Obscure Quotes - Page 4

• Thread of their days without pity, and in the midst of life, without ever concerning themselves with this fatal moment, living as though they were to exist for ever, they disappear into the obscure cloud of immortality, uncertain of the fate which lies in store for them.

  Marquis de Sade

  Lying, Fate, Cutting

  "Eugénie de Franval".

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• The stress laid on upward social mobility in the United States has tended to obscure the fact that there can be more than one kind of mobility and more than one direction in which it can go. There can be ethical mobility as well as financial, and it can go down as well as up.

  Margaret Halsey

  Stress, One Direction, Mobility

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• Things are more beautiful when they're obscure.

  Veda Hille

  Love, Beautiful

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• For my birthday my husband learned to cook and is cooking one day a week for me. But he only likes to do fancy dishes. So we end up with weird, obscure things in the refrigerator.

  Cheryl Hines

  Birthday, Husband, Cooking

  Interview with Rachael Ray, www.rachaelraymag.com. November 1, 2005.

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• At the bidding of a Peter the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves against the East; the words of an hallucinated enthusiast such as Mahomet created a force capable of triumphing over the Graeco-Roman world; an obscure monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The voice of a Galileo or a Newton will never have the least echo among the masses. The inventors of genius hasten the march of civilization. The fanatics and the hallucinated create history.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Men, Civilization, Voice

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• The girl dreams she is dangerously ill. Suddenly birds come out of her skin and cover her completely ... Swarms of gnats obscure the sun, the moon, and all the stars except one. That one start falls upon the dreamer.

  Carl Jung

  Girl, Dream, Stars

  Carl Gustav Jung (2012). “Man and His Symbols”, p.90, Dell

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• On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century...First of all, what style should I employ?

  Umberto Eco

  Latin, Italian, Reflection

  Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity.

  Tacitus

  Encouragement, Errors, Events

  Tacitus (2013). “The Annals”, p.112, Courier Corporation

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• Don't be upset. Don't listen to me. I only meant that I am jealous of a dark, unconscious element, something irrational, unfathomable. I am jealous of your toilet articles, of the drops of sweat on your skin, of the germs in the air you breathe which could get into your blood and poison you. And I am jealous of Komarovsky, as if he were an infectious disease. Someday he will take you away, just as certainly as death will someday separate us. I know this must seem obscure and confused, but I can't say it more clearly. I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.

  Boris Pasternak

  Confused, Love You, Jealous

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• Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.

  Kristin Hannah

  Pain, Three, Changed

  Kristin Hannah (2010). “Winter Garden”, p.323, Macmillan

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• Am I a liar in your eyes?" he asked passionately. "Little skeptic, you shall be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that you know. What love has she for me? None: as I have taken pains to prove; I caused a rumor to reach her that my fortune was not a third of what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the result; it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not-I could not-marry Miss Ingram. You-you strange-you almost unearthly thing!-I love as my own flesh. You-poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are-I entreat to accept me as a husband.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Mother, Pain, Husband

  Jane Eyre ch. 23 (1847)

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• The more obscure our tastes, the greater the proof of our genius.

  Jennifer Donnelly

  Genius, Taste, Proof

  Jennifer Donnelly (2015). “Revolution”, p.9, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Now, I'm as appreciative as the next obsessive-compulsive recovering-academic of the vast riches of material becoming available online, thanks to all those Google scanners crouched in the basements of libraries around the world, madly feeding books through their machines. I download obscure tomes onto my iPad and give thanks to the dual gods Gates and Jobs, singing hymns to all the lesser pantheon of geniuses. But there's nothing like a book.

  Laurie R. King

  Jobs, Book, Hymns

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• Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure.

  Philip K. Dick

  Men, Body, Danger

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “The Man in the High Castle”, p.175, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.

  Philip K. Dick

  Other Worlds, Evil, Different

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “The Man in the High Castle”, p.260, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Acquaintance: "A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Degrees, Rich, Enough

  Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 12

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• There is nothing obscure about the objectives of educational exchange. Its purpose is to acquaint Americans with the world as it is and to acquaint students and scholars from many lands with America as it is-not as we wish it were or as we might wish foreigners to see it, but exactly as it is-which by my reckoning is an "image" of which no American need be ashamed.

  J. William Fulbright

  Educational, Land, America

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• One dark night the skeletons that they had carefully hidden in an obscure closet appeared, grabbed them around the throat, and strangled them.

  Benjamin Carson

  Dark, Night, Skeletons

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• I feel like I am involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell me the rules, and who smiles all the time.

  Neil Gaiman

  Dark, Dice, Cards

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• I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Memories, Opportunity, Self

  "In the Land of Memory" by Adam Dunn, edition.cnn.com. October 27, 2000.

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• ...it is not the obscure passages in Scripture that bind you but the ones you understand. With these you are to comply at once. If you understood only one passage in all of Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all. It will be this passage God asks you about. Do not first sit down and ponder the obscure passages. God's Word is given in order that you shall act according to it, not that you gain expertise in interpreting it.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Christian, Order, Gains

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• This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.

  Dylan Thomas

  Believe, Suffering, Violence

  Dylan Thomas (1968). “Quite Early One Morning”, p.108, New Directions Publishing

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• Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. Heroes do not want power over others.

  Edward Abbey

  Hero, People, Evil

  "Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast".

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• Nothing out of the ordinary ever occurs to me when I'm by myself. But you attract duels, ambushes, immortal enemies, obscure creatures such as the Ra'zac, long-lost family members, and mysterious acts of magic as if they were were starving weasels and you were a rabbit that wandered into their den.

  Christopher Paolini

  Long, Magic, Enemy

  "Brisingr: Book Three". Book by Christopher Paolini, September 20, 2008.

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• Depression is something that seems really obscure when you see it in a theater, but when you talk to people who come to see it and hear their reactions, you realize that it is such a prevalent part of life and our society today that it really needed to be told, and still needs to be told.

  Aaron Tveit

  People, Our Society, Society Today

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