Obscurity Quotes - Page 5

• I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?

  Charlotte Bronte

  Coward, Rust, London

  Charlotte Bronte (2016). “Villette”, p.48, Xist Publishing

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• College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Real, College, Names

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2011). “The Marriage Plot: A Novel”, p.23, Macmillan

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• It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Artist, Use, Want

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• I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted, and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity, but I find that thy will knows no end in me, and when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart, and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Country, Heart, Track

  Rabindranath Tagore (2005). “கீதாஞ்சலி: Kītāñcali”, p.79, Sura Books

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• The door was locked and Alexia, resourceful as she was, had not yet learned to pick locks. Though she mentally added it to her list of useful skills she needed to acquire along with hand-to-hand combat and the recipe for pesto. If her life were to continue on its present track which after 26 years of obscurity, now seemed to mainly involve people trying to kill her, it would appear that acquiring a less savory skill set might be necessary. Although she supposed pesto making ought to be termed 'more savory'.

  Gail Carriger

  Doors, Hands, Years

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• Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Believe, Profound, Water

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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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• It is not a question of skimming the surface of the art, it must be probed to its depths, for to seize upon superficial things only is to degenerate into mediocrity and obscurity.

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Art, Superficial Things, Ballet

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• I would rather live a short life of glory than a long one of obscurity.

  Alexander the Great

  Short Life, Long, Glory

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• We musicians play in Time and with Time, but sometimes it is Time that plays with us. One day, unpredictably, the evolution of culture makes real an oeuvre which has lain in obscurity.

  Igor Markevitch

  Real, Play, One Day

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• The cold war was the longest war in United States history. Because of the nuclear capabilities of our enemy it was the most dangerous conflict our country ever faced. Those that won this war did so in obscurity. Those that gave their lives in the cold war have never been properly honored.

  Harry Reid

  Country, War, Enemy

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• Obscurity is a bigger problem for authors than piracy.

  Tim O'Reilly

  Problem, Bigger, Piracy

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• The big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.

  Cory Doctorow

  Problem, Bigs, Piracy

  Cory Doctorow (2010). “Little Brother”, p.116, Macmillan

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• There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities...more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes

  Joseph Fourier

  Simple, Errors, Order

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• I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity.

  Oliver Cromwell

  Gentleman, Height, Birth

  Oliver Cromwell (1860). “Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: Including the Supplement to the First Edition with Elucidations”, p.110

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• Believing is a fine thing, but placing those beliefs into execution is a test of strength. Many are those who talk like the roar of the sea, gut their lives are shallow and stagnant, like the rotting marshes. Many are those who lift their heads above the mountain tops, but their spirits remain dormant in the obscurity of the caverns.

  Khalil Gibran

  Life, Believe, Sea

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• The origins of poetry are clearly rooted in obscurity, in secretiveness, in incantation, in spells that must at once invoke and protect, tell the secret and keep it.

  Mary Ruefle

  Secret, Protect, Invoke

  Mary Ruefle (2012). “Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures”, p.82, Wave Books

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• The coaching profession has lost one of its true legends. Though he was best known for winning more football games than any other coach when he retired, Eddie Robinson's impact on coaching and the game of football went far beyond wins and losses. He brought a small school in northern Louisiana from obscurity to nationwide, if not worldwide, acclaim and touched the lives of hundreds and hundreds of young men in his 57 years at Grambling. That will be his greatest legacy.

  Grant Teaff

  Football, School, Loss

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• When the artist ... intends from the beginning to be obscure and take obscurity as his objective or goal for its own sake and wishes to astonish, shock, and seem mysterious, that is a swindle.

  Tawfiq al-Hakim

  Artist, Goal, Wish

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• It{California} is the land where the fabled Aladdin's Lamp lies buried-and she {San Francisco} is the new Aladdin who shall seize it from its obscurity and summon the genie and command him to crown her with power and greatness and bring to her feet the hoarded treasures of the earth.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Greatness, Land

  Mark Twain, Arthur Grove Day (1975). “Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii”, p.274, University of Hawaii Press

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