Secret Quotes - Page 29

• Since [man] is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing from which he was made, and the infinite in which he is swallowed up.

  Blaise Pascal

  Knowledge, Men, Infinity

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pascal's Pensees”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• The secret of my success is that no woman has ever been jealous of me.

  Elsa Maxwell

  Jealous, Jealous Of Me, Secret Of My Success

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• Every man has a secret ambition: To outsmart horses, fish and women.

  Mark Twain

  Horse, Women, Ambition

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• Because systems of mass communication can communicate only officially acceptable levels of reality, no one can know the extent of the secret unconscious life. No one in America can know what will happen. No one is in real control.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Life, Wisdom, Real

  Allen Ginsberg (2015). “The Essential Ginsberg”, p.178, Penguin UK

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• Secret fates
  Guide our states
  Both in mirth and mourning.

  Thomas Campion

  Fate, Mourning, Mirth

  Thomas Campion (1909). “Campion's Work”

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• It takes a very strong head to keep secrets for years and not go slightly mad. It isn't wise to be advised by anyone slightly mad.

  C.P. Snow

  Wise, Strong, Years

  C. P. Snow (2013). “Science and Government”, p.62, Harvard University Press

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• I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets . . .

  George Washington Carver

  Giving Up, Flower, Fidgeting

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• One sees that dead, vacant look steal over the rarest, finest of women's faces . . . in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces . . .

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  Summer, Lying, Solitude

  Rebecca Harding Davis (2006). “Life in the Iron-mills: Easyread Edition”, p.11, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• I will be steel!
  I will build a steel bridge over my need!
  I will build a bomb shelter over my heart!
  But my future is a secret.
  It is as shy as a mole.

  Anne Sexton

  Strength, Heart, Bridges

  Anne Sexton (1978). “Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.

  Rebecca West

  Causes, Ends, Mistrust

  The New Meaning of Treason (1966). West here was referring to the work of Communists seeking to undermine democracies.

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• That is supposed to be the rallying cry of women in the age of AIDS: no condom, no sex. But the dirty little secret is that the rallying cry is a whisper.... The great unspoken on the heterosexual AIDS front has been how behavior is still determined by the old psychosexual minuet of the sexes, the lack of responsibility in young men and of assertiveness in young women.

  Anna Quindlen

  Sex, Dirty, Responsibility

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• In the beginning was the secret brain.
  The brain was celled and soldered in the thought

  Dylan Thomas

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Brain

  Dylan Thomas (2010). “The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The Original Edition”, p.34, New Directions Publishing

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• I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret;
  The code of night tapped on my tongue;
  What had been one was many sounding minded.

  Dylan Thomas

  Learning, Knowledge, Night

  Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones (2003). “The Poems of Dylan Thomas”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

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• If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear. . .

  Robertson Davies

  Book, People, Stories

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• The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare [sic] … Wordsworth … Keats … Chateaubriand … Senancour.

  Matthew Arnold

  Animal, Men, Giving

  Matthew Arnold (1869). “Essays in Criticism”, p.76

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• The three most difficult things in life are: 1. To keep a secret. 2. To forget an injury. 3. To make good use of leisure.

  Bruce Lee

  Things In Life, Three, Use

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• The export of oil, the export of minerals, will for many decades continue to be a critical part for the growth of African economies. The emphasis is on diversification. We have for many years - not just in South Africa but in many parts of the continent - spoken about beneficiation. And I think part of the secret, in relation to beneficiation, is you have got to make it attractive, profitable for the private sector - and it will take off. You may have to look at mechanisms like tax concessions... You will not have to worry about beneficiation if it makes commercial sense.

  Patrice Motsepe

  Thinking, Years, Oil

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• The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.

  Joan Didion

  America, Mobility, Sake

  Joan Didion (2013). “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, p.57, Zola Books

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• Science, unguided by a higher abstract principle, freely hands over its secrets to a vastly developed and commercially inspired technology, and the latter, even less restrained by a supreme culture saving principle, with the means of science creates all the instruments of power demanded from it by the organization of Might.

  Johan Huizinga

  Mean, Science, Technology

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• It is a secret from nobody that the famous random event is most likely to arise from those parts of the world where the old adage"There is no alternative to victory" retains a high degree of plausibility.

  Hannah Arendt

  Victory, Events, Degrees

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “On violence”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Thank God I'm over the hill. The only heat I have left comes from hot flashes, my promiscuity is confined to the words "one size fits all," and I buy my white cotton unmentionables at Boadicea's Retreat, not Victoria's Secret. None of the things men do to women could possibly happen to me now unless the U.S. is invaded by one of those new Russian republics whose soldiers aren't fussy.

  Florence King

  Women, White, Hot Flashes

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• The great passion in a man's life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.

  Frank Pittman

  Children, Passion, Boys

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• Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.

  David Hume

  Spring, Intelligent, Mind

  David Hume (1788). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.374

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• If we confine ourselves to a general and distant reflection on the ills of human life, that can have no effect to prepare us for them. If by close and intense meditation we render them present and intimate to us, that is the true secret for poisoning all our pleasures, and rendering us perpetually miserable.

  David Hume

  Life, Death, Reflection

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.683, Delphi Classics

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• We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable.

  David Hume

  Experience, Together, Events

  David Hume (2016). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Revision of Great Book”, p.51, VM eBooks

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