Uneasy Quotes - Page 5

• It is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one half of mankind brave and one cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting; but being all cowards, we go on very well.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fighting, Brave, Coward

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 3, p. 326 (28 April 1778)

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• We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, Looks, Use

  Northrop Frye (1964). “The Educated Imagination”, p.56, Indiana University Press

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• The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

  Alexander Pope

  Home, Soul, Veronica Mars

  Alexander Pope (1847). “The works of Alexander Pope, with notes and illustrations, by himself and others. To which are added, a new life of the author [&c.] by W. Roscoe”, p.32

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• In my career, there have been roles I haven't taken because someone involved with the project gave me a bad vibe. I don't care how much money is on the table: No job is worth feeling uneasy every day.

  Gabrielle Union

  Jobs, Taken, Careers

  "Gabrielle Union Revisits Rape, Reveals Her ‘Aha! Moment’ To O, The Oprah Magazine". O, The Oprah Magazine Interview, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 2012.

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• The sum of all that makes a just man happy
  Consists in the well choosing of his wife:
  And there, well to discharge it, does require
  Equality of years, of birth, of fortune;
  For beauty being poor, and not cried up
  By birth or wealth, can truly mix with neither.
  And wealth, when there's such difference in years,
  And fair descent, must make the yoke uneasy.

  Philip Massinger

  Men, Years, Differences

  Thomas Dekker, Philip Massinger (2010). “Elizabethan Drama II”, p.875, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The dark, uneasy world of family life - where the greatest can fail and the humblest succeed.

  Randall Jarrell

  Dark, World, Succeed

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• He that taketh his own cares upon himself loads himself in vain with an uneasy burden. I will cast all my cares on God; He hath bidden me; they cannot burden Him.

  Joseph Hall

  Care, Burden, Vain

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• If we want energy security, then we have to reduce our appetite for fossil fuels. There's no other way. Other issues may crowd the headlines, but this is our fundamental challenge. Big challenges require bold action and leadership. To get the United States off fossil fuels in this uneasy national climate of terrorism and conflict in the Persian Gulf, we must treat the issue with the urgence and persistance it deserves. The measure of our success will be the condition on which we leave the world for the next generation.

  Robert Redford

  Issues, Challenges, Way

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• When the man who knows all about the fruit fly chromosomes finds himself sitting next to an authority on Beowulf, there may be an uneasy silence.

  Brand Blanshard

  Men, Fruit Flies, Silence

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• I have an abiding interest in how ordinary people produce knowledge, and what it means for individuals to know the world. I thought I'd be a theoretical physicist because I love physicists' views of the world - I find general relativity and quantum theory thrilling - but I have always felt uneasy with the idea of an Ultimate Truth. One of the functions of science is to help us instrumentally; it helps us to build things like microchips and GPS satellites. But another function of science in the modern world is to help us feel "at home in the universe".

  Margaret Wertheim

  Mean, Home, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The general remedy of those who are uneasy without knowing the cause is change of place.

  Samuel Johnson

  Change, Knowing, Causes

  Samuel Johnson (1793). “The Rambler”, p.12

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• Contempt of others is the truest symptom of a base and bad heart,--while it suggests itself to the mean and the vile, and tickles there little fancy on every occasion, it never enters the great and good mind but on the strongest motives; nor is it then a welcome guest,--affording only an uneasy sensation, and bringing always with it a mixture of concern and compassion.

  Henry Fielding

  Heart, Mean, Compassion

  Henry Fielding (1916). “The Works of Henry Fielding”, p.299, Library of Alexandria

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• Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Regret, Looks, Way

  Oliver Goldsmith, David Masson (1869). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith”, p.157

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• The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Attitude, Majority, Pay

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• Imperishable moments and immortal deeds, death itself and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. The energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed and the earth tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for the moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest.

  Arthur Balfour

  Men, Race, Space

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• Those forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights That flash on dank morasses, the quick wind That smites us by the roadside—are the Night's Innumerable children. Unconfined By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls, Uneasy spirits, steal into the air From festering graveyards when the curfew tolls At the day's death... And wheresoever murders have been done, In stately palaces or lonesome woods, Where'er a soul has sold itself and lost Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods Some sad, invisible, accurséd Ghost!

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Children, Night, Light

  Thomas Bailey ALDRICH (1859). “The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems”, p.113

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• I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision -- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Art, Powerful, Eye

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1869). “Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.11

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• When a man is just and firm in his purpose,
  The citizens burning to approve a wrong
  Or the frowning looks of a tyrant
  Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind.
  Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic,
  Nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove:
  Should the heavens crack and tumble down,
  As the ruins crushed him he would not fear.

  Horace

  Men, Hands, Tyrants

  Horace, Joseph P. Clancy (1960). “Odes and Epodes”, p.108, University of Chicago Press

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• Lovers are commonly industrious to make themselves uneasy.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Lovers, Industrious

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1771). “The History of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha”, p.251

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• To a great extent, suffering is a sort of need felt by the organism to make itself familiar with a new state, which makes it uneasy, to adapt its sensibility to that state.

  Marcel Proust

  Suffering, Needs, States

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.1127, Wordsworth Editions

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• Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better. I am convinced...that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it. Disharmony, to paraphrase Bergson's statement about disorder, is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed.

  John Cage

  Music, Strong, Ears

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• The menopause is probably the least glamorous topic imaginable; and this is interesting, because it is one of the very few topics to which cling some shreds and remnants of taboo. A serious mention of menopause is usually met with uneasy silence; a sneering reference to it is usually met with relieved sniggers. Both the silence and the sniggering are pretty sure indications of taboo.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Interesting, Silence, Topics

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.3, Grove Press

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• Be still, then, thou uneasy mortal; know that God is unerringly wise; and be assured that, amidst the greatest multiplicity of beings, He does not overlook thee.

  James Hervey

  Wise, Wisdom, Doe

  James Hervey (1856). “Meditations and contemplations: to which is prefixed the life of the author”, p.117

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• Some people wait constructively; they read or knit. I have watched some truly appalling pieces of needlework take form. Others - I am one of them - abandon all thought and purpose to an uneasy vegetative states.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  People, Waiting, Purpose

  Ada Louise Huxtable (1986). “ARCHITECTURE, ANYONE?”, Random House

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• Drawing is one of those things which sit on the uneasy bending line between instinct and instruction, where seeming perversity eventually trumps pleasure as the card players and the kibitzers interact and new thrills are sought.

  Adam Gopnik

  Player, Drawing, Risk

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