Spun Quotes - Page 5

• There had been a frozen mist here, and the trees were spun into feathers. Their fragile brilliance made me wonder why, into the spotlessness of Creation, God had seen fit to introduce soiling, twisting, rampaging, Man.

  Maria McCann

  Men, Tree, Frozen

  Maria McCann (2010). “The Wilding”, p.263, Faber & Faber

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• (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life.

  John Milton

  Life, Thinking, Mind

  'Lycidas' (1638) l. 64

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• This can never become popular, and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for fine-spun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths. On the other hand, since both inevitably force themselves on every man who rises to the height of speculation, it becomes the manifest duty of the schools to enter upon a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, and thus to prevent the scandal which metaphysical controversies are sure, sooner or later, to cause even to the masses.

  Immanuel Kant

  School, Men, Hands

  Immanuel Kant (1855). “Critique of pure reason, tr. by J.M.D. Meiklejohn”, p.37

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• Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world.

  Ron Suskind

  Summer, Self, Events

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• Why? You want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Glasses, Two, Clothes

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2009). “Wintergirls”, p.124, Penguin

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• It is no coincidence that a rebirth of psychedelic use is occuring as we acquire the technological capability to leave the planet. The mushroom visions and the transformation of the human image precipitated by space exploration are spun together. Nothing less is happening than the emergence of a new human order. A telepathic, humane, universalist kind of human culture is emerging that will make everything that preceded it appear like the stone age.

  Terence McKenna

  Order, Mushrooms, Space

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• A fine shiver coursed over my skin. "Seth?" "Yeah?" "You were in my dream." One amber-colored eye opened. "Please tell me we were naked." I rolled my eyes. "You're such a perv." He sighed mournfully as he wiggled closer. "I'll take that as a no." "You'd be correct." Unable to fall back to sleep, I started chewing on my lip. So many worries surfaced at once that my brain spun.

  J. Lynn

  Dream, Fall, Sleep

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• American liberty is being destroyed by Marxist doctrines that explain society in terms of hegemonic and oppressed groups - whether classes, races or genders - fighting for suzerainty. In these societies spun out of Marxist theorizing, good will does not exist, only the material interests of warring groups. Morality resides in the oppressed, but if the oppressed succeed in becoming hegemonic, their claim to moral supremacy evaporates.

  Paul Craig Roberts

  Fighting, Class, Race

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• Science was tearing through the 'fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs' to behold a new cosmos, in which our Earth is merely an 'eccentric speck' - a world of evolution 'and unchanging causation'. It invited new ways of thinking. It demanded a new rationale for belief. With science's truths the only accessible ones, 'blind faith' was no longer admirable but 'the one unpardonable sin'.

  Adrian Desmond

  Thinking, Cosmos, World

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• No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.

  William Butler Yeats

  Writing, Men, Land

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.82, Simon and Schuster

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• For this our task hath Fate spun without fail to last for ever sure, that we on man weighed down with deeds of hate should follow till the earth his life immure. Nor when he dies can he boast of being truly free.

  Aeschylus

  Hate, Fate, Men

  Aeschylus (1873). “The Tragedies of Æschylos: A New Translation, with a Biographical Essay, and an Appendix of Rhymed Choral Odes”, p.374

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• Only the Earth can become the central axis around which world peace can be spun, for no religion is more compelling, no single nation larger, and no peoples older than the Earth itself. For that to happen, the collective human consciousness must expand enough so that our highest identification is as Earth-Humans.

  Ilchi Lee

  Axes, World, Earth

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• Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Attachment, Play

  "A Room of One's Own". Essay by Virginia Woolf (Chapter 3, pp. 43-44), October 24, 1929.

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• But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Two, Dwelling

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.304, CUP Archive

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• Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse; Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.

  John Milton

  Sports, Thinking, Hair

  'Lycidas' (1638) l. 64

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• A man must be able to affirm, I know for certain, that what I teach is the only Word of the high Majesty of God in heaven, his final conclusion and everlasting, unchangeable truth, and whatsoever concurs and agrees not with this doctrine, is altogether false, and spun by the devil.

  Martin Luther

  Men, Heaven, Devil

  Martin Luther (1848). “The table talk or familiar discourse of Martin Luther, tr. by W. Hazlitt”, p.18

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• Capitalism is the sorcerer's apprentice: it has summoned up powers which have spun wildly out of control and now threaten to destroy us.The task of socialism is not to spur on those powers but to bring them under rational human control.

  Terry Eagleton

  Spurs, Tasks, Socialism

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

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• The US have dealt with Iran. I'm not saying attack it; I'm saying we should have taken it seriously. The Iranian connection to 9/11 is much stronger than the Iraqi one ever was. That was the big lie: That Saddam had something to do with 9/11 - not the WMD - the connection between Saddam and bin Laden. We were spun on that and we were spun on the famous Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence, which was a complete lie. Both the CIA and the FBI came out and said that never happened.

  Robert Baer

  Lying, Taken, Stronger

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• The heart is like an instrument whose strings Steal nobler music from Life's many frets: The golden threads are spun thro' Suffering's fire, Wherewith the marriage-robes for heaven are woven: And all the rarest hues of human life Take radiance, and are rainbow'd out in tears.

  Gerald Massey

  Heart, Fire, Rainbow

  Gerald Massey (1864). “Poems”, p.204

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• I think the greatest gift we can give our children is the experience of deep quiet. If we don’t help our children cultivate contemplation, reflection, prayer, meditation, or whatever other practice of mindfulness, then they’re likely to be completely spun out of their center by the time they’re in grade school.

  Marianne Williamson

  Prayer, Children, School

  "Marianne Williamson on Consciousness, Women and Politics". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 9, 2012.

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• Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.

  Robert E. Howard

  Life, Dream, Ghost

  Robert E. Howard (2007). “The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 1: Volume 1: The Shadow Kingdom”, p.117, Del Rey

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• My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette after many days without one there is none of them can compare with sleep. Sleep is best.

  Roger Zelazny

  Sex, Sleep, Water

  Roger Zelazny (2016). “This Immortal”, p.218, ibooks

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• Out of the night you burn, Manhattan, In a vesture of gold-- Spun of innumerable arcs, Flaring and multiplying-- Gold at the uttermost circles fading Into the tenderest hint of jade, Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues, Robing the far-flung offices, Scintillant-storied, forking flame, Or soaring to luminous amethyst Over the steeples aureoled.

  Lola Ridge

  New York, Twilight, Night

  Lola Ridge (1918). “The Ghetto, and Other Poems”

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• Perhaps the author cited is one of those, who, shunning the practice of the world, have taught the world to shun return! whose poetry is too finely spun, whose philosophy is too and mystified for popular demand: perhaps we have experienced feeling which Mr. Wordsworth alludes to, in a poem worthy of simplicity and loneliness of the sentiment "Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure; Sighed to think I read a book Only read perhaps by me!

  Samuel Laman Blanchard

  Lonely, Philosophy, Loneliness

  "Sketches from Life" by Laman Blanchard. "Quotations", 1846.

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• Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.

  Jonathan Swift

  Plato, Pride, Might

  Jonathan Swift (1861). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Cop'ous Notes and Additions”, p.554

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