Phenomenon Quotes - Page 4

• We say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.

  Jose Saramago

  Hands, Dying, May

  "Blindness". Book by Jose Saramago, October 1997.

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• I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind -- and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.

  William Faulkner

  Moving, Reality, Bereavement

  William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck (1971). “William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill [and] John Steinbeck”

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• The human phenomenon is but the sum Of densely coiled layers of illusion Each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity That there are persons of any kind When all there can be is mindless mirrors Laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream

  Thomas Ligotti

  Dream, Mirrors, Wind

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• The phenomenon of war is its hermaphroditism: the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body and the necessary opponent, enemy, is merely the bed they self-exhaust each other on.

  William Faulkner

  War, Self, Enemy

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• I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.

  Muriel Barbery

  Foundation, Belief, Ability

  "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". Book by Muriel Barbery, August, 2006.

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• In this sense love is of a different order to any other phenomenon, for it may be both an event and a sign of that invisible mechanism I spoke of before; perhaps the finest sign, the most certain. In it’s throes we need neither luck nor science. We are the wheel, and the man who profits by it. We are the star, and the darkness it pierces. We are the butterfly, brief and beautiful.

  Clive Barker

  Beautiful, Stars, Butterfly

  "Galilee". Book by Clive Barker, February 3, 1999.

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• Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another s soul.

  James Joyce

  Love, Life, Ocean

  James Joyce (1992). “Poems and Exiles”, ePenguin

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• His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Simple, New Experiences

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.51, GENERAL PRESS

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• Everything you have is to give. Thou art a phenomenon of philosophy and an unfortunate man.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Art, Philosophy, Men

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, p.401, Simon and Schuster

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• Repentance can become a very, very deep phenomenon in you if you understand the responsibility. Then even a small thing, if it becomes a repentance-- not just verbal, not just on the surface; if it goes deep to the roots, if you repent from the roots; if your whole being shakes and trembles and cries, and tears come out; not only out of your eyes but out of every cell of your body, then repentance can become a transfiguration.

  Rajneesh

  Spiritual, Eye, Responsibility

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• Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - conditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them.

  Paulo Freire

  Order, Shadow, Revolution

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.46, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Libertarian action must recognize this dependence as a weak point and must attempt through reflection and action to transform it into independence. However, not even the best-intentioned leadership can bestow independence as a gift. The liberation of the oppressed is a liberation of women and men, not things. Accordingly, while no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he liberated by others. Liberation, a human phenomenon, cannot be achieved by semihumans. Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them.

  Paulo Freire

  Men, Reflection, People

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.47, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

  Emma Goldman

  Religious, Men, Silence

  Emma Goldman (1983). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”, Schocken

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• No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person most of whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves.

  Marcel Proust

  Names, People, Doubt

  Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.808, Delphi Classics

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• The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosohpically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation.

  Edith Wharton

  Mirrors, August, Cities

  Edith Wharton (2014). “Edith Wharton The Dover Reader”, p.271, Courier Corporation

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• The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target--you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is the target--not a beautiful house, but a beautiful you; not much money, but a rich you; not many things, but an open being, available to millions of things.

  Rajneesh

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Spiritual

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• Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.

  Stephen Crane

  Finals, Individual

  Stephen Crane (2016). “The Open Boat and Other Stories”, p.27, Lulu.com

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• That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact. Why it did not upset I am unable to offer any reason. I have often thought about the matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural obstinacy of all things in this world. The boat may possibly have come to the conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that we had come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to disappoint us. That is the only suggestion I can offer.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Suicide, Morning, Views

  Jerome K. Jerome, Geoffrey Harvey (2008). “Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel”, p.135, Oxford University Press

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• ... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

  Alan Garner

  Block, Thinking, Waiting

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• You use the word "Infinity" very glibly.... Have you ever been there? Time and space are extensions of the mind, the will. Which means that infinity is a purely local phenomenon. You can turn over a stone and find it crawling there. Or you can make it yourself out of whatever materials are at hand.

  Mike Carey

  Mean, Hands, Space

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• Words are very powerful and can lead anyone reading them or hearing them, into contemplation and insight. How the mind follows suit is rarely palpable or expected. This impact is not a matter of metaphysical effects nor of an unexplainable phenomenon. It’s simply part of being human.

  David Mitchell

  Powerful, Reading, Impact

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• Exploding is a perfectly normal medical phenomenon.

  Graham Chapman

  Perfectly Normal, Medical, Exploding

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• Is this Prior?" "In the flesh." "Why's he bleeding?" "Because he's an idiot." Zeke offers me a black jacket with a factionless symbol stitched into the collar. "I didn't know that idiocy caused people to just start spontaneously bleeding from the nose." I wrap the jacket around Caleb's shoulders and fasten one of the buttons over his chest. He avoids my eyes. "I think it's a new phenomenon.", I say.

  Veronica Roth

  Eye, Thinking, People

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• His eyes are blue, and blue eyes up close are a celestial phenomenon: nebulae as seen through telescopes, the light of unnamed stars diffused through dusts and elements and endlessness. Layers of light. Blue eyes are starlight.

  Laini Taylor

  Stars, Eye, Light

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• Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to the situation that has value. All the meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you.

  Christopher McCandless

  Mean, Humor, Deep Thought

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