Obscurity Quotes - Page 3

• I had a great time on News Radio, I got to make tons of money in relative obscurity and learn a lot about the TV biz and work on my standup act constantly. It was a dream gig.

  Joe Rogan

  Dream, News, Radio

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• But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

  George Eliot

  Life, Numbers, Half

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch - A Study of Provincial Life -”, p.367, Read Books Ltd

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• I guess I didn't feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in certain directions or teach me certain things - not knowing what that would be.

  Steven Soderbergh

  Knowing, Toil, Would Be

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• You have to demand things and believe you're worth more. And once you do demand them, you're usually going to get them. The players who first came in were very humble because we came from obscurity. Today's players, on the other hand, have a sense of entitlement.

  Sue Wicks

  Believe, Humble, Player

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• How rare it is to come across a piece of writing that is unambiguous, unqualified, and also unblurred by understatements or subtleties, and yet at the same time urbane and tolerant. It is a vice of the scientific method when applied to human affairs that it fosters hemming and hawing and a scrupulousness that easily degenerates into obscurity and meaninglessness.

  Eric Hoffer

  Writing, Vices, Pieces

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.

  Eric Hoffer

  Pain, Writing, People

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• Here's some free advice; like the folkies of yore, you need to be not just a writer of songs, you need to be a lover of songs, a listener of songs and a collector of songs. If you hear a song in a club that knocks you out or you hear an old recording of a great song you never knew existed, it does not diminish you to record it; it actually exalts you because you have brought a great song from obscurity to the ear of the public.

  Michael Kosser

  Song, Writing, Advice

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• So true is it that all transactions of preeminent importance are wrapt in doubt and obscurity; while some hold for certain facts the most precarious hearsays, others turn facts into falsehood; and both are exaggerated by posterity.

  Tacitus

  Doubt, Facts, Certain

  Cornelius Tacitus (1860). “The Works of Tacitus: The Oxford Translation, Revised. With Notes ...”, p.119

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• Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Twilight, Ignorance, Night

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1854). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions”, p.108

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• Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.

  Lionel Trilling

  Understanding, Advantage, Miscommunication

  Lionel Trilling (2012). “The Liberal Imagination”, p.259, New York Review of Books

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• The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

  Henry Miller

  Communication, Writing, Important

  Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.246, New Directions Publishing

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• Sometimes, idealistic people are put off the whole business of networking as something tainted by flattery and the pursuit of selfish advantage. But virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in Heaven. To succeed in this world you have to be known to people.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Selfish, People, Heaven

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Fame is fickle, but Obscurity is usually faithful to the end.

  Mason Cooley

  Faithful, Fickle, Fame

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

  Joseph Addison

  Funny, Humor, Criticism

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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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• To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

  George Orwell

  Art, Latin, Struggle

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