Obscure Quotes - Page 20

• No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.

  Alfred Austin

  Quality, May, Verses

  "The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry". Book by Alfred Austin, 1910.

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• We have a tendency to obscure the forest of simple joys with the trees of problems.

  Christiane Collange

  Simple, Tree, Joy

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  I know not whether, in the eyes of the world, a brilliant death is not preferred to an obscure life of rectitude. Most men are remembered as they died, and not as they lived. We gaze with admiration upon the glories of the setting sun, yet scarcely bestow a passing glance upon its noonday splendor.

  Davy Crockett

  Eye, Men, World

  Davy Crockett (1834). “A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett ...”

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• For most people it's easier to support an eminent person in deserved disgrace than an obscure one who has been wronged.

  Shirley Hazzard

  People, Support, Easier

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• An answer, once found, is dull; and the only remaining interest lies in a further effort to render equally dull what is still obscure enough to be intriguing.

  Nelson Goodman

  Lying, Effort, Answers

  Nelson Goodman (2012). “The Structure of Appearance”, p.1, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Wings, Solitude

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.83, Harvard University Press

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• It was a dagger in the haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do.

  Charles Dickens

  Daughter, Father, Heart

  Charles Dickens (1858). “Dombey and Son ... With frontispiece by H. K. Browne”, p.52

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• Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.

  Oscar Wilde

  Style, Succeed, Masters

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations”, p.39, Courier Corporation

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• Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences - nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.

  Eric Hoffer

  Drama, Artist, Destiny

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• Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are merely walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Father, Mean, Men

  'Orthodoxy' (1908) ch. 4

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• I am poor - obscure - just eighteen years of age - with a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse.

  Katherine Mansfield

  Light, Years, Age

  Brownlee Jean Kirkpatrick, Katherine Mansfield, Vincent O'Sullivan (1989). “Katherine Mansfield: selected letters”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Theater for me is about enduring human truth. Special effects can be part of that, but when they obscure what is the reason we come to theater - to see reflections of our confounded humanity - the theater has lost its way.

  Neil Patrick Harris

  Reflection, Humanity, Special

  Source: articles.latimes.com

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• Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader.

  Georges Bataille

  Communication, Desire, Tasks

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• Ecstacy stripped away the user's inhibitions to self-expression. On E, lies are inefficient, and the peculiarities or weaknesses they are meant to obscure no longer seem like offenses against nature.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Lying, Self, Expression

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• Being obscure in acronyms is great. I think I'll start making up my own... INYM - I'm Not Your Momma.

  Paul Vixie

  Thinking, Acronyms, Your Mom

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• If you want to study one of these strange organisms, you had better have a good justification. It's not good to say I want to study gene organisation in some obscure insect that no one's ever heard about.

  Thomas Cech

  Want, Strange, Study

  "Funding above and beyond scientific research". EMBO reports Interview, embor.embopress.org. September 2001.

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• Seldom, if ever, has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sense of uncertainty and fear, with such a realization that the future is obscure and that survival is not assured.

  Edward R. Murrow

  War, Leaving, Survival

  Edward R. Murrow (1967). “In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961”

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• I think [James] Joyce sometimes enjoyed misleading his readers. He said to me that history was like that parlor game where someone whispers something to the person next to him, who repeats it not very distinctly to the next person, and so on until, by the time the last person hears it, it comes out completely transformed. Of course, as he explained to me, the meaning in Finnegans Wake is obscure because it is a 'nightpiece.' I think, too, that, like the author's sight, the work is often blurred.

  Sylvia Beach

  Thinking, Games, Sight

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• Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, ... I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.

  Charles Darwin

  Mean, Long, Natural

  Charles Darwin, James T. Costa (2009). “The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species”, p.6, Harvard University Press

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• In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.

  Saint Augustine

  Fall, Vision, Progress

  "De Genesi ad Litteram" by Saint Augustine, translated by J.H. Taylor in "Ancient Christian Writers", 1982.

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• Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Believe, Race, Special

  "The United States". The New York magazine article on November 15, 1971, reprinted in "A View from the Stands", 1986.

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• An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Art, Writing, Expression

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• To love it too much is to obscure and not see what is there.

  Dennis Potter

  Too Much

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• I've always liked being relatively obscure. I feel that's where I belong, that's where my work belongs.

  Don DeLillo

  Literature, Feels

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.77, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• For some obscure reason, some authorities seem bent on making the drinking of wine a ritual more complicated than chess. They have succeeded in inhibiting a large section of the public and depriving them of one of the greatest pleasures known to man.

  Craig Claiborne

  Drinking, Wine, Men

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