Unspeakable Quotes - Page 6

There is no point in trying to remember your dreams ... There is only the unspeakable joy of eavesdropping on your spirit, catching tiny glimpses of its independent life, resting for a moment in its wisdom, puzzling, laughing sometimes, over what it's up to, what it makes of you.

Marsha Norman

Dream, Independent, Laughing

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Through revision, I enter the realm of the unspeakable and find the words that have eluded me.

Terry Tempest Williams

Revision, Realms

Source: therumpus.net

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Now let us regard the idea of God from the magic standpoint, according to the four elements, the so-called tetragrammaton, the unspeakable, the supreme: the fiery principle involves the almightiness and the omnipotence, the airy principle owns the wisdom, purity and clarity, from which aspect proceeds the universal lawfulness. Love and eternal life are attributed to the watery principle, and omnipresence, immortality and consequently eternity belong to the earth principle. These four aspects together represent the supreme Godhead.

Franz Bardon

Omnipotence, Four Elements, Ideas

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To see Him and know Him and be in His presence is the soul’s final feast. Beyond this there is no quest. Words fail. We call it pleasure, joy, delight. But these are weak pointers to the unspeakable experience.

John Piper

Joy, Soul, Finals

John Piper (2011). “Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”, p.87, Multnomah

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I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing that can happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable.

Amy Tan

Magic, Worst, Know How

Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.103, Penguin

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This is of monumental significance. The gift has been given - what we make of it is up to us. Unless we listen to counsel we will receive none. Unless we pray, exercise faith, love, obey, and keep the tabernacles of our spirits clean - we can have no claim upon this unspeakable gift. May we so live as to have the guidance of the Holy Spirit to help us make wise decisions.

F. Burton Howard

Wise, Exercise, Decision

F. Burton Howard (1992). “You Can Go Home Again”, Bookcraft, Incorporated

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...Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the 'noblest work of God.'

Mark Twain

Angel, Sarcasm, Men

Mark Twain, Paul Baender (1973). “What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings”, p.405, Univ of California Press

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Even if torture works, it cannot be tolerated -- not in one case or a thousand or a million. If their efficacy becomes the measure of abhorrent acts, all sorts of unspeakable crimes somehow become acceptable. I may have found myself on the wrong side of government on torture. But I'm on the right side of history. There are things we should not do, even in the name of national security. One of them, I now firmly believe, is torture.

John Kiriakou

Believe, Names, Government

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Art is a mediator of the unspeakable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Art, Art Is, Mediators

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There is in certain living souls a quality of loneliness unspeakable, so great it must be shared as company is shared by lesser beings. Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this that in immensity there is one lonelier than you.

Theodore Sturgeon

Loneliness, Soul, Quality

Theodore Sturgeon, Paul Williams, Kurt Vonnegut (2002). “A Saucer of Loneliness”, p.13, North Atlantic Books

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And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.

Joyce Carol Oates

Evil, Victim, Attractive

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Right, then, mate, terribly sorry for my unspeakable rudeness, and I do beg your pardon. I can only say that it was caused by my natural affront to the notion of her as my sister. Since I'll be shagging her tonight, you can imagine how I'd be distressed at the thought of rogering my sibling" "You shmuck! The only thing you'll be shagging tonight is yourself!" "You wanted sincerity, well, luv, I was sincere.

Jeaniene Frost

Sorry, Sibling, Tonight

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Well, speaking as a feminist, I'm glad that women can lead--uh, groups of unspeakable magical evil." "Yes," Alan said gravely. "It'd be shoking if the evil magicians were sexist. For one thing, that would mean they were stupid, and having stupid enemies would be a terrible blow to my manly pride.

Sarah Rees Brennan

Stupid, Mean, Pride

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To what or whom does Lizzie Harris direct the imperative title of her startling first book, Stop Wanting? To the reader, the narrator, to desire itself, or to lack? This is a work of complexly, ambiguously layered narratives and identities. The opening poem asserts I want to say what happened / but am suspicious of stories. These lines become an ars poetica for the whole of this painful and exceptional collection in which the unspeakable is stubbornly confronted by a searing eloquence. This is a commanding debut.

Lynn Emanuel

Book, Desire, Identity

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I cannot understand how something as ubiquitous as war can simply be dismissed as pathological. It is not clear to me that it is an unspeakable evil. If it is, I need proof of it.

George Friedman

War, Evil, Needs

Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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New York has a tremendous number of people but the quality of its politics is unspeakable. By contrast, in a smaller township, I find there's a great deal of social awareness, less of a sense of powerlessness, less of a polarization of economic life.

Murray Bookchin

New York, Numbers, People

Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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Taboos are falling across our culture like dominoes. What was unspeakable yesterday dominates talk shows today.

Ellen Goodman

Fall, Yesterday, Culture

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It would be an unspeakable advantage, both to the public and private, if men would consider that great truth, that no man is wise or safe but he that is honest.

Walter Raleigh

Wise, Honesty, Men

Sir Walter Raleigh (1829). “The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt: Miscellaneous works”, p.297

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There is unspeakable pleasure attending the life of a voluntary student.

Oliver Goldsmith

Students, Pleasure, Attending

Oliver Goldsmith, Henry George Bohn (1848). “Works: With a Life and Notes”, p.239

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O how unspeakable is this Sacrament which sets our affections ablaze with charity. ... It is the fulfillment of Christ's Mystical Body.

Thomas Aquinas

Charity, Body, Affection

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But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us—to know Whence our lives come and where they go.

Matthew Arnold

Heart, Fire, Desire

Matthew Arnold (1994). “Dover Beach and Other Poems”, p.24, Courier Corporation

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We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.

Anne Lamott

Jobs, Writing, Doors

Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.198, Anchor

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All of our actions have in their doing the seed of their undoing. ... That in her creation of her children there should be the unspeakable promise of their death, for by their birth she had created mortal beings.

Louise Erdrich

Children, Promise, Our Actions

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His voice was low, charged with unspeakable adjectives.

Frank Herbert

Voice, Adjectives, Lows

Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.212, Penguin

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The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the Pursuit of useful Knowledge, in honourable Actions and the Practice of Virtue; in which he who labours to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest Fruits of them; not only because these never leave a Man, not even in the extremest Old Age; but because a Conscience bearing Witness that our Life was well-spent, together with the Remembrance of past good Actions, yields an unspeakable Comfort to the Soul

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Past, Men, Yield

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