Obscurity Quotes - Page 6

• It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years.

  J. D. Salinger

  Years, Feelings, Opinion

  "JD Salinger: from boy of war, to modern man of letters" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 30, 2010.

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• The street to obscurity is paved with athletes who perform great feats before friendly crowds. Greatness in major league sports is the ability to win in a stadium filled with people who are pulling for you to lose.

  George Allen

  Sports, Athlete, Winning

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• Truth is like the stars; it does not appear except from behind obscurity of the night. Truth is like all beautiful things in the world; it does not disclose its desirability except to those who first feel the influence of falsehood. Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

  Khalil Gibran

  Beautiful, Stars, Truth

  Khalil Gibran “Khalil The Heretic”, Library of Alexandria

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• You cannot be buried in obscurity: you are exposed upon a grand theater to the view of the world. If your actions are upright and benevolent, be assured they will augment your power and happiness.

  Cyrus the Great

  Happiness, Army, Power

  "A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations". Book by Tyron Edwards, p. 290, 1908.

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• Therefore if we realize that our nature and destiny are what they should be, we will have no anxiety and will be at ease with ourselves in the face of life or death, prominence or obscurity, or an infinite amount of changes and variations, and will be in accord with principle.

  Guo Xiang

  Change, Destiny, Anxiety

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• I do not enjoy the promotional side of being a writer, to be blunt about it. Even with the little amount that is expected of me, which is nothing compared to the life of an artist. Writers can live in obscurity and come out of the woodwork with a book, then go back in. Artists don’t have that luxury.

  Rachel Kushner

  Book, Writing, Artist

  "Rachel Kushner: The Useless Truth". Interview with Jonathan Lee, www.guernicamag.com. February 17, 2014.

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• This was a splendid life. Splendid in its obscurity and humility, splendid in its strength and charity, splendid in its achievements.

  Robert Mortimer

  Life, Humility, Achievement

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• The obscurity, incredibility and obscenity, so conspicuous in many parts of it, would justly condemn the works of a modern writer. It contains a mixture of inconsistency and contradiction; to call which the word of God, is the highest pitch of extravagance: it is to attribute to the deity that which any person of common sense would blush to confess himself the author of.

  Elihu Palmer

  Common Sense, Religion, Extravagance

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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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• Look, we live in a celebrity culture and sometimes you get caught in the wave and the buzz and a lot of it's flattering but, you know, one of the things that I try to remind people of is, is that I was in politics as a state senator operating in obscurity for many years. Before that I was a community organizer working in low income communities in Chicago and nobody knew my name then. And so, having involved myself in public service for a pretty long time without getting too much attention, hopefully I can keep some of the attention that I'm getting now in perspective.

  Barack Obama

  Names, Years, Perspective

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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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• 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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• Those humble but indomitable workers, to whom later generations referred by the collective name of Baale Masorah, Masters of Tradition, performed in obscurity their Herculean task of guarding the Biblical Text against loss or variation.

  Robert Gordis

  Humble, Loss, Biblical

  Robert Gordis (1971). “The Biblical text in the making: a study of the kethib-qere”, Ktav Pub Inc

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• My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse And shut upon obscurity; my acts Cast to their opposites by impatient violence Break up the sequent path; they fly On a circumference to avoid the centre.

  Stephen Spender

  Eye, Light, Opposites

  Stephen Spender (1966). “World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender”, p.5, Univ of California Press

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• To crave wealth and honor, to demand power, to pile up riches, to gather all those vanities which seem to make for pomp and empty display, that is our furious passion and our unbounded desire.On the other hand, we fear and abhor poverty, obscurity, and humility, and we seek to avoid them by all possible means.

  John Calvin

  Mean, Humility, Passion

  John Calvin (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.41, Baker Books

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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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• Still, the change is nearly indescribable - going from total obscurity to walking down a street in New York and having everybody turn and look; to feel the temperature of a room change when I walked in.

  Matt Damon

  New York, Looks, Rooms

  "Top gun" by Steven Goldman, www.theguardian.com. August 9, 2007.

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