Vague Quotes - Page 3

• The traveller must, of course, always be cautious of the overly broad generalisation. But I am an American, and a paucity of data does not stop me from making sweeping, vague, conceptual statements and, if necessary, following these statements up with troops.

  George Saunders

  Data, Troops, Doe

  "Just who is this Magna Carta fellow?" by George Saunders, www.theguardian.com. July 21, 2006.

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• In spite of its romantic frisson, the position of muse is very vague and largely thankless for the muse herself.

  Katie Roiphe

  Muse, Spite, Position

  Katie Roiphe (2013). “In Praise of Messy Lives”, p.61, Canongate Books

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• Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship.

  Joseph Stalin

  Loyalty, World Government, Historical

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• A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Happiness, Inner Peace, Strive

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• I suddenly feel a vague pity for all those writers who have to ply their trade from sleepy American suburbs, writing divorce scenes symbolized by the very slow washing of dishes.

  Teju Cole

  Writing, Divorce, Plies

  Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 21, 2014.

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• If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive-then don't be a writer.

  Graham Swift

  Writing, Cells, Long

  Graham Swift (2012). “Making an Elephant: Writing from Within”, p.56, Pan Macmillan

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• A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him.

  George Orwell

  Fear, Stupid, People

  George Orwell (2012). “Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.86, Lulu.com

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• If today's arts love the machine, technology and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times.

  Oskar Schlemmer

  Art, Technology, Organization

  Oskar Schlemmer, Tut Schlemmer (1990). “The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer”

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• One of the most significant effects of age-segregation in our society has been the isolation of children from the world of work. Whereas in the past children not only saw what their parents did for a living but even shared substantially in the task, many children nowadays have only a vague notion of the nature of the parent's job, and have had little or no opportunity to observe the parent, or for that matter any other adult, when he is fully engaged in his work.

  Urie Bronfenbrenner

  Jobs, Children, Past

  Urie Bronfenbrenner (1973). “Two worlds of childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R.”, Pocket

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• In any case, his religious teaching consisted mostly in more or less vague ethical remarks, an obscure mixture of ideals of English gentlemanliness and his favorite notions of personal hygiene. Everybody knew that his class was liable to degenerate into a demonstration of some practical points about rowing, with Buggy sitting on the table and showing us how to pull an oar.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Religious, Teaching

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present.

  Giacomo Leopardi

  Memories, Quality, Remember

  Giacomo Leopardi (2002). “Thoughts: And, The Broom [or The Flower of the Desert]”, Hesperus Press

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• Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness. . . . But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Nature, Morning, Kindness

  Henry Ward Beecher (1862). “Eyes and ears”, p.69

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• I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don't know whether this world has meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.

  Albert Camus

  Spring, Mean, Unity

  Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

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• The catch-all phrase "the war on terrorism", in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against "criminal gangsterism". Terrorism is a tactic. You can't have a war against a tactic. It's deliberately vague and non-definable in order to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere and under any circumstance.

  Ron Paul

  Honesty, War, Order

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• Moreover, behind this vague tendency to treat religion as a side issue in modern life, there exists a strong body of opinion that is actively hostile to Christianity and that regards the destruction of positive religion as absolutely necessary to the advance of modern culture

  Christopher Dawson

  Strong, Issues, Culture

  Christopher Dawson, Gerald J. Russello (1998). “Christianity and European Culture (Selections from the Work of Christopher Dawson)”, p.119, CUA Press

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• I think people have a vague sense that the television system is changing.

  Michael K. Powell

  Technology, Thinking, People

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• Euphemisms, vague terminology or calls for discussions with Turkey to get at the truth are just some of the dodges Congress and the administration have used to avoid Turkish discomfort with its Ottoman past.

  Adam Schiff

  Past, Turkeys, Ottomans

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• He sometimes felt that life was something that had already risen, and all of this, the Jackson Pollack of spring, summer, and fall, the vague refrigeration and tinfoiled sky of wintertime, was just a falling, really, originward, in a kind of correction, as if by spritual gravity, towards the wiser consciousness--or consciousnessless, maybe; could gravity trick itself like that?--of death. It was a kind of movement both very slow and very fast; there was both too much and not enough time to think.

  Tao Lin

  Summer, Spring, Fall

  Tao Lin (2007). “Eeeee Eee Eeee: A Novel”, Melville House Pub

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• We know only that we are living in these bodies and have a vague idea, because we have heard it, and because our faith tells us so, that we possess souls. As to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or who dwells within them, or how precious they are, those are things which seldom consider and so we trouble little about carefully preserving the soul's beauty.

  Teresa of Avila

  Beauty, Ideas, Soul

  St. Teresa of Avila (2013). “Interior Castle”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• Autumn clouds, vague and obscure; The evening, lonely and chill. I felt the dampness on my garments, But saw no spot, and heard no sound of rain.

  Bai Juyi

  Summer, Lonely, Rain

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• I had refused to pay any attention to the moral laws upon which all our vitality and sanity depend: and so now I was reduced to the condition of a silly old woman, worrying about a lot of imaginary rules of health, standards of food-value, and a thousand minute details of conduct that were in themselves completely ridiculous and stupid, and yet which haunted me with vague and terrific sanctions. If I eat this, I may go out of my mind. If I do not eat that, I may die in the night.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Stupid, Silly

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• Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence-so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavorable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophecies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophecies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer's trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable.

  Karl Popper

  Order, Typical, Might

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• When I started, they told me I only needed 3 chords and the truth... It turned out I could manage with 2 and some vague ideas.

  Joe Strummer

  Ideas, Chords, Needed

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• We're teaching our kids that attributes as vague and relatively meaningless as a toothy smile or a fine head of hair make a fine statement about a person.

  Neil Cavuto

  Smile, Teaching, Kids

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• One of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate. When we worry, our minds jump here and there and everywhere, and we lose all power of decision. However, when we force ourselves to face the worst and accept it mentally, we then eliminate all those vague imaginings and put ourselves in a position in which we are able to concentrate on our problem.

  Dale Carnegie

  Inspirational, Change, Acceptance

  Dale Carnegie (2016). “How to stop worrying & start living”, p.26, Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd

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