Unseen Quotes - Page 5

• A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.

  Charles Baxter

  Writing, Details, Plot

  Charles Baxter (2007). “The art of subtext: beyond plot”, Graywolf Pr

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• Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!

  Eugene O'Neill

  Fall, Fog, Hands

  Eugene O'Neill, Harold Bloom (2009). “Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night”, p.79, Infobase Publishing

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• So I suppose I do not know how he really looked, and, in fact, I suppose I shall never know, now, for he was plainly an object created in the mode of fantasy. His image was already present somewhere in my head and I was seeking to discover it in actuality, looking at every face I met in case it was the right face - that is, the face which corresponded to my notion of the unseen face of the one I should love, a face created parthenogeneticallyby the rage to love which consumed me.

  Angela Carter

  Faces, Facts, Fantasy

  Angela Carter (1997). “Burning your boats: the collected short stories”, Penguin Group USA

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• Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish, every sweet word will fade, But do not be disheartened, The source they come from is eternal, growing, Branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you And this whole world is springing up from it.

  Rumi

  Inspirational, Sweet, Science

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• She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another form behind, more and more, until his looks, his character, his soul would have eroded away . . . I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into someone quite mundane, mortally wounded with tiresome habits and irritating imperfections.

  Amy Tan

  Character, Eye, Men

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• Sure! A relationship with the Almighty is not impossible. We must realize that one's approach to the Presence of Almighty Being, who is absolutely unseen, is possible by means of fortification of spiritual power via one's complete faith in His Self-reliant Being.

  Muhammad Atta-ullah Faizani

  Spiritual, Mean, Self

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• I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen. I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number. I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me. I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Air, Eagles, Numbers

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• Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as "big bursts" and "little bursts." Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Children, Coffee, Thinking

  Elizabeth Strout (2013). “Olive Kitteridge”, p.64, Simon and Schuster

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• I put my head out of my window and see how much the wind’s knife wants to slice it off. On this unseen guillotine, I’ve placed the eyeless head of all my desires.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Wind, Knives, Desire

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• I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even when I'm not thirsty. If the store is crowded I'll even go so far as dropping change all over the floor, nickels and dimes skidding in every direction. All I want is not to die on a day I went unseen.

  Nicole Krauss

  Trying, Dimes, Juice

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• The warm dampness of her breath made me shiver at the mix of the familiar and the unknown, with a soft exhalation she shifted her head and her lips found my collarbone, teasingly shy of my old scar. Tendrils pulsed in time with my heart, building on the ones before to an unseen height.

  Kim Harrison

  Heart, Shy, Height

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• Let the unseen days be. Today is more than enough.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Today, Enough

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Children of Húrin”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The end he had been born to serve yet did not see had led him to escape by an unseen path and now it beckoned to him once more and a new adventure was about to be opened to him.

  James Joyce

  Adventure, Path, Ends

  James Joyce (2011). “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Thrift Study Edition”, p.118, Courier Corporation

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• We do not need more material development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen. It is on that side of life that it is desirable to put the emphasis at the present time. If that side be strengthened, the other side will take care of itself.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Spiritual, Character, Government

  Calvin Coolidge (1925). “America's Need for Education: And Other Educational Addresses”

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• I say, choose faith. Choose faith over doubt, choose faith over fear, choose faith over the unknown and the unseen, and choose faith over pessimism.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Doubt, Pessimism

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• Learning to see the structures within which we operate begins a process of freeing ourselves from previously unseen forces and ultimately mastering the ability to work with them and change them.

  Peter Senge

  Structure, Process, Force

  Peter M Senge (2010). “The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization: First edition”, p.78, Random House

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• Unfortunately, the simplest things - such as thinking for myself, creating my own reality and being whatever the hell I want to be each day of my life - are a sin. To be a good Christian basically means to give up the reigns of your life and let some unseen force do it for you.

  Brandon Boyd

  Christian, Giving Up, Mean

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• We form an association of brothers in all points of the globe ... yet there is one unseen that can hardly be felt, yet it weighs on us. Whence comes it? Where is it? No one knows ... or at least no one tells. This association is secret even to us the veterans of the Secret Societies.

  Giuseppe Mazzini

  Brother, Secret, Association

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• I ground matter to find the continuous line. And when I realized I could not find it, I stopped, as if an unseen someone had slapped my hands.

  Constantin Brancusi

  Hands, Lines, Matter

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• Nearness to nature... keeps the spirit sensitive to impressions not commonly felt and in touch with the unseen powers.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Nature, Spirit, Sensitive

  Charles Alexander Eastman (1980). “The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation”, p.163, U of Nebraska Press

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• Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings. It's not God in his heaven who sees everything. A kitchen chair, a clothes hanger, a half-filled ashtray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe can serve perfectly well as an unforgetting witness to our every deed.

  Gunter Grass

  Memories, Clothes, Heaven

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• Faith wouldn't be faith without having to trust what is unseen. That's difficult sometimes, and it's almost easier to put our trust in what is tangible. But God wants us to put one foot in front of the other and just step out on faith.

  Rebecca St. James

  Feet, Tangible, Want

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• Fiction, with its preference for what is small and might elsewhere seem irrelevant; its facility for smuggling us into another skin and allowing us to live a new life there; its painstaking devotion to what without it might go unnoticed and unseen; its respect for contingency, and the unlikely and odd; its willingness to expose itself to moments of low, almost animal being and make them nobly illuminating, can deliver truths we might not otherwise stumble on.

  David Malouf

  Animal, Skins, New Life

  David Malouf (2011). “The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World”, p.87, Black Inc.

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• Daniel Nahmod's music is addictive and contagious... and is equally comfortable addressing your spirituality, your co-dependence and anger, your hungry stomach or your loving heart. His songs run the gamut from meditative to wise-ass to joyful to everything in between, and he is particularly wonderful working with children (and the young-at-heart). When CDs 4 and 5 come out, you can feel totally comfortable buying them unheard and unseen -- all of Daniel's music is amazing.

  Mel White

  Wise, Running, Song

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• Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know - even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction - than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

  Isaac Asimov

  Life, Wise, Wisdom

  "The New Hugo Winners". Book by Isaac Asimov et al., p. 215, 1989.

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