Vague Quotes - Page 18

• I can picture the color of the song, or the shape of it, or who it is that I'm trying to appeal to, in the song, and what I'm trying to, almost, reinforce my feelings for. And I know that sounds sort of vague and abstract, but I've got a handle on it when I'm doing it.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Color, Feelings

  Source: www.rightwingbob.com

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• I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted.

  Jean Cocteau

  Girl, Mother, Teacher

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• Old noted oak! I saw thee in a mood Of vague indifference; and yet with me Thy memory, like thy fate, hath lingering stood For years, thou hermit, in the lonely sea Of grass that waves around thee!

  John Clare

  Lonely, Memories, Fate

  John Clare (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of John Clare (Illustrated)”, p.700, Delphi Classics

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• Unless an action is rightly thought out and its steps rightly planned, every stage of its performance will probably remain vague and therefore unsatisfactory for the doer and all those concerned.

  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

  Doers, Steps, Action

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• The film is ambiguous, an ambiguity that reflects on Japan today, and a world in which nothing is clear. Once I made the film [Takeshis'], I realized it was about this feeling of vague disquiet in Japan and in the rest of the world, a feeling that is gaining on us, getting less vague.

  Takeshi Kitano

  Japan, Feelings, World

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable. It's not the final thing, it's the first thing, which may just be the suggestive, vague identification of something that you have to come back to and rewrite.

  M. H. Abrams

  Thinking, Editing, Finals

  "An Interview with M. H. Abrams by Sharon Hamilton". People's Education, March 10, 2007.

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• When you want to organize knowledge. you will be careful to base the classification upon essential qualities. You will thus derive classes in which the members have the greatest amount of resemblance to one another and the greatest amount of difference from the members of other classes. But suppose that, instead of organizing knowledge, you set out to organize ignorance and prejudice. You will then do precisely the opposite.You will keep the classification vague and flexible, so that it can be made to include just whatever individuals you choose.

  Barrows Dunham

  Ignorance, Class, Differences

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• I don't suppose you do know precisely what you are after. I don't think in the creative process anyone quite knows. They have a vague idea - a beckoning, an inkling of some truth - it is only in the process that it comes to any clarity.

  Lawren Harris

  Thinking, Ideas, Creative

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• Public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield. There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Powerful, Yield, Public Opinion

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• My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Art, Writing, Sight

  H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2014). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1753, eBookIt.com

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• There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal.

  Abraham Lincoln

  People, Honor, Vivid

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.46, Fordham Univ Press

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• The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security.

  Hugo Black

  Military, Real, Government

  "New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713". Concurring opinion, 1971.

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• Nature's never quite
  Sure she hasn't erred
  In her vague design.

  Robert Frost

  God, Design, Never Quit

  Robert Frost (1975). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

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• For who can wonder that man should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wandering through those places which they once dearly affected, when he himself, scarcely less separated from his old world than they, is for ever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the ghost of his former self, about the places and people that warmed his heart of old?

  Charles Dickens

  Heart, Past, Men

  Charles Dickens, Peter Preston (1998). “The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories”, p.13, Wordsworth Editions

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• Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is negative. This low quality is not just a vague, woolly-headed, crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an experience. It is not a judgment about an experience. It is not a description of experience. The value itself is an experience. As such it is completely predictable. It is verifiable by anyone who cares to do so.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Religious, Intellectual, Quality

  "Lila : An Inquiry Into Morals". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1991.

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• For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls not for him in the night any so hideous phantasmagoria as will not become, in the clarity of the next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead. Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him, and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun's bright message to him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer.

  Max Beerbohm

  Morning, Memories, Sleep

  Max Beerbohm (2010). “Zuleika Dobson: An Oxford Love Story”, p.40, The Floating Press

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• Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

  Matthew Arnold

  Disappointment, New Beginnings, Light

  Matthew Arnold (1994). “Dover Beach and Other Poems”, p.44, Courier Corporation

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• Whether a law be void for its repugnancy to the Constitution, is, at all times, a question of much delicacy, which out seldom, if ever, to be decided in the affirmative, in doubtful case. ... But it is not on slight implication and vague conjecture that the legislature is to be pronounced to have transcended its powers, and its acts to be considered as void. The opposition between the Constitution and the law should be such that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other.

  John Marshall

  Strong, Law, Judging

  Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87, 128, 1810.

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• We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time; it does not occur to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned and can mean that death -- or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again -- may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon whose time-table, hour by hour, has been settled in advance.

  Marcel Proust

  Mean, Thinking, Doe

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• The idea of freedom is quite in accord with a general, though vague, sentiment among us; it is an idea of fair play, of giving everyone a chance; and nothing arouses more general and active indignation among our people than the belief that some one or some class is not getting a fair chance.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Class, Play, Ideas

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• The present age delights in unearthing a great man's secrets; for one thing because we like to temper our admiration and also perhaps we have a vague hope of finding a clue to genius in such "revelations."

  Andre Malraux

  Men, Secret, Age

  "The Voices of Silence". Book by Andre Malraux, Doubleday, Part III, Chapter VI, 1953.

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• Athirst for personal salvation, the West forgets that many religions had but a vague notion of the life beyond the grave; true, all great religions stake a claim on eternity, but not necessarily on man's eternal life.

  Andre Malraux

  Men, West, Forget

  "The Voices of Silence". Book by Andre Malraux, Doubleday, Part IV, Chapter I, 1953.

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• I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel. And it isn't vague, it strikes against the very nerves of their life and in order to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own.

  Joni Mitchell

  Honesty, Order, Light

  "Joni Mitchell: Lament for the Lady of the Canyon" by James Hughes, www.smh.com.au. July 10, 2015.

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• Perhaps I became so vague, so exhilarated with vagueness, precisely in order to forestall a recognition of the final term of the syllogism that begins: If one man loves another he is a homosexual; I love a man.

  Edmund White

  Men, Order, Vagueness

  Edmund White (2016). “A Boy's Own Story: Picador Classic”, p.84, Pan Macmillan

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• The average, vague understanding of being can be permeated by traditional theories and opinions about being in such a way that these theories, as the sources of the prevailing understanding, remain hidden.

  Martin Heidegger

  Average, Understanding, Way

  Martin Heidegger, Joan Stambaugh, Dennis J. Schmidt (2010). “Being and Time”, p.5, SUNY Press

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