Substance Quotes - Page 5

• Think of the universal substance, of which thou has a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art

  Marcus Aurelius

  Art, Destiny, Thinking

  Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2015). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius The Golden Sayings Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.27, Lulu.com

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• I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Instant, Loses

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2015). “Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography”, p.375, e-artnow

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• let me tell you what happens when you cook down the syrup of loss over the open fire of sorrow: it solidfies into something wlaw. not grief, like you'd expect, or even regret. no, it gets thick as paste, black as ash; yet it isn't until you dip a finger in and feel that sharp taste dissolving on your tounge that you realize this is angel in its purest form, unrefined; a substance to be weighed and measyred and spread.

  Jodi Picoult

  Regret, Grief, Angel

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• The one and only time an archangel can Make another angel is when our bodies produce a substance known as ambrosia. Ambrosia,is produced instinctively at a single point in an archangel’s life. It is legend that ambrosia only rises when an archangel loves true.

  Nalini Singh

  Angel, Body, Legends

  Nalini Singh (2009). “Angels' Blood”, p.252, Penguin

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• Does there exist an Infinity outside ourselves? Is that infinity One, immanent and permanent, necessarily having substance, since He is infinite and if He lacked matter He would be limited, necessarily possessing intelligence since He is infinite and, lacking intelligence, He would be in that sense finite. Does this Infinity inspire in us the idea of essense, while to ourselves we can only attribute the idea of existence? In order words, is He not the whole of which we are but the part?

  Victor Hugo

  Order, Ideas, Inspire

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• Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Essentials, Behavior, Mood

  FaceBook post by Kay Redfield Jamison from Jul 26, 2012

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• Then there are the addicts, the hunger addicts, the rage addicts, the poverty addicts, and power addicts, and the pure addicts who are addicted not to substances but to the oblivion and the tenderness the substances engender. An addict, if you don't mind me saying so, is like a saint. What is a saint but someone who has cut himself off, voluntarily, from the world's traffic and currency?

  Jeet Thayil

  Cutting, Mind, Saint

  "Narcopolis". Book by Jeet Thayil, 2012.

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• You said to me once that you weren’t what I dreamed of. You were right. You surpass everything I dreamed of. Even the rot in you that’s caused you to do shameful things. Some men let the rot and guilt fester into something ugly beyond words. Few men can turn it into worth and substance. If you’re gods’ blessed for no other reason, it’s for that.

  Melina Marchetta

  Blessed, Men, Guilt

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• One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.

  Jean Rhys

  Shadow, Important, Illusion

  Jean Rhys (1981). “Quartet”

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• The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Garden, Self

  "On Writing". Book by Stephen King, 1999.

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• Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Creating, Soul, Together

  Marcus Aurelius, C. Scot Hicks, David Hicks (2002). “The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

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• A person's looking for a simple truth to live by, there it is. CHOICE. To refuse to passively accept what we've been handed by nature or society, but to choose for ourselves. CHOICE. That's the difference between emptiness and substance, between a life actually lived and a wimpy shadow cast on an office wall.

  Tom Robbins

  Wall, Simple, Differences

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.241, Bantam

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• Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.

  Anna Quindlen

  Dream, Home, Doors

  Anna Quindlen (2006). “Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City”, p.160, National Geographic Books

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• Each substance of a grief has twenty shadows.

  William Shakespeare

  Grief, Shadow, Twenties

  William Shakespeare (1813). “The Plays of William Shakespeare: In Twenty-one Volumes, with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators, to which are Added Notes”, p.68

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• ...most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.

  David Foster Wallace

  Thinking, People, Infinite Jest

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.146, Hachette UK

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• I love you," he writes again and again. "I can't bear to live without you. I'm counting the minutes until I see you." The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.

  Christina Baker Kline

  Song, Love You, Writing

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• Its a fact of being in love that we often pay no attention whatsoever to the substance of what a lover says, while being intoxicated to ecstasy by the way it's said. I was in love with her eyes, but I didn't read them. I loved her voice, but I didn't really hear the fear & the anguish in it.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Eye, Being In Love, Voice

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.452, St. Martin's Press

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• Time ripens the substance of a life as the seasons mellow and perfect its fruits. The best apples fall latest and keep longest.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Time, Fall, Apples

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”

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• All substances the cunning chemist Time
  Melts down into that liquor of my life.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Liquor, Cunning

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.160, The Floating Press

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• In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Dream, Time, Lying

  'On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic' (1841) 'The Hero as Man of Letters'

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• Presently he rose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves were crowded with small broken objects —hardly recognisable domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles — made of glass, of clay, of discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.
  'It seems cruel,' she said, 'that after a while nothing matters... any more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labeled: "Use unknown".'

  Edith Wharton

  Time, Glasses, People

  "The Age of Innocence".

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• Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Food, Cooking, Hens

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.47, University of Georgia Press

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• Some new machinery with adequate powers must be created now if our fine phrases and noble sentiments are to have substance and meaning for our children.

  J. William Fulbright

  Children, Future, Noble

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• When we build ... let it not be for present delights nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think ... that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor, and the wrought substance of them, See! This our fathers did for us!

  John Ruskin

  Father, Future, Men

  John Ruskin (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.188, Courier Corporation

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• The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice -- and always has been.

  Mark Twain

  Soul, Patriotism, Moral

  Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.350, Courier Corporation

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