Quintessence Quotes - Page 2

• The Universe story is the quintessence of reality. We perceive the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs, and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the Universe in the trees. Everything tells the story of the Universe. The winds tell the story, literally, not just imaginatively. The story has its imprint everywhere, and that is why it is so important to know the story. If you do not know the story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything.

  Thomas Berry

  Reality, Wind, Bird

  Thomas Berry, Thomas Mary Berry, Thomas E. Clarke, Anne Lonergan (1991). “Befriending the Earth: A Theology of Reconciliation Between Humans and the Earth”, Mystic, Conn. : Twenty-Third Publications

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• When I was young, I thought confidence could be earned with perfection. Now I know that you don't earn it; you claim it. And you do that by loving the wacky, endlessly optimistic, enthusiasticall y uninhibited free spirit that is the essence of style, the quintessence of heart, and uniquely you.

  Cecelie Berry

  Heart, Optimistic, Essence

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• Hindu Dharma is the quintessence of our national life, hold fast to it if you want your country to survive, or else you would be wiped out in three generations.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Country, Three, Generations

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• The Holy Eucharist is the perfect expression of the love of Jesus Christ for man since It is the quintessence of all the mysteries of His Life.

  Peter Julian Eymard

  Jesus, Men, Expression

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• The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.

  Edward Weston

  Photography, Steel, Substance

  Sarah M. Lowe, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Barbican Art Gallery (2004). “Tina Modotti & Edward Weston: the Mexico years”, Merrell Publishers

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• Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.

  Agnes Repplier

  Writing, Men, Generosity

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• The Most Secret Quintessence of Life is an original work filled with rich, new research, relying on important primary literature which has not, until now, been plumbed and digested. In this book, Chandak Sengoopta offers both a history of hormone discovery and a chronicle of how this discovery transformed our concepts of the body and how our existing concepts of sex and sexuality, in turn, informed our concepts for understanding hormones.

  Anne Fausto-Sterling

  Sex, Book, Discovery

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• The sum and substance of my teaching is this: Don't be dishonest to your vital breath; worship that only, abide in that only, accept it as yourself. And when you worship in this manner, it can lead you anywhere, to any heights- this is the quintessence of my talks.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Teaching

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (2011). “The Ultimate Medicine: Dialogues with a Realized Master”, p.199, North Atlantic Books

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• I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz . that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Should Have, Imagination, Paradise

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2015). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria”, p.4115, e-artnow

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• Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming chambers like beehives.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Skulls, Space

  "Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies". Book by Hilary Mantel, 2015.

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• The solutions put forth by imperialism are the quintessence of simplicity...When they speak of the problems of population and birth, they are in no way moved by concepts related to the interests of the family or of society...Just when science and technology are making incredible advances in all fields, they resort to technology to suppress revolutions and ask the help of science to prevent population growth. In short, the peoples are not to make revolutions, and women are not to give birth. This sums up the philosophy of imperialism.

  Fidel Castro

  Philosophy, Science, Technology

  "Fidel Castro". Book by Enrique Meneses, 1968.

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• Appalachia is still, for American musicians, a kind of fountain of youth we always go back to, the old home place to a group of artists who represent the quintessence of American independence, fortitude, genius, and madness.

  Paul Burch

  Music, Home, Artist

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• The poet makes himself a voyant through a long, immense reasoned deranging of all his senses. All the forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he tries to find himself, he exhausts in himself all the poisons, to keep only their quintessences.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Long, Suffering, Trying

  Arthur Rimbaud (1974). “A Season in Hell: The Illuminations”, p.7, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• You may train for a long time, but if you merely move your hands and feet and jump up and down like a puppet, learning karate is not very different from learning a dance. You will never have reached the heart of the matter; you will have failed to grasp the quintessence of karate-do.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Moving, Heart, Hands

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• The noblest relationship is marriage, that is, love. Its nobility resides in its altruism, the desire to serve another beyond all the pleasures of the relationship; and in its refusal ever to regard the other as a thing, an object, a utilizability. Sex is an exchange of pleasures, of needs; love is a giving without return. It is this giving without return, this helping without reward, this surplus of pure good, that identifies the uniqueness of man as well as the true nature of the true marriage. This is the quintessence the great alchemy of sex is for.

  John Fowles

  Love, Sex, Men

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• To see the Thing itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism... This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock. Significant presentation - not interpretation.

  Edward Weston

  Rocks, Fog, Essentials

  Edward Weston, Nancy Newhall (1990). “The daybooks of Edward Weston”

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• That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: "Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.

  Horace Walpole

  Religion, Genius, Lines

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• One may guess the why and wherefore of a tear and yet find it too subtle to give any account of. A tear may be the poetical resume of so many simultaneous impressions, the quintessence of so many opposing thoughts! It is like a drop of one of those precious elixirs of the East which contain the life of twenty plants fused into a single aroma.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Giving, Tears, May

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• Poetry is the honey of all flowers, the quintessence of all sciences, the marrow of wit, and the very phrase of angels.

  Thomas Nashe

  Flower, Angel, Phrases

  1592 Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil, 'An Invective Against Enemies of Poetr y'.

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• They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression-- yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarecly tolerated guest at a party she was giving.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Stars, Party, Passion

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.636, e-artnow

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• Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Hate, Mean

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.152, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The creative force in man recognizes and records these rhythms with the medium most suitable to him, the object, or the moment, feeling the cause, the life within the outer form. Recording unfelt facts, acquired by rule, results in sterile inventory. To see the Thing Itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism - the casual noting of the superficial phase, a transitory mood.

  Edward Weston

  Creativity, Men, Fog

  Edward Weston, Nancy Newhall (1990). “The daybooks of Edward Weston”

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• If melodrama is the quintessence of drama, farce is the quintessence of theatre. Melodrama is written. A moving image of the worldis provided by a writer. Farce is acted. The writer's contribution seems not only absorbed but translated.... One cannot imagine melodrama being improvised. The improvised drama was pre-eminently farce.

  Eric Bentley

  Drama, Moving, Theatre

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• The snapshot has no pretense or ambition. Innocence is the quintessence of the snapshot. I wish to distinguish between innocence and ignorance. Innocence is one of the highest forms of being and ignorance is one of the lowest.

  Lisette Model

  Ambition, Ignorance, Wish

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• Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering - a hell of boredom.

  Victor Hugo

  Wisdom, Blessing, Boredom

  Victor Hugo, Charles Edwin Wilbour (1987). “Les misérables”, Dutton Adult

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