Obscurity Quotes - Page 11

• The public easily confuses him who fishes in troubled waters with him who draws up water from the depths.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Water, Depth, Fishes

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• That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.

  Herman Melville

  Dog, Men, Rejection

  Herman Melville (1996). “Pierre: or, The Ambiguities”, p.296, Penguin

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• A bard whom there were none to praise,
  And very few to read.

  Hartley Coleridge

  Poetry, Praise, Bards

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• Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders ourview. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tends to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing.... In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.

  Blaise Pascal

  Truth, Distance, Light

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• In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality--the principle of order versus the split atom.

  Ezra Pound

  Order, Ideas, Rose

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• I hate set dissertations,--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception.

  Laurence Sterne

  Hate, Numbers, World

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”, p.151

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• Why should not the knowledge, the skill, the expertness, the assiduity, and the spirited hazards of trade and commerce, when crowned with success, be entitled to give those flattering distinctions by which mankind are so universally captivated? Such are the specious, but false arguments for a proposition which always will find numerous advocates, in a nation where men are every day starting up from obscurity to wealth. To refute them is needless. The general sense of mankind cries out, with irresistible force, "Un gentilhomme est toujours gentilhomme.

  James Boswell

  Men, Starting Up, Class

  James Boswell (2008). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.249, Wordsworth Editions

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• Do they [the publishers of Murphy] not understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and thatto compress it further can only make it more obscure?

  Samuel Beckett

  Book, Obscure, Compression

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• The time is perhaps not altogether too green for the vile suggestion that art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear, and more than the light of day (or night) makes the subsolar, -lunar, and -stellar excrement. Art is the sun, moon, and stars of the mind, the whole mind.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Stars, Moon

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• There is nothing wrong with "women's studies" that studying the right women can't cure, but feminist literary scholars have a penchant for dragging the rivers of deserved obscurity for third-rate neurotics.

  Florence King

  Rivers, Feminist, Feminism

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• A great discovery is a fact whose appearance in science gives rise to shining ideas, whose light dispels many obscurities and shows us new paths.

  Claude Bernard

  Light, Discovery, Ideas

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.63, Courier Corporation

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• That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Squares, Views, Roots

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• Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Spring, Expression, Ideas

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.89, Editions Le Mono

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• Eliminate mental muddiness and obscurity; keep your mind crystal clear. Allow your pure original insight to emerge. Quiet your emotions and abide in serenity. Don't go crazy with the worship of idols, images, and ideas; this is like putting a new head on top of the head you already have. Remember: if you can cease all restless activity, your integral nature will appear.

  Laozi

  Nature, Crazy, Idols

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• Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity.

  Anna Komnene

  Depth, Flow, Flood

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• For though we very truly hear that the kingdom of God will be filled with splendor, joy, happiness and glory, yet when these things are spoken of, they remain utterly remote from our perception, and as it were, wrapped in obscurities, until that day.

  John Calvin

  Joy, Perception, Kingdoms

  John Calvin “Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion”, Westminster John Knox Press

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• The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Dream, Mean

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• Permit us to labor on in obscurity, and at the end of twenty years you may hear from us again.

  Adoniram Judson

  Years, Twenties, Missionary

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• Genius is often a short way of spelling hard work. Poverty, obscurity, struggle and ambition formed the foundation for many careers of transcendent achievement. Few marks are made in the world's history by eight-hour-day men.... Sir Joshua Reynolds had but one maxim for success: Work, work, work. Is not rigid and continuous training necessary for the making of strong athletes? Hard work is not fatal to real success. Vouloir c'est pouvoir.

  B. C. Forbes

  Strong, Real, Work

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• Moreover, the sciences are monuments devoted to the public good; each citizen owes to them a tribute proportional to his talents. While the great men, carried to the summit of the edifice, draw and put up the higher floors, the ordinary artists scattered in the lower floors, or hidden in the obscurity of the foundations, must only seek to improve what cleverer hands have created.

  Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

  Science, Men, Artist

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• The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Law, Energy, World

  Alexander Maclaren (1871). “Sermons Preached in Manchester: First series”, p.183

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• When we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer.

  Carl Jung

  Darkness, Wish, Enlightenment

  Carl Gustav Jung, Herbert Read, Michael Scott Montague Fordham, Gerhard Adler (1972). “The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: The structure and dynamics of the psyche”

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• Don't be a writer, it's a terrible way to live your life, there's nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it.

  Paul Auster

  Mean, Live Your Life, Solitude

  "Big Think Interview With Paul Auster". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 5, 2009.

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• We're living at a time when attention is the new currency We're all publishers now, and the more we publish, the more valuable connections we'll make. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Fitbit and the SenseCam give us a simple choice: participate or fade into a lonely obscurity.

  Pete Cashmore

  Lonely, Simple, Giving

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• The Lord chose Joseph Smith, called upon him at fourteen years of age, gave him vision, and led him along, guided and directed him in his obscurity.

  Brigham Young

  Years, Vision, Age

  Brigham Young (1861). “Journal of Discourses”, p.354

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