Perplexity Quotes - Page 2

• Perhaps, on the whole, embarrassment and perplexity are a kind of natural accompaniment to life and movement; and it is better to be driven out of your senses with thinking which of two things you ought to do than to do nothing whatever, and be utterly uninteresting to all the world.

  Margaret Oliphant

  Thinking, Two, Movement

  Margaret Oliphant (2014). “Miss Marjoribanks”, p.430, The Floating Press

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• Do you not think that sometimes when matters are at the worst with us, when we appear to have done all which we ourselves can do, yet all has been unavailing, and we have only shown we cannot, not we will not, help ourselves; that often just then something comes, almost as if supernaturally, to settle for us, as if our guardian angel took pity on our perplexities, and then at last obtained leave to help us? And if it be so, then what might only be a coincidence becomes a call of Providence, a voice from Heaven, a command.

  James Anthony Froude

  Angel, Thinking, Voice

  James Anthony Froude (1849). “The nemesis of faith”, p.37

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• So if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in places of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that HIs resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.

  Hudson Taylor

  Giving, Grace, Trials

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• The small perplexities of small minds eddy and boil about you. Confident from the experience that has led you out of these same dangers, you attack each problem as it appears, unafraid.

  Alice Foote MacDougall

  Business, Mind, Problem

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• Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence. We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Essence, Justice, Care

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.91, Stanford University Press

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• Did the gods once mingle with humankind, or is Homer a visionary madman, or, what is worse, a mere poet, a maker-up of beautiful falsities, an elegant liar? I shall grapple with that perplexity, only to emerge as I went in, in a cloud of unknowing, if perhaps a little the wiser.

  Eva Brann

  Beautiful, Liars, Clouds

  Eva Brann “Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad”, Paul Dry Books

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• A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Philosophy, Men, Philosopher

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The World as Will and Idea 1: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.41, 谷月社

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• If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Dream, Men, Progress

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• Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

  Hannah Arendt

  Hypocrite, Evil, Hypocrisy

  'On Revolution' (1963) ch. 2

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• We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavors in it, may also become clearer.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Wise, Distance, Character

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.13, Lulu.com

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• Either still I find Some imperfection in the chosen theme, Or see of absolute accomplishment Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself, That I recoil and droop, and seek repose In listlessness from vain perplexity, Unprofitably travelling towards the grave.

  William Wordsworth

  Accomplishment, Imperfection, Vain

  'The Prelude' (1850) bk. 1, l. 265

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• I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Teaching, School, Loss

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2750, Delphi Classics

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• I feel anxious for the fate of our monarchy, or democracy, or whatever is to take place. I soon get lost in a labyrinth of perplexities; but, whatever occurs, may justice and righteousness be the stability of our times, and order arise out of confusion. Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.

  Abigail Adams

  Perseverance, Fate, Order

  Abigail Adams, John Adams, L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Mary-Jo Kline (1975). “The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784”, p.113, UPNE

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• All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

  John Adams

  Nature, Money, Ignorance

  John Adams' Letter to Thomas Jefferson, founders.archives.gov. August 23, 1787.

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• I am not here to merely argue about the perplexities regarding theism or philosophy, but to be a light to the world and to reach out to those who long to be a part of that light.

  Criss Jami

  Philosophy, Light, Long

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.71, Criss Jami

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• Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. Theyve been a laboratory for everybody.

  Donald Barthelme

  War, World, Formal

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• As an anti-hunger advocate, I found the perplexity of the obesity problem and the hunger problem existing side-by-side in our increasingly global food system begged further investigation.

  Ellen Gustafson

  Sides, Problem, Obesity

  "Solving the world's hunger and obesity crises together" by Ellen Gustafson, www.cnn.com. August 10, 2010.

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• It is a common error, and the greater and more mischievous for being so common, to believe that repentance best becomes and most concerns dying men. Indeed, what is necessary every hour of our life is necessary in the hour of death too, and as long as one lives he will have need of repentance, and therefore it is necessary in the hour of death too; but he who hath constantly exercised himself in it in his health and vigor, will do it with less pain in his sickness and weakness; and he who hath practiced it all his life, will do it with more ease and less perplexity in the hour of his death.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Believe, Men

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• If I can procure three hundred good substantial names of persons, or bodies, or institutions, I cannot fail to do well for my family, although I must abandon my life to its success, and undergo many sad perplexities and perhaps never see again my own beloved America.

  John James Audubon

  Names, America, Three

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• Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

  Khalil Gibran

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Knowledge

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• The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt.

  John Dewey

  Education, Teacher, Thinking

  John Dewey (2015). “How We Think: Top American Authors”, p.11, 谷月社

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• Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Music, Character, Joy

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• As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.

  John Steinbeck

  Loneliness, People, Paper

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.34, Penguin

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• Writing is a strong easement for perplexity. My life is a map, spread out with all the rivers and hills showing.

  Emily Carr

  Strong, Writing, Rivers

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• Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born -a hundred million years -and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.

  Mark Twain

  Death, Grateful, Grief

  Autobiography ch. 49 (1959)

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