Obscure Quotes - Page 22

• Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how - while it may have been a "mistake" or an "unwise effort" - the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That's standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Mistake, Book

  Source: chomsky.info

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• There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper.

  Arthur Machen

  Strange, Forgotten, Lost

  Arthur Machen (2016). “The Great Return: Machen's Collection”, p.1, VM eBooks

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• He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Reading, Complaining

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.261, Univ of California Press

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• In the same way that when the car got going, people thought it would be an electric car, people thought it would be a steam car. Actually, the dark horse in that race was internal combustion, but because of the energy density of gasoline and discovery of oil in large amounts at that point in first Pennsylvania and then Texas, it won out over those other two, to the point that those other two are actually viewed as obscure footnotes in history.

  Bill Gates

  Horse, Dark, Race

  "THE BILL GATES INTERVIEW: An energy miracle is coming, and it's going to change the world". Interview with Drake Baer, www.businessinsider.com. February 22, 2016.

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• I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.

  Therese of Lisieux

  God, Sacrifice, Soul

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• Jeff is the annoying kind of Scrabble player who plays a lot of obscure two-letter words that shouldn't count but for whatever reason are considered legitimate. My father is the annoying kind of Scrabble player who takes hours with his turn and then plays deliberately misspelled words that no one has the heart to call him out on. I am the perfect Scrabble player, both serious and considerate. Obviously I lost by a lot.

  Bennett Madison

  Father, Heart, Player

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• Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Beauty, Children, Dwelling

  Henry Ward Beecher (1873). “The Original Plymouth Pulpit: Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn”, p.151

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• Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.

  Vaclav Havel

  Memories, Party, Adventure

  "Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala". Book by Václav Havel, translated by Paul Wilson. Chapter 4: "Public Enemy", 1990.

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• Never be so brief as to become obscure.

  Tryon Edwards

  Writing, Live By

  Tryon Edwards (2015). “The New Dictionary of Thoughts”, p.157, Ravenio Books

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• Hardship makes the world obscure.

  Don DeLillo

  Hardship, World

  Don DeLillo (2012). “The Names”, p.305, Vintage

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• Sometimes people get passionate about the obscure jokes.

  Martin Short

  People, Passionate, Sometimes

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• My God is rock'n'roll. It's an obscure power that can change your life. The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.

  Lou Reed

  Rocks, Guitar, Play

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• People dread silence because it is transparent; like clear water, which reveals every obstacle—the used, the dead, the drowned, silence reveals the cast-off words and thoughts dropped in to obscure its clear stream. And when people stare too close to silence they sometimes face their own reflections, their magnified shadows in the depths, and that frightens them. I know; I know.

  Janet Frame

  Fear, Reflection, People

  Janet Frame (1980). “Scented gardens for the blind: a novel”, George Braziller

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• It is possible for the most obscure person in a church, with a heart right toward God, to exercise as much power for the evangelization of the world, as it is for those who stand in the most prominent positions.

  John Mott

  Christian, Prayer, Heart

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• Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

  Joseph Joubert

  Writing, Glasses, Vision

  "The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert". Book by Joseph Joubert, translated by Paul Auster, 2005.

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• If you sincerely desire a truly well-rounded education, you must study the extremists, the obscure and "nutty." You need the balance! Your poor brain is already being impregnated with middle-of-the-road crap, twenty-four hours a day, no matter what. Network TV, newspapers, radio, magazines at the supermarket... even if you never watch, read, listen, or leave your house, even if you are deaf and blind, the telepathic pressure alone of the uncountable normals surrounding you will insure that you are automatically well-grounded in consensus reality.

  Ivan Stang

  Education, Reality, House

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• While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.

  Virginia Woolf

  Humility, Dark, Men

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.447, Wordsworth Editions

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• Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Action, Concrete, Unconscious

  Entry for December 30, 1850, "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel", Book by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Mary Augusta Ward, 1882.

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• Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Views, Language, Garments

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• Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope emerges for the future...Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in our hands.

  Susan Griffin

  Memories, Lying, Hands

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• Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. [...] To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.

  George Polya

  Attitude, Opportunity, Opposites

  George Pólya (1945). “How to Solve it: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method”

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• I wonder, only in passing, whether the indelible ornamentation that man inscribes upon his own epidermis does not respond to a nostalgia for the universal internally generated coloring of corrollas, furs, shells, carapaces and wings. For man it has been necessary to create both works and tools outside of himself. But it may be that he retains an obscure nostalgia to create them on his own body, to make them a part of it rather than projecting them outwards onto an independent surface, where he is free to retouch them as he sees fit, which is precisely what painting and art are.

  Roger Caillois

  Art, Independent, Men

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• I need not instruct you of my belief: Time gives all and takes all away ; everything changes but nothing perishes ; One only is immutable, eternal and ever endures, one and the same with itself. With this philosophy my spirit grows, my mind expands. Whereof, how r ever obscure the night may be, I await daybreak, and they who dwell in day look for night Rejoice therefore, and keep whole, if you can, and return love for love.

  Giordano Bruno

  Philosophy, Night, Giving

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• The past is certain, the future obscure.

  Thales

  Past, Certain

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• The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.

  Hans Zimmer

  Writing, Ideas, Long

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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