Vague Quotes - Page 14

• The planet Mars -- crimson and bright, filling our telescopes with vague intimations of almost-familiar landforms -- has long formed a celestial tabula rasa on which we have inscribed our planeto-logical theories, utopian fantasies, and fears of alien invasion or ecological ruin.

  David Grinspoon

  Long, Mars, Invasion

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• On occasions, after drinking a pint of beer at luncheon, there would be a flow into my mind with sudden and unaccountable emotion, sometimes a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza, accompanied, not preceded by a vague notion of the poem which they were destined to form a part of.... I say bubble up because, so far as I could make out, the source of the suggestions thus proffered to the brain was the pit of the stomach.

  A. E. Housman

  Drinking, Beer, Two

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• There are two men in Tolstoy. He is a mystic and he is also a realist. He is addicted to the practice of a pietism that for all its sincerity is nothing if not vague and sentimental; and he is the most acute and dispassionate of observers, the most profound and earnest student of character and emotion.

  William Ernest Henley

  Character, Men, Two

  William Ernest Henley (1906). “Views and Reviews: Essays in Appreciation: Literature”

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• Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.

  Maya Angelou

  Adults, Teens, Pressure

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.208, Modern Library

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• One man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest - indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Strong, Men, Evil

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• Jefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted as suited any Supreme Court Justice or White House incumbent. That amendment had built a wall, with the ecclesiastical estate on one side and the civil estate on the other.

  Edwin Gaustad

  Wall, White, Justice

  Edwin Scott Gaustad (1993). “Neither King Nor Prelate: Religion and the New Nation, 1776-1826”, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

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• The tension of a mysterious danger is even more unbearable than danger itself. People hate the vacuum of an unknown situation. They want security. They even prefer war to the insecure expectation of a war with its threat of enemy surprise. This vague fearful expectation acts on their fantasies. They anticipate all kinds of mysterious dangers; they begin to provoke them. It is the evocation of fear and danger in order to escape the tension of insecurity.

  Joost Meerloo

  Hate, War, Insecure

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• At times, the biggest challenge in embracing simplicity will be the vague feeling of isolation that comes with it, since private sacrifice doesn't garner much attention in the frenetic world of mass culture.

  Rolf Potts

  Sacrifice, Mass Culture, Simplicity

  Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.15, Ballantine Books

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• It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that, when the heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and irresistibly. It would seem almost as though our better thoughts and sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom we loved in life. Alas! how often and how long may these patient angels hover around us, watching for the spell which is so soon forgotten!

  Charles Dickens

  Beautiful, Death, Memories

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• The gospel of cheerfulness, I had almost said the gospel of amusement, is preached by people who lack experience to people who lack vitality. There is a vague impression that the world would be a good world if it were only happy, that it would be happy if it were amused, and that it would be amused if plenty of artificial recreation - that recreation for which we are now told every community stands responsible - were provided for its entertainment.

  Agnes Repplier

  Happiness, People, Community

  Agnes Repplier (1916). “Counter-currents”

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• To try to stop war by placing before men's eyes the terrible suffering involved will never succeed, because men are willing (in their thoughts and imaginations at least) to face any kind of suffering when motivated by noble aims like the vague and tremendous concept of freedom ... Or, in their humility (or sloth - who knows?) men are quite willing to leave decisions to others 'who know more about it than we do.

  Dorothy Day

  War, Humility, Eye

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• Youth is the season of tragedy and despair. Youth is the time when one's whole life is entangled in a web of identity, in a perpetual maze of seeking and of finding, of passion and of disillusion, of vague longings and of nameless griefs, of pity that is a blade in the heart, and of 'all the little emptiness of love.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Grief, Passion, Heart

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• My dance is a sacred poem in which each movement is a word and whose every word is underlined by music. The temple in which I dance can be vague or faithfully reproduced, for I am the temple.

  Mata Hari

  Dance, Movement, Sacred

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• Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction.

  Harriet Martineau

  Dark, Tyrants, Silence

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.138

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• Truths are not truths to you unless you realize them within yourself. Without realization, they are just ideas. For spiritual perception, spiritual consciousness, lies not in vague theological ideas, but in the acquisition of Self-realization.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Spiritual, Lying, Self

  Yogananda (Paramahansa) (1977). “Self-realization”

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• I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

  Barry Hannah

  Writing, Done, Too Much

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• You will perceive that economy, scientifically speaking, is a very contracted science; it is in fact a sort of vague mathematics which calculates the causes and effects of man's industry, and shows how it may be best applied.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Men, May, Causes

  William Stanley Jevons, Harriet A. Jevons (1886). “Letters & Journal of W. Stanley Jevons, Ed”

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• As towards most other things of which we have but little personal experience (foreigners, or socialists, or aristocrats, as the case may be), there is a degree of vague ill-will towards what is called Thinking. ... I am tempted to believe that much of the mischief thus laid at the door of that poor unknown quantity Thinking is really due to its ubiquitous twin-brother Talking.

  Vernon Lee

  Brother, Believe, Thinking

  Vernon Lee (1904). “Hortus Vitae: Essays on the Gardening of Life”

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• My intention to lecture is as vague as my intention is to go on the stage. I will never consider an offer to lecture, not because I despise the vocation, but because I have no desire to appear on the public rostrum.

  Mary MacLane

  Desire, Goes On, Lectures

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• So I was in America and I thought I'll stick around while I'm here and just see what happens. The next film I did was High Art, so I guess it started with a sort of vague idea but really just a fantasy.

  Radha Mitchell

  Art, Ideas, America

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• The actual, original 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,' I have vague memories of because I was pretty small, but I loved, loved, loved it. I have only those weird, visceral little-kid memories: I remember the extreme flat, two dimensional green that was their skin or the weird pizza with no sauce - it was just like yellow, drippy cheese.

  Mae Whitman

  Memories, Teenage, Kids

  "Mae Whitman on TMNT, blending into Arrested Development, and acting with Coach Taylor". Interview with Erik Adams, www.avclub.com. March 1, 2013.

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• The fourth paradigm forces us at every point to discern between the creationally valid and the sinfully perverse and thus confronts us with a never-ending task which requires not only competence but also spiritual discernment. Yet this is precisely the task which we must assume, even at the risk of being vague on specifics. The alternative is to compromise basic themes of authentic Christianity.

  Albert M. Wolters

  Spiritual, Risk, Tasks

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• One starts gambling for a joke, out of curiosity, as a little challenge to fortune. One goes on, pricked to the quick by delusions, excited by vague desires that grow. Woe to you if you win anything - an AMBO, a small TERNO! It is all up with you, for your chance of winning seems certain. ... It is the devil's money going back to hell.

  Matilde Serao

  Winning, Gambling, Challenges

  Matilde Serao (2017). “The Land of Cockayne (Matilde Serao) (Literary Thoughts Edition)”, p.304, epubli

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• The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.

  Edward Gibbon

  Simple, History, Interesting

  Edward Gibbon (1828). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.410

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• An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that flatters the virtue and competence of believers, while being vague or conspiratorial enough to withstand skeptical scrutiny.

  Steven Pinker

  Events, Narrative, Way

  "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined". Book by Steven Pinker, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2011.

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