Obscure Quotes - Page 5

• 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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• 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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• After wishing for years to be given-the-opportunity of filming some of the more 'mystical' occupations of our Times - some of the more obscure Public Figures which the average imagination turns into 'bogeymen'... viz.: Policemen, Doctors, Soldiers, Politicians, etc.: - I was at last permitted to ride in a Pittsburgh police car, camera in hand, the final several days of September 1970.

  Stan Brakhage

  Opportunity, Doctors, Average

  Stan Brakhage (1982). “Brakhage scrapbook: collected writings, 1964-1980”, Treacle Pr

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• When you feel discouraged or simply lazy, as is bound to happen sometimes, remember the millions of people in the world who have not had your privilege. Remember the poor and obscure lives of those countless millions who suffer from every sort of deprivation and frequently find themselves the unwilling victim of wars, and a variety of cruelties, perpetuated by man on man. Is it not significant that the first bid for self realization, among the poor and downtrodden, is to assert their right to education?

  Jehan Sadat

  Graduation, War, Men

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• Astronomy is useful because it raises us above ourselves; it is useful because it is grand; .... It shows us how small is man's body, how great his mind, since his intelligence can embrace the whole of this dazzling immensity, where his body is only an obscure point, and enjoy its silent harmony.

  Henri Poincare

  Men, Mind, Body

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.473, Modern Library

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• Many words will be written on the wind and the sand, or end up in some obscure digital vault. But the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then we can send the great chronicle of humanity out into the endless universe.

  Henning Mankell

  Wind, Humanity, Listening

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• I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say. Rather than offering the balm of consolation, the Buddha encouraged us to peer deep and unflinchingly into the heart of the bewildering and painful experience that life can so often be.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Karma, Believe, Heart

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• Things are more beautiful when they're obscure.

  Veda Hille

  Love, Beautiful

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• With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing.

  Criss Jami

  Regret, Philosophy, Thinking

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.116, Criss Jami

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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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• Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity of making things plain to uninstructed people, was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind.

  Thomas Huxley

  Mean, Science, People

  'Man's Place in Nature' (1894 ed.) preface

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• If the soul is impartial in receiving information, it devotes to that information the share of critical investigation the information deserves, and its truth or untruth thus becomes clear. However, if the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment's hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The results is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted.

  Ibn Khaldun

  Soul, Receiving, Prejudice

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• It is better to be famous than notorious, but better to be notorious than obscure.

  James Kern Feibleman

  Obscurity, Notorious

  James Kern Feibleman (1978). “New proverbs for our day”, Horizon House Pubs

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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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• Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Character, Hair

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.118, Courier Corporation

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• People of good character are not all going to come down on the same side of difficult political and social issues. Good people - people of character and moral literacy - can be conservative, and good people can be liberal. We must not permit our disputes over thorny political questions to obscure the obligation we have to offer instruction to all our young people in the area in which we have, as a society, reached a consensus: namely, on the importance of good character, and some of its pervasive particulars.

  William Bennett

  Character, Issues, People

  "The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories". Book edited by William Bennett, 1993.

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• In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of thing that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be.

  Wallace Stevens

  Spring, Moon, Clouds

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.288, Vintage

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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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• 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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• 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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• Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.

  Alice Miller

  Real, Ideas, Facts

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.42, Basic Books

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• Hipsters seek refuge in church, Our Lady of Perpetual Subculture. There is some discussion as to whether or not they are still cool but then they are calmed by the obscure location and the arrival of their kind. Keep the address to yourself, let the rabble fund it themselves. Wow, this crappy performance art is really making me feel no so terrible about my various emotional issues.

  Colson Whitehead

  Art, Hipster, Emotional

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