Obscurity Quotes

• If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.

  Emily Bronte

  Work, Silence, Effort

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• Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Witty, Time, Powerful

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• Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity.

  Ovid

  Solitude, Wells

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• Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Class, Competition

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1980). “Annals of an Abiding Liberal”, Plume

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• How often the highest talent lurks in obscurity.

  Plautus

  Talent, Highest

  "Captivi". I, 2, 62,

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• It is better to be looked over than overlooked.

  Mae West

  Funny, Sexy, Strong Women

  Belle of the Nineties (motion picture) (1934)

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• The human mind is indeed a cave swarming with strange forms of life, most of them unconscious and unilluminated. Unless we can understand something as to how the motives that issue from this obscurity are generated, we can hardly hope to foresee or control them.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Issues, Mind, Caves

  Charles Horton Cooley (1922). “Human Nature and the Social Order”

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• I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

  Aldous Huxley

  Sunset, Dark, Losing

  1925 Those Barren Leaves, pt.1, ch.1.

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• Obscurity brings safety.

  Aesop

  Safety

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• He who has lived obscurely and quietly has lived well.

  Ovid

  Wells

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• The mind's passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.

  Adrienne Rich

  Passion, Mind, Tales

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “Collected Early Poems: 1950-1970”, p.201, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.

  Quintilian

  Proportion, Incapacity

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

  James Kern Feibleman

  Obscure, Notorious

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

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• Obscurity is the realm of error.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Mistake, Errors, Realms

  "Reflections and Maxims". Book by Luc de Clapiers (No. 5), 1746.

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• Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.

  James Joyce

  Flower, Unseen, Born

  James Joyce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)”, p.486, Delphi Classics

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• Learn to be pleased with everything, with wealth so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.

  Plutarch

  Balance, Contentment, Care

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• Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Home, Men, Play

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.150, 谷月社

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• The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Lying, Opportunity, Night

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• Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

  James Thurber

  Witty, Stupid, Trying

  Letter to Malcolm Cowley on March 11, 1954. "Collecting Himself". Book by James Thurber, 1989.

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• Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

  Joseph Addison

  Funny, Humor, Criticism

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• It is human nature to instinctively rebel at obscurity or ordinariness.

  Taylor Caldwell

  Rebel, Human Nature, Humans

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• Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

  Jim Carrey

  Poverty, Life Is, Exciting

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• My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.

  Edward Gibbon

  Language, Obscenity, Decent

  Edward Gibbon (1900). “The Memoirs of the Life of Edward Gibbon with Various Observations and Excursions”

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• I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God.

  Robert Browning

  God, Not Giving Up, Fighting

  'Paracelsus' (1835) pt. 5, l. 363

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• Philosophical reflection could not leave the relation of mind and spirit in the obscurity which had satisfied the needs of the naive consciousness.

  Wilhelm Wundt

  Philosophical, Reflection, Psychology

  Wilhelm Max Wundt (1969). “Principles of Physiological Psychology”

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