Surface Quotes - Page 26

One of the things that made me persist in the Antarctic in the face of sickening discouragements was my determination to name a portion of the earth's surface after my father.

Lincoln Ellsworth

Determination, Father, Names

Lincoln Ellsworth (1938). “Beyond Horizons”, New York, Book League of America

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With all due respect for the wondrous ways people have invented to amuse themselves and one another on paved surfaces, I find that this exodus from the land makes me unspeakably sad. I think of the children who will never know, intuitively, that a flower is a plant's way of making love, or what silence sounds like, or that trees breathe out what we breathe in.

Barbara Kingsolver

Nature, Children, Flower

Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.48, Faber & Faber

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As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

Maurice Maeterlinck

Dark, Thinking, Glasses

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Some men are one thing on the surface and another underneath. The true poet shows not just the exterior of his subject, but all the contradictions within, and lets the reader draw his own conclusions.

Steven Saylor

Men, Poet, Contradiction

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The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would only be an insect crawling among the ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.

Sri Aurobindo

Life, Real, Sacrifice

Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (Pondicherry, India), Aurobindo Ghose (1997). “Bulletin”

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Man is like the foam of the sea, that floats upon the surface of the water. When the wind blows, it vanishes, as if it had never been. Thus are our lives blown away by Death.

Khalil Gibran

Life, Blow, Men

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The large shiny black forehead of the first whale was no more than two yards from us when it sank beneath the surface of the water, then we saw the huge blue-black bulk glide quietly under the raft right beneath our feet. It lay there for some time, dark and motionless, and we held our breath as we looked down on the gigantic curved back of a mammal a good deal longer than the raft.

Virginia Woolf

Time, Dark, Blue

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In the first place a philosophical proposition must be general. It must not deal specially with things on the surface of the earth, or within the solar system, or with any other portion of space and time. . . . This brings us to a second characteristic of philosophical propositions, namely that they must be a priori. A philosophical proposition must be such as can neither be proved nor disproved by empirical evidence. . . . Philosophy, if what has been said is correct, becomes indistinguishable from logic as that word has now come to be used.

Bertrand Russell

Time, Philosophy, Philosophical

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One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges.

Judith Martin

Emotional, Ties, People

Judith Martin (1996). “Common courtesy: in which Miss Manners solves the problem that baffled Mr. Jefferson”

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I think this is the case in the great majority of authoritarian states: on the surface, because of repression, everything seems frozen, but when the sun comes out and the ice melts, you find that there was a lot of life underneath all along.

Aung San

Thinking, Ice, Majority

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In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Spiritual, Integrity, Evil

"The Gulag Archipelago". Book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, www.believermag.com. 1973.

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We see the water of a river flowing uninterruptedly and passing away, and all that floats on its surface, rubbish or beams of trees, all pass by. Christian! So does our life. . .I was an infant, and that time has gone. I was an adolescent, and that too has passed. I was a young man, and that too is far behind me. The strong and mature man that I was is no more. My hair turns white, I succumb to age, but that too passes; I approach the end and will go the way of all flesh. I was born in order to die. I die that I may live. Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom!

Tikhon of Zadonsk

Christian, Spiritual, Strong

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Those among us who have achieved the most have achieved only a fraction of what ALL of us are capable of. You haven't even begun to scratch the surface!

Marianne Williamson

Positive Thinking, Scratches, Fractions

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He goes along just as a water lily
Gentle on the surface of his thoughts his body floats
Unweighed down by passion or intensity
Yet unaware of the depth upon which he coasts
And he finds a home in me
For what misfortune sows, he knows my touch will reap

Fiona Apple

Song, Passion, Home

Song: Pale September, Album: Tidal, 1996

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The process of rating players can be compared to the measurement of the position of a cork bobbing up and down on the surface of agitated water with a yard stick tied to a rope and which is swaying in the wind.

Arpad Elo

Player, Wind, Water

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So it is with scripture. The word of God is there, able to transform your life. But you must probe for it. You have to penetrate the surface with more than just a cursory glance.

Howard G. Hendricks

Able, Scripture, Study

Howard G. Hendricks, William D. Hendricks (2007). “Living By the Book: The Art and Science of Reading the Bible”, p.54, Moody Publishers

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The rocks, to a great extent, look swept clean. It's a much cleaner surface than what we had a right to hope for.

Steve Squyres

Rocks, Looks, Cleaning

"NASA rover wakes up on Mars" By Richard Stenger, www.cnn.com. January 4, 2004.

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No one wishes for crisis, but when crises come, they can call forth our best impulses, those of compassion, courage, creativity, and community. And if there are crimes and evils hidden in the dark places of our society and the darker places of our consciousnesses, all the better they come to the surface to be seen, understood, confronted, and healed. If our generation is called to bear a burden of that healing, it is a powerful calling and honor and one within our capability.

David Spangler

Courage, Powerful, Healing

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Errors like straws upon the surface flow, Who would search for pearls to be grateful for often must dive below.

John Dryden

Gratitude, Grateful, Errors

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All art is at once surface and symbol.

Oscar Wilde

Art, Peril, Beneath The Surface

Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.6, First Avenue Editions

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Geneva has a long history of hosting international organizations, which is part of the reason why CERN is here. CERN has signed agreements with the ITU, WIPO and the WMO. At first sight, there may not seem to be much common ground between CERN and, say, the World Meteorological Organization, but scratch the surface, and you'll soon find a common thread. All of these organizations have a vocation to stimulate technological innovation, and together we're stronger.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer

Sight, Agreement, Common Threads

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Beyond the beauty, the sex, the titillation, the surface, there is a human being. And that has to emerge.

Jeanne Moreau

Sex, Humans, Human Beings

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The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.

Carl Sagan

Ocean, Sea, Water

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.26, Ballantine Books

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A writer will write with or without a movement; but at the same time, for Chicano, lesbian, gay and feminist writers-anybody writing against the grain of Anglo misogynist culture-political movements are what have allowed our writing to surface from the secret places in our notebooks into the public sphere.

Cherrie Moraga

Notebook, Writing, Gay

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A person does not...stand motionless and clear before our eyes with his merits, his defects, his plans, his intentions with regard to ourself exposed on his surface...but is a shadow which we can never succeed in penetrating...a shadow behind which we can alternately imagine, with equal justification, that there burns the flame of hatred and of love.

Marcel Proust

Eye, Flames, Hatred

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