Perplexity Quotes - Page 3

• As soon as we try to write the simplest sentence about God, we find ourselves in anxious perplexities, but when we stop trying to write about God and talk with God, God is there and we can talk with God.

  Kevin Hart

  Writing, Trying, Anxious

  "The Poetry and Prayers of Kevin Hart". "Encounter" with Carmel Howard, www.abc.net.au. June 5, 2011.

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• In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
  That old perplexity an empty purse,
  Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

  William Butler Yeats

  Work, Frustration, Night

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

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• The best antidote against evils of all kinds, against the evil thoughts that haunt the soul, against the needless perplexities which distract the conscience, is to keep hold of the good we have. Impure thoughts will not stand against pure words and prayers and deeds. Little doubts will not avail against great certainties. Fix your affections on things above, and then you will less and less be troubled by the cares, the temptations, the troubles of things on earth.

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  Prayer, Evil, Temptation

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 214), 1895.

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• At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Life, Fate, Should Have

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1969). “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910”, p.149, W. W. Norton & Company

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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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• When I had satisfied myself that no star of that kind had ever shone before, I was led into such perplexity by the unbelievability of the thing that I began to doubt the faith of my own eyes.

  Tycho Brahe

  Stars, Eye, Science

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• There are three marks of a superior man: being virtuous, he is free from anxiety; being wise, he is free from perplexity; being brave, he is free from fear.

  Confucius

  Wise, Men, Bravery

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• Scruples, temptations, and fears, and cutting perplexities of the heart, are often the lot of the most excellent persons.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Fear, Heart, Cutting

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• Life, with all it's sorrows, cares, perplexities and heart-breaks, is more interesting than bovine placidity, hence more desirable. The more interesting it is, the happier it is.

  William Lyon Phelps

  Heart, Happy Life, Interesting

  William Lyon Phelps (2016). “Happiness”, p.16, Read Books Ltd

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• As witnesses not of our intentions but of our conduct, we can be true or false, and the hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. 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

  Integrity, Hypocrite, Evil

  'On Revolution' (1963) ch. 2

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• If Christians will obey the instructions given to them by Christ and his inspired apostles, they will adorn the religion of the Bible, and save themselves much perplexity and severe trials, which they attribute to their afflictions in consequence of believing unpopular truth.

  Ellen G. White

  Christian, Believe, Trials

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• Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

  Mark Twain

  Answers

  Mark Twain (2006). “The Signet Classic Book of Mark Twain's Short Stories”, p.291, Penguin

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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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• 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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• I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.

  Jose Saramago

  Positive, Hero, Writing

  "Interview with Jose Saramago, Author of Blindness". Political Affairs Magazine Interview, www.politicalaffairs.net. March 2006.

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• Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Sadness, Joy, Feelings

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• What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question - How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulcher, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt, notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered with undiminished perplexity.

  George MacDonald

  Beautiful, Faces, Belief

  George MacDonald (2015). “The Complete Works of George MacDonald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Theological Writings & Essays (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, England’s Antiphon, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, The Light Princess, The Golden Key and many more”, p.353, e-artnow

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• Get the most out of everything in your life; the happiness and the sadness, the success and the failure...get a good perspective of what life is all about. Let the orchestra of your life play all the notes, the high notes, the low rumblings of the difficulties and perplexities that all we all face.

  Jim Rohn

  Happiness, Sadness, Play

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• The success of this Government, and thus the success of our Nation, depends in the last analysis upon the quality.of our career services. The legislation enacted by the Congress, as well as the decisions made by me and by the department and agency heads, must all be implemented by the career men and women in the Federal service. In foreign affairs, national defense, science and technology, and a host of other fields, they face problems of unprecedented importance and perplexity. We are all dependent on their sense of loyalty and responsibility as well as their competence and energy.

  John F. Kennedy

  Loyalty, Responsibility, Technology

  "Special Message to the Congress on Federal Pay Reform". February 20, 1962.

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• All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman.

  Washington Irving

  Lonely, Night, Men

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• If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be, as Poor Richard says, “the greatest prodigality'; since, as he elsewhere tells us, 'Lost time is never found again'; and 'What we call time enough always proves little enough'. Let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Time, Purpose, Littles

  "The Autobiography and Other Writings".

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• The answers to the world's perplexities are, in fact, found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ . . . The more we can bring others to see the gospel in action, the more they will be willing to at least tolerate us, then to encourage us, and eventually to cooperate with us.

  Truman G. Madsen

  Jesus, Answers, World

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• Read the Bible, read the Bible! Let no religious book take its place. Through all my perplexities and distresses, I seldom read any other book, and I as rarely felt the want of any other.

  William Wilberforce

  Religious, Book, Want

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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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• Those who obtain riches by labor, care, and watching, know their value. Those who impart them to sustain and extend knowledge, virtue, and religion, know their use. Those who lose them by accident or fraud know their vanity. And those who experience the difficulties and dangers of preserving them know their perplexities.

  Charles Simmons

  Vanity, Use, Care

  Charles Simmons (1852). “Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker”, p.541

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