Uncanny Quotes - Page 2

• Beware of charisma . . . Representative Men; was Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1850 phrase for the great men in a democracy . . . Is there some common quality among these Representative Men who have been most successful as our leaders? I call it the need to be authentic-or, as our dictionaries tell us, conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance or belief. While the charismatic has an uncanny outside source of strength, the authentic is strong because he is what he seems to be.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Strong, Successful, Men

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• Are people who have been crazy held to unfair standards?Of course, but it's not in your best interest to complain. If you're paranoid and people are looking at you funny it's best to let it pass. Psychotic people have an uncanny knack for making their own worst dreams come true. Depressing things happen to depressed people way beyond what you would expect from random distribution.

  Mark Vonnegut

  Dream, Depressing, Crazy

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• Anxiety is not fear, being afraid of this or that definite object, but the uncanny feeling of being afraid of nothing at all. It is precisely Nothingness that makes itself present and felt as the object of our dread.

  William Barrett

  Anxiety, Feelings, Dread

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• Every snapshot collector has obsessions. Some only collect photos of cars. Others like World War II, or babies, or old-timey girls in old-timey swimsuits. I happen to collect the weird stuff: photos that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up a little. The uncanny.

  Ransom Riggs

  Girl, Baby, War

  "9 Creepy Photos That Appear In ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’" by Ransom Riggs, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 13, 2011.

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• At birth we begin to discover that shapes, sounds, lights, and textures have meaning. Long before we learn to talk, sounds and images form the world we live in. All our lives, that world is more immediate than words and difficult to articulate. Photography, reflecting those images with uncanny accuracy, evokes their associations and our instant conviction. The art of the photographer lies in using those connotations, as a poet uses the connotations of words and a musician the tonal connotations of sounds.

  Nancy Newhall

  Photography, Art, Lying

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• The two of you, there's something uncanny about the way you two are with each other. I mean everything--the way you look at each other, the way she relaxes when you put your hand on her back, the way you both seem to know what the other is always thinking, it's always struck me as extraordinary. That's another reason I keep putting marriage off. I know I want something like what you two share, and I'm not sure I've found it yet. I'm not sure I ever will. And with love like that, they say anything's possible, right?

  Nicholas Sparks

  Love, Mean, Thinking

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• All that you see was and is for your sake. The numerous books, uncanny markings, and beautiful thoughts are the ghosts of souls who preceded you.

  Khalil

  Beautiful, Book, Soul

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• The girl in the mirror caught my eye briefly...It is an uncanny feeling, that rare occasion when one catches a glimpse of oneself in repose. An unguarded moment, stripped of artifice, when one forgets to fool even oneself.

  Kate Morton

  Girl, Eye, Mirrors

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• Reading the Bible can be like meeting someone you don't know who, oddly, somehow seems to know you deeply. It's uncanny.

  Max Lucado

  Reading, Meeting Someone, Meetings

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• I have a passion for big cats, I like big snakes. There is something about snakes that is so wise, they have this uncanny perfection. I'd like to get inside their reptilian heads.

  Anton Szandor LaVey

  Wise, Passion, Cat

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• When I first encountered the poems of Jon Woodward, I was stunned into the state that is my life's joy-I was in the presence of the inimitable. Uncanny Valley extends that experience-almost into another dimension. These apocalyptic, pixilated poems forge a mythology of our ravaged culture, one that might have been written in the future. If you want poetry to give you a persimmon on a plate, look elsewhere; if you want to know what happens when seven trees fall on the highway and the story is told by a stutterer, this is the book, and it could only have been written by Woodward.

  Mary Ruefle

  Book, Fall, Giving

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• As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Spiritual, Atheist, Evil

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo”, p.33, Vintage

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• I'd never taken to four foot creatures who had the uncanny ability to point out all my flaws in thirty second flat. And just for the record, I can too read without moving my lips.

  Darynda Jones

  Moving, Taken, Feet

  Darynda Jones (2011). “First Grave on the Right”, p.39, Macmillan

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• Obama might do well to remember that his fast rise from the Illinois state Senate was due in large part to an uncanny ability to make friends and find mentors.

  Ron Fournier

  Illinois, Mentor, Might

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• My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance--this is why people tell me secrets--my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is ever lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound.

  Dave Eggers

  Pain, Color, Wings

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• I saw what I had been fighting for: It was for me, a scared child, who had run away a long time ago to what I had imagined was a safer place. And hiding in this place, behind my invisible barriers, I knew what lay on the other side: Her side attacks. Her secret weapons. Her uncanny ability to find my weakest spots. But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was finally there: an old woman, a wok for her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in.

  Amy Tan

  Running, Daughter, Children

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.183, Penguin

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• Nefret had always had an uncanny ability to read his thoughts. 'Did she cry?' she asked sweetly. 'And then you kissed her? You shouldn't have done that. I'm sure you meant well, but kissing someone out of pity is always a mistake.

  Barbara Mertz

  Mistake, Kissing, Done

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• People only worry about the uncanny for about a week; that's the end of their attention span. After that, suspicions turn into shtick.

  Scott Westerfeld

  People, Worry, Attention

  Scott Westerfeld (2006). “Peeps”, p.47, Penguin

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• There are friends with whom we share neither interests nor any particular experiences, friends with whom we never correspond, whom we seldom meet and then only by chance, but whose existence nonetheless has for us a special if uncanny meaning. For me the Eiffel Tower is just such a friend, and not merely because it happens to be the symbol of a city, for Paris leaves me neither hot nor cold. I first became aware of this attachment of mine when reading in the paper about plans for its demolition, the mere thought of which filled me with alarm.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Reading, Attachment, Cities

  Stanislaw Lem (1984). “The Chain of Chance”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Vanity is a factor, but it is more a question of control. It is easier to trick others into perceiving you as beautiful if you can convince yourself you are beautiful. But mirrors have an uncanny way of telling the truth.

  Marissa Meyer

  Beautiful, Vanity, Mirrors

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• In pregnancy, there are two bodies, one inside the other. Two people live under one skin. When so much of life is dedicated to maintaining our integrity as distinct beings, this bodily tandem is an uncanny fact.

  Joan Raphael-Leff

  Integrity, Pregnancy, Two

  Joan Raphael-Leff (2001). “Pregnancy: The Inside Story”, p.8, Karnac Books

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• I am ever more intrigued by the correspondence between mathematics and physical facts. The adaptability of mathematics to the description of physical phenomena is uncanny.

  Nicolaas Bloembergen

  Science, Facts, Mathematics

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• Cinder twisted up her lips. "Do you think it could have a virus?" "Maybe her programming was overwhelmed by Prince Kai's uncanny hotness.

  Marissa Meyer

  Thinking, Viruses, Lips

  Marissa Meyer (2012). “Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles Book 1)”, p.150, Penguin UK

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• By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display - the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time.
  Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth.

  Helene Cixous

  Spring, Writing, Self

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