Semblance Quotes - Page 3

• One of the most marked characteristics of our day is a reckless neglect of principles, and a rigid adherence to their semblance.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Adherence, Principles, Reckless

  Marguerite Countess of Blessington, Marguerite GARDINER (Countess of Blessington.) (1839). “Desultory Thoughts and Reflections”, p.40

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• For those who have lived on the edge of poverty all their lives, the semblance of poverty affected by the affluent is both incomprehensible and insulting.

  Lillian B. Rubin

  Insulting, Poverty, Rich

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• The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Reality, Ideas, Savages

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.189, Penguin

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• Consciousness-raising is at the very least supposed to bring about an intimacy, but what it seems instead to bring about are the trappings of intimacy, the illusion of intimacy, a semblance of intimacy.

  Nora Ephron

  Feminism, Consciousness, Illusion

  Nora Ephron (2012). “Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble: Some Things About Women and Notes on Media”, p.97, Vintage

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• It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Ambition, Reality, Men

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)”, p.1640, Delphi Classics

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• By a kind of fashionable discipline, the eye is taught to brighten, the lip to smile, and the whole countenance to emanate with the semblance of friendly welcome, while the bosom is unwarmed by a single spark of genuine kindness and good-will.

  Washington Irving

  Kindness, Eye, Discipline

  Washington Irving (1897). “The Works of Washington Irving...: Illustrated”

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• All my life long I have been sensible of the injustice constantly done to women. Since I have had to fight the world single-handed, there has not been one day I have not smarted under the wrongs I have had to bear, because I was not only a woman, but a woman doing a man's work, without any man, husband, son, brother or friend, to stand at my side, and to see some semblance of justice done me. I cannot forget, for injustice is a sixth sense, and rouses all the others.

  Amelia Barr

  Brother, Husband, Fighting

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• While, politically, a mixed economy preserves the semblance of an organized society with a semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos of robber gangs looting-and draining-the productive elements of the country.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Order, Law

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.197, Penguin

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• If I could get any semblance of, not really anonymity, but control over my public image, that would be nice. But no, I think it's impossible [to maintain that], for one thing. I don't think anyone can do that, apart from Denzel Washington. It's a strange place that the film industry is at, where you can just play superhero after superhero.

  Robert Pattinson

  Nice, Thinking, Strange Places

  Source: collider.com

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• We may be unable to maintain even a semblance of order in our urban schools, which increasingly resemble happy hour in Beirut. But, hallelujah, we sure know how to protect kids from God.

  Don Feder

  Christian, Religious, School

  Don Feder (1993). “A Jewish conservative looks at pagan America”, Vital Issues Pr

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• A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

  Katherine Paterson

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes.

  Sol Stein

  Writing, Views, Speech

  Sol Stein (2014). “Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies”, p.110, St. Martin's Press

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• True happiness involves the pursuit of worth goals; without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved.

  Dan Buettner

  Being Happy, Dream, Goal

  Dan Buettner (2010). “Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way”, p.16, National Geographic Books

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• The painter sees the semblance of things and repeats it. That is, without fabricating the things himself, he fabricates their semblance; and, if that no longer recalls any object, this artificially produced semblance functions only because it is scrutinized for likeness to a familiar - that is, object-related - semblance.

  Gerhard Richter

  Painting, Function, Painter

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007”

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• But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story

  Glenn Danzig

  Song, Writing, Stories

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• It was like being in a car with the gas pedal slammed down to the floor and nothing to do but hold on and pretend to have some semblance of control. But control was something I'd lost a long time ago.

  Nic Sheff

  Long, Car, Lost

  Nic Sheff (2012). “Tweak: Growing up on Crystal Meth”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• If I could get any semblance of - it's not really anonymity, but a little bit more - control over my public image, I guess that would be nice.

  Robert Pattinson

  Nice, Littles, Would Be

  Source: www.moviesonline.ca

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• Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call upon us to advance. The rest that awaits us invites us forward. We do not pine for our rest before God wills it. We long for no inglorious rest. We are thankful rather for the invaluable training of difficulty, the loving discipline of danger and strife. Yet in the midst of it all the prospect of rest invites us heavenward. Through all, and above all, God cries, "Go forward!" "Come up higher!

  William James

  Reality, Voice, Discipline

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 564, 1895.

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• At the heart of all that civilization has meant and developed is 'community' - the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Brother, Responsibility, Heart

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Alex Ayres (1993). “The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr”, Plume

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• The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded. Therefore, anything that has the semblance of an external authority is rejected by Zen. Absolute faith is placed in a man's own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Men, Ideas, Way

  D.T. Suzuki (2007). “An Introduction to Zen Buddhism”, p.33, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn't expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was continuously in doubt? Since Belgorod, terror had overturned all my preconceptions, and the pace of life had been so intense one no longer knew what elements of ordinary life to abandon in order to maintain some semblance of balance. I was still unresigned to the idea of death, but I had already sworn to myself during moments of intense fear that I would exchange anything - fortune, love, even a limb - if I could simply survive.

  Guy Sajer

  Love, Disappointment, War

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• But nothing is better than a truth which appears not to have the semblance of truth. There is always something incomprehensible about the great heroic deeds performed by humanity because they rise so far beyond the mediocre measure of mere mortals; but it is always only because of the incredible feats that human beings have accomplished that humanity recovers its faith in itself.

  Stefan Zweig

  Truth, Heroic Deeds, Humanity

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• Civilisation is hooped together, brought
  Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
  By manifold illusion.

  William Butler Yeats

  Civilization, Together, Uprooting

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose”, p.215, Simon and Schuster

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• Superstition moulds nature into an arbitrary semblance of the supernatural, and then bows down to the work of its own hands.

  John Sterling

  Hands, Arbitrary, Superstitions

  John Sterling (1848). “Essays and Tales: Fragments from the travels of Theodore Elbert. Thoughts. Tales and apologues”, p.128

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• If thou art wise, incline to truth; for truth, not the semblance, remains in its place.

  Saadi

  Wise, Art, Truth

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