Obscurity Quotes - Page 4

• 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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• 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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• 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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• Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Incompetence, Refuge

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.305, Penguin

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• "Let there be no inscription upon my tomb. Let no man write my epitaph. No man can write my epitaph. I am here ready to die. I am not allowed to vindicate my character; and when I am prevented from vindicating myself, let no man dare calumniate me. Let my character and motives repose in obscurity and peace, till other times and other men can do them justice.

  Robert Emmet

  Writing, Character, Men

  Speech on his trial and conviction for high treason (September, 1803); reported in "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, (p. 230), 1922.

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• The problem for most artists isn't piracy, it's obscurity.

  Tim O'Reilly

  Artist, Problem, Piracy

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• Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needsbe delightful and rejoicing.

  David Hume

  Eye, Light, Mind

  David Hume (2012). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, p.15, tredition

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• I never knew how good it is to be unknown until now. The last time I was unknown I was too busy trying to become known to realize the advantages of obscurity.

  Alec Guinness

  Trying, Lasts, Realizing

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• Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts.

  Austin Kleon

  Lasts, Enjoy

  Austin Kleon (2012). “Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative”, p.78, Workman Publishing

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• Obscurity is a bigger problem than money.

  Grant Cardone

  Problem, Bigger Problems, Bigger

  Twitter post from Aug 26, 2011

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• Maybe some people are better off in obscurity than trying to keep on expanding.

  Erika M. Anderson

  People, Trying, Expanding

  Source: thequietus.com

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• A man will work and slave in obscurity for ten years and then become famous in ten minutes.

  Robert Ripley

  Men, Years, Slave

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• The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.

  Quintilian

  Soul, Rust, Kind

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• If I am ever obscure in my expressions, do not fancy that therefore I am deep. If I were really deep, all the world would understand, though they might not appreciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. To me an obscurity is a reason for suspecting a fallacy.

  Charles Kingsley

  Expression, Appreciate, Style

  Charles Kingsley (1877). “Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life”, p.56

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• Obscurity is dispelled by augmenting the light of discernment, not by attacking the darkness.

  Socrates

  Light, Darkness, Attacking

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• I do not whisper obscurities in some dark corner. I would not have told the people of Israel to seek me if I could not be found. I, the Lord, speak only what is true and declare only what is right.

  Isaiah

  Dark, Israel, People

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• God's extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Home, People, Ordinary

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• For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sports, Weed, Wind

  Virginia Woolf (1996). “Mrs Dalloway”, p.117, Wordsworth Editions

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• Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity.

  Neil Gaiman

  Fame, Notoriety

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• If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity.

  Oscar Wilde

  Differences, Three, Forgotten

  Oscar Wilde, Richard Butler Glaenzer (1906). “Decorative Art in America: A Lecture, Together with Letters, Reviews and Interviews. Edited, with an Introd. by Richard Butler Glaenzer”

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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. . . . But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.

  Anna Komnene

  Strong, Taken, History

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• I want to be famous so I can be humble about being famous. What good is my humility when I am stuck in this obscurity?

  David Budbill

  Humility, Humble, Want

  David Budbill (2012). “Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse”, p.56, Copper Canyon Press

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• What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.

  William Hazlitt

  Fashion, Clothes, Trying

  William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays by W. H. Now first collected [and edited] by his son”, p.244

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• In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, ... sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and ... entangling, from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth... Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel is the zodiac.

  Victor Hugo

  Life, Stars, Science

  "Les misérables".

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