Obstinate Quotes - Page 3

• The sun had, in the meanwhile, sunk behind the Ettersberg. We felt in the wood the chill of the evening, and drove all the quicker to Wiemar, and to Goethe's house. Goethe urged me to go in with him for a while, and I did so. He was in an extremely engaging mood. He talked a great deal about his theory of colors, and of his obstinate opponents; remarking that he was sure that he had done something in this science.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Death, Color, House

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.99, Ravenio Books

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• I bid you conquer in your warfare against your four great enemies, the world, the devil, the flesh, and above all, that obstinate and perverse self-will, unaided by which the other three would be comparatively powerless.

  Augustus William Hare

  Motivational, Self, Enemy

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• Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Cities, Despair, Answers

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.82, Granta Books

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• A mind is accustomed to mathematical deduction, when confronted with the faulty foundations of astrology, resists a long, long time, like an obstinate mule, until compelled by beating and curses to put its foot into that dirty puddle.

  Johannes Kepler

  Time, Dirty, Feet

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• And she hates being managed - that is not the word I want. What is it, Maturin?' 'Manipulated.' 'Exactly. She is a dutiful girl - a great sense of duty: I think it rather stupid, but there it is - but still she finds the way her mother has been arranging and pushing and managing and angling in all this perfectly odious. You two must have had hogsheads of that grocer's claret forced down your throats. Perfectly odious: and she is obstinate - strong, if you like - under that bread-and-butter way of hers. It will take a great deal to move her; much more than the excitement of a ball.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Girl, Mother, Strong

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• Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least resistance, we ascribe to them collective crimes, collective acts and opinions. "The Serbs have massacred…", "The English have devastated…", "The Jews have confiscated…", "The Blacks have torched", "The Arabs refuse…". We blithely express sweeping judgments on whole peoples, calling them "hardworking" and "ingenious", or "lazy", "touchy", "sly", "proud", or "obstinate". And sometimes this ends in bloodshed." – Amin Maalouf "On Identity

  Amin Maalouf

  People, Lazy, Together

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• Skye kissed her forehead. "You saved my life." Katsa smiled. "You Lienid are very outward in your affection." "I'm going to name my firstborn child after you." Katsa laughed at that. "For the child's sake, wait for a girl. Or even better, wait until all your children are older and give my name to whichever is the most troublesome and obstinate." Skye burst into laughter and hugged her, and Katsa returned his embrace. And realized that quite without her intending it, her guarded heart had made another friend.

  Kristin Cashore

  Girl, Laughter, Children

  Kristin Cashore (2009). “Graceling”, p.433, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• An island can be dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are as hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon.

  Tove Jansson

  Islands, Rocks, Self

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• He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Common Sense, Dying, Stones

  "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel García Márquez, 1985.

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• It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.

  Michael Faraday

  Principles, Should, Blindness

  Michael Faraday (1859). “Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics”, p.474

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• Real success and accomplishment, at whatever it is you are passionate about, requires real work. Real sacrifice. Real disappointment. Real failure. And it requires the ability to scrape your sorry ass up off the floor, stumble to your feet, wipe the rivulets of watery drool from your face, and do it again, like an obstinate toddler running against the wall with his head in a bucket.

  Aisha Tyler

  Running, Wall, Sorry

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• He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred. All who met him were loathsome to him - he loathed their faces, their movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that he might have spat at him or bitten him... .

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Hatred, Feelings, Gestures

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• Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things,
  Fallings from us, vanishings;
  Blank misgivings of a Creature
  Moving about in worlds not realised,
  High instincts before which our mortal Nature
  Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised

  William Wordsworth

  Moving, Fall, World

  "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" l. 146 (1807)

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• Obstinate people can be divided into the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish.

  Aristotle

  People, Ignorant, Opinionated

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• Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise and self-consistent.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Real, Self

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “An Outline of Philosophy”, p.2, Routledge

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• They also have at that critical point of death the opportunity to be converted to God through repentance. And if they are so obstinate that even at the point of death their heart does not draw back from malice, it is possible to make a quite probable judgment that they would never come away from evil.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Heart, Opportunity, Evil

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• Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fear, Men, Mind

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.153

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• Leave the Artillerymen alone, they are an obstinate lot.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Military, Artillery

  "The Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations". Book Robert Heinl, Jr., 1966.

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• The less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he always seems to be.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Fashion, Dresses, Taste

  Jerome K. Jerome (2014). “Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog”, p.107, Diderot Publishing

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• Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Great Gatsby American Dream, Great Gatsby Book, Great Gatsby Important

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2003). “The Great Gatsby”, p.97, Simon and Schuster

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• In most cases, to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turn points to conformity with reality as it is. The principle of adjustment is taken for granted. When the idea of reason was conceived, it was intended to achieve more than the mere regulation of the relation between means and ends: it was regarded as the instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them.

  Max Horkheimer

  Taken, Mean, Reality

  Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.8, Read Books Ltd

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• I was a peaceful sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life, with no appetite for perils and commotions. But I was beginning to realise that I was very obstinate.

  John Buchan

  Men, Peaceful, Lovers

  John Buchan (2016). “JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated): Scottish Poems, World War I Books & Mystery Novels like Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Huntingtower, No Man’s Land, Prester John and many more”, p.817, e-artnow

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• By that time it was already clear that the next prime minster was going to be Golda Meir, a woman whom I frankly detested - a mutual sentiment, I might add. I knew her as an opinionated, obstinate person, primitive in her outlook, rigid in her attitudes, with a genius for reaching and exploiting the deepest fears and prejudices of the Jewish masses. I was certain that with her as prime minister, all peace efforts would come to a total standstill.

  Uri Avnery

  Attitude, Effort, Add

  "My Friend, the Enemy". Book by Uri Avnery, 1986.

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• Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow.

  George Eliot

  Men, Vegetables, Desire

  George Eliot (1869). “Silas Marner, and Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.168

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• Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.

  David Hume

  Real, Passion, Government

  'Essays' (1741-2) 'Of Civil Liberty'

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