Obscurity Quotes - Page 2

• One must choose between obscurity with efficiency, and fame with its inevitable collateral of bluff.

  William McFee

  Reputation, Fame, Efficiency

  William McFee (1921). “Harbours of Memory”

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• The line between greatness and obscurity is very, very small.

  Peabo Bryson

  Greatness, Lines

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• When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Literature, Invisibility, Worship

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• You need a platform upon which to release an orchestral record, otherwise it's just going to be an obscurity.

  Elvis Costello

  Needs, Records, Release

  "Interview about The Delivery Man". Interview with Brian Wise, www.elviscostello.info. April 10, 2004.

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• Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Light, Space, Silence

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• Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Life, Office, Gentleman

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.85, Courier Corporation

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• It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, heartening and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere.

  Bernard Bailyn

  People, Vision, Liberty

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.160, Harvard University Press

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• I think it's important to have had at least a few years of obscurity, where people treat you like everybody else.

  Robert De Niro

  Thinking, Years, People

  "Robert De Niro: 'Obscurity is important'" by Mayer Nissim, www.digitalspy.com. November 6, 2009.

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• As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Past, Men, Light

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1847). “Democracy in America”

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• The theory of interest was wrapped in utter obscurity, until Hume and Smith dispelled the vapor.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Vapor, Theory, Hume

  Jean Baptiste Say (1821). “A treatise on political economy; or, The production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. Tr. by C.R. Prinsep, with notes”, p.152

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• You have available to you, right now, a powerful supercomputer. This powerful tool has been used through-out history to take people from rags to riches, from poverty and obscurity to success and fame, from unhappiness and frustration to joy and self-fulfillment, and it can do the same for you.

  Brian Tracy

  Motivational, Powerful, Frustration

  FaceBook post by Brian Tracy from Apr 16, 2014

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• To be sure an artist wishes to raise his standard intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain in obscurity. Pleasure must be found in the studying.

  Paul Cezanne

  Men, Artist, Wish

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• If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  World, Would Be, Vietnam

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• If you desire to know or learn anything to your advantage, then take delight in being unknown and unregarded. A true understanding and humble estimate of oneself is the highest and most valuable of all lessons.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Humble, Understanding, Desire

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• Art will never come except from some small disregarded corner where an isolated and inspired man is studying the mysteries of nature.

  Jean-Francois Millet

  Art, Men, Inspired

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• Any effort... to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while the reward of success is banality.

  Nelson Goodman

  Confusion, Effort, Rewards

  Nelson Goodman (2012). “The Structure of Appearance”, p.1, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Modern liberalism, for most liberals is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs, but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow.

  James Burnham

  Emotional, Glowing, Color

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• Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another...

  W. H. Auden

  People, History, Firsts

  "The Dyer's Hand". "The Listener" Magazine, June 30, 1955.

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• The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.

  Ernest Gellner

  Paris, Car, Detroit

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• No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.

  William Kingdon Clifford

  Believe, Simplicity, Mind

  William Kingdon Clifford, Leslie Stephen, Frederick Pollock (2011). “Lectures and Essays”, p.183, Cambridge University Press

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• I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.

  Tallulah Bankhead

  Men, Rumor, Way

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• Obscurantism is the academic theorist's revenge on society for having consigned him or her to relative obscurity - a way of proclaiming one's superiority in the face of one's diminished influence.

  David Lehman

  Revenge, Way, Faces

  David Lehman (1992). “Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man”, Poseidon Pr

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• Leave bands, go back to obscurity if I choose to, without a great sense of loss of security because it's all been based on the fact that I did it on my own or was doing, enjoying doing it on my own in the first place.

  Eric Clapton

  Loss, House, Band

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• But it is true that sometimes an enveloping darkness aids one to clearer vision; as in a panorama building, for example, where the obscurity about the entrance prepares one better for the climax, and gives the scene depicted a more real and vivid appearance.

  Pierre Loti

  Real, Giving, Darkness

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• Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

  Thomas Merton

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Profound

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.81, New Directions Publishing

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