be too hard for the Cook.

  Edward Coke

  Mean, Deeds, May

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• But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure; the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites; and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Mean, Mislead Us

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1792). “The rambler”, p.233

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• He had fought back with every weapon in his arsenal, being alternatively obtuse, evasive and pedantic, for it was wonderful how you could obscure an emotional issue by appearing to seek precision.

  J. K. Rowling

  Emotional, Issues, Weapons

  J.K. Rowling (2012). “The Casual Vacancy”, p.99, Hachette UK

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• Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that we might conclude almost anyone who seriously applied himself would achieve a measure of success.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Success, Science, Perfection

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• There is reason to suspect, that the distinctions of mankind have more show than value, when it is found that all agree to be weary alike of pleasures and of cares; that the powerful and the weak, the celebrated and obscure, join in one common wish, and implore from nature's hand the nectar of oblivion.

  Samuel Johnson

  Powerful, Hands, Humanity

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.127

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• She was sad with an obscure sadness of which she had not the secret herself. There was in her whole person the stupor of a life ended but never commenced.

  Victor Hugo

  Sadness, Secret, Persons

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Marius”, p.25

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• We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.

  Marcel Proust

  Death, Grieving, Filled In

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• Are not the thoughts of the dying often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, visceral aspect, towards the "seamy side" of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, and which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?

  Marcel Proust

  Crush, Death, Breathing

  Marcel Proust (2010). “In Search Of Lost Time Vol 1: Swann's Way”, p.96, Random House

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• Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry.

  Marisha Pessl

  Making Love, Library, Littles

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• I can’t let you go now. I want to go places with you; obscure little places, just to be able to say: here I came with her.

  Anais Nin

  Want, Littles, Able

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• It was a part of myself that was my enemy; I still had a childish illusion that the flesh on my own bones was somehow unique and precious to the universe, in some obscure corner of my mind I wanted the others to love me and make exceptions for me simply because I felt heat and cold, pain and loneliness as they did. Now this was gone once and for all, and I understood there were no exceptions and on one was invulnerable, we all had to share the same conditions and in the end this was simply mortality, the mortality of things as well as ourselves. After that I didn't expect anybody to love me.

  MacDonald Harris

  Pain, Loneliness, Unique

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• [O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Writing, Want, Should

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• A holy woman may be beautiful by the gift of nature, but she must not give occasion to lust. If beauty be hers, so far from setting it off she ought rather to obscure it.

  Tertullian

  Beautiful, Giving, Lust

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