Volition Quotes - Page 2

• ... for our sake loosing within Himself the bonds of bodily birth, He granted us through spiritual birth, according to our own volition, power to become children of God instead of children of flesh and blood if we have faith in His Name (cf. Jn. 1:12-13). For the Savior the sequence was, first of all, incarnation and bodily birth for my sake; and so thereupon the birth in the Spirit through baptism, originally spurned by Adam, for the sake of my salvation and restoration by grace, or, to describe it even more vividly, my very remaking.

  Maximus the Confessor

  Christian, Spiritual, Children

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• All athletic accomplishments begin with volition; that is, the desire and willpower necessary to succeed. Volition affects more than thoughts and feelings - it affects physical performance.

  Charles Garfield

  Basketball, Accomplishment, Athletic

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• There are several more careers more engaging to follow than that of poetry. But the circumstances of one's birth, the conduct of one's parents, the current economic structure of society, and a thousand other local factors have as much or more to say about successions to such occupations, the naive volitions of the poet to the contrary.

  Hart Crane

  Careers, Parent, Occupation

  Hart Crane (1965). “Letters, 1916-1932”

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• The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on conventional photon drive. Its crew of four were ill as ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple coincidence, but by some curious perversion of physics- as if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules

  Douglas Adams

  Heart, Simple, Night

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.77, Pan Macmillan

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• She lay down and never stirred. To move hand or foot, or even so much as one finger, would have been an exertion beyond the powers of either volition or motion. She was so tired, so stunned, that she thought she never slept at all; her feverish thoughts passed and repassed the boundary between sleeping and waking, and kept their own miserable identity.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Moving, Tired, Sleep

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)”, p.1075, Delphi Classics

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• What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.

  William Wordsworth

  Passion, Men, Soul

  William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth (1815). “Poems”, p.376

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• Innate directs its vital energy through the nervous system to specialize the coordination and sensation and volition through the cumulative and vegetative functions.

  Daniel D. Palmer

  Energy, Nervous, Chiropractic

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• The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own.

  Sigmund Freud

  Doe, Purpose, Links

  Sigmund Freud (2008). “General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology”, p.46, Simon and Schuster

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• " Science is beginning to encroach on every level of our volition". And to me, that is a frightening social concept. It doesn't have anything to do with the right to have an abortion verses the right to life. It has to do with the ability of science to keep things alive and the ability of science to really control our lives.

  Stephen King

  Abortion, Alive, Levels

  Interview with Phil Konstantin, americanindian.net. July 1987.

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• Though it is folly to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves content and cheerful whenever we choose - a theory that many poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh driven mad - yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever left without the power of self-discipline and self-control in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it is exercised.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Self, Hands, Discipline

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 10), 1858.

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• Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer.

  Gao Xingjian

  Literature, Moral, Ethical

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• I've always been accused by my detractors of some sort of moral failure, cowardice, or even lack of humanity by not portraying the human form. I respond that I do better by portraying traces of character and intentions of human volition that no mug or body shot can ever exude.

  Robert Polidori

  Character, Humanity, Body

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• The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power. You think yourself free, because you do what you will; but are you free to will, or not to will; to desire, or not to desire? Are not your volitions and desires necessarily excited by objects or qualities totally independent of you?

  Baron d'Holbach

  Independent, Thinking, Desire

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• To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?

  Thomas Carlyle

  Life, Devil, Rolling

  Thomas Carlyle (2009). “Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.230, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Are you a person—with volition and maybe some stubbornness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surprising—or are you a tool? A tool just serves its user. It’s only as good as the skill of its user, and it’s not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplish something special—something more than you can do for yourself—you can’t use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favor. You have to use something that’s free to not be what you had in mind.

  Stephen R. Donaldson

  Determination, Skills, Mind

  Stephen R. Donaldson (1982). “The One Tree”, Del Rey

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• To me, songs come of their own volition - and with an open-ended philosophy.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Song, Philosophy

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• "You’re a stubborn, ill-trained horse.” she said. The horse snorted and walked towards the North Road of his own volition. ”Hey!” Karigan pulled back on the reins. “Whoa. Who do you think is in charge here?"

  Kristen Britain

  Horse, Thinking, Hey

  "Green Rider". Book by Kristen Britain, November, 1998.

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• The man of wisdom is devoid of ego even though he may appear to use it. His vacant or fasting mind is neither doing anything nor not doing anything. He is outside of volition, neither this nor that. He is everything and nothing.

  Ramesh S Balsekar

  Men, Ego, Mind

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• What Artistic and Scientific Experience Have in Common - Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaninful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is the loving devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition.

  Albert Einstein

  Art, Mind, Wish

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• Creation,' in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being.

  Thomas Huxley

  Ordinary, Six, Evolution

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• David knew that the very quality of his worship was not based on his own volition but on the object of his worship - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Though our affections for God may wax and wane, His character is unchanging! We even see David speaking to his own soul, demanding of it, "Bless the Lord!"

  Laura Story

  Father, Character, Son

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• Unto each one hath been prescribed a preordained measure, as decreed in God's mighty and guarded Tablets. All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Book, Tablets, Holy

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• Our coherent extrapolated volition is our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  People, Wish, Together

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• Love itself is not an act of will, but sometimes I need the force of my volition to break with my habitual responses and pass along the love already here.

  Hugh Prather

  Needs, Sometimes, Break

  Hugh Prather (2003). “Standing on My Head: Life Lessons in Contradictions”, Conari Press

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• Reason, in a strict sense, as meaning the judgment of truth and falsehood, can never, of itself, be any motive to the will, and can have no influence but so far as it touches some passion or affection. Abstract relations of ideas are the object of curiosity, not of volition. And matters of fact, where they are neither good nor evil, where they neither excite desire nor aversion, are totally indifferent, and whether known or unknown, whether mistaken or rightly apprehended, cannot be regarded as any motive to action.

  David Hume

  Truth, Passion, Ideas

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2007). “A Dissertation on the Passions: The Natural History of Religion : a Critical Edition”, p.24, Oxford University Press

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