Obscure Quotes - Page 9

• The tendency of modern scientific teaching is to neglect the great books, to lay far too much stress upon relatively unimportant modern work, and to present masses of detail of doubtful truth and questionable weight in such a way as to obscure principles.

  Ronald Fisher

  Stress, Book, Teaching

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• When the truth is ugly, people try to keep it hidden, because they know if revealed, the damage it will do. So they conceal it within sturdy walls or they place it behind closed doors or they obscure it with clever disguises but truth, no matter how ugly, always emerges. And someone we care about always ends up getting hurt. And someone else will revel in their pain and that's the ugliest truth of all.

  Mary Alice

  Hurt, Wall, Clever

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• Obscure, like muddy waters.

  Laozi

  Water, Taoism, Muddy

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• If there is anything in life in which I take a pardonable pride, it is my friendship for certain old woodsmen and hunters; obscure men, as far as the world is concerned, but faithful friends, loyal comrades.

  Archibald Rutledge

  Pride, Men, Faithful

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• I have never been able to understand why perfectly sensible people waste time being wittily obscure instead of just saying what they want and going on about their business.

  Barry Hughart

  People, Want, Able

  Barry Hughart (2011). “The Story of the Stone”, p.64, Spectra

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• When the situation is obscure, attack

  Heinz Guderian

  Military, Situation

  "Waging Business Warfare". Book by David J. Rogers, p. 236, 1988.

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• Every type of destruction that human philosophy, human science, human reason, human art, human cunning, human force, and human brutality could bring to bear against this Book, and yet the Bible stands absolutely unshaken today. At times almost all the wise and great of the earth have been pitted against the Bible, and only an obscure few for it. Yet it has stood.

  R. A. Torrey

  Bible, Christian, Wise

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• ... the modern state masks itself in moral ideologies which obscure its actual conduct. One of the most compelling and insidious of these ideologies is the doctrine of natural rights. It was to secure these rights that the modern state was invented in the first place, and it is impossible, especially for Americans, not to be seduced by the doctrine. But it is nonetheless a philosophical superstition.

  Donald Livingston

  Philosophical, Rights, Doctrine

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• A little tough talk in the midst of a campaign or as part of a presidential debate cannot obscure a record of 30 years of being on the wrong side of defense issues.

  Dick Cheney

  Years, Issues, Presidential

  Dick Cheney at Vice President Debate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, www.cnn.com. October 7, 2004.

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• A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure.

  Hugh Kingsmill

  Learning, Libertarian, Programming

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• The joy of life is made up of obscure and seemingly mundane victories that give us our own small satisfactions.

  Billy Joel

  Life, Giving, Joy

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• To mystify, in the active sense, is to befuddle, cloud, obscure, mask whatever is going on, whether this be experience, action, or process, or whatever is "the issue." It induces confusion in the sense that there is failure to see what is "really" being experienced, or being done, or going on, and failure to distinguish or discriminate the actual issues. This entails the substitution of false for true constructions of what is being experienced, being done (praxis), or going on (process), and the substitution of false issues for the actual issues.

  R. D. Laing

  Clouds, Issues, Confusion

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• 'God' is the name given to the most 'important' human idea. In English, as in other languages, the original sense of the word is obscure. But the character of the name is the same in all languages: it is a question. 'God' is the question 'Is there something more important than, something besides, man?'

  Laura Riding

  Character, Men, Names

  "The Idea of God". "Essays from 'Epilogue' 1935-1937". Book by Laura Riding, Robert Graves, and Mark Jacobs, 2001.

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• The mathematician who is without value to mathematicians, the thinker who is obscure or meaningless to thinkers, the dramatist who fails to move the pit, may be wise, may be eminent, but as an author he has failed.

  George Henry Lewes

  Wise, Moving, May

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• Carlsen came with a line that was not very theoretical, trying to challenge the World Champion to play chess. [...] But Anand proved that even this obscure line is something he has studied before, and it was Carlsen that was set back.

  Alejandro Ramirez

  Play, Challenges, Champion

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• I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the street car and the star sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities.

  Everett Ruess

  Stars, Tired, Sky

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• I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities. Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me? It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty

  Everett Ruess

  Stars, Mean, Intelligent

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• One can spend too much of one's life locked in stuffy rooms seeking out obscure truths, searching, researching, until one is too old to enjoy life.

  Jimmy Sangster

  Enjoy Life, Too Much, Rooms

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• Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Talent

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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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• I never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute; but I know how to raise a small and obscure city to glory and greatness...whereto all kindreds of the earth will pilgrim.

  Themistocles

  Greatness, Play, Cities

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• In any case, his religious teaching consisted mostly in more or less vague ethical remarks, an obscure mixture of ideals of English gentlemanliness and his favorite notions of personal hygiene. Everybody knew that his class was liable to degenerate into a demonstration of some practical points about rowing, with Buggy sitting on the table and showing us how to pull an oar.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Religious, Teaching

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It's like all my life I've been this tower standing at the edge of the ocean for some obscure purpose, and only now, almost eighteen years in, has someone thought to flip the switch that reveals that I'm not a tower at all. I'm a lighthouse. It's like waking up. I am incandescent.

  Laini Taylor

  Ocean, Years, Towers

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• There are many things akin to highest deity that are still obscure. Some may be too subtle for our powers of comprehension, others imperceptible to us because such exalted majesty conceals itself in the holiest part of its sanctuary, forbidding access to any power save that of the spirit. How many heavenly bodies revolve unseen by human eye!

  Seneca the Younger

  Eye, Science, Power

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• Dog! When we first met on the highway of life, we came from the two poles of creation.... What can be the meaning of the obscure love for me that has sprung up in your heart?

  Anatole France

  Friendship, Dog, Heart

  Anatole France (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Anatole France (Illustrated)”, p.1266, Delphi Classics

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