Wisps Quotes - Page 2

• Genius is a will-o'-the-wisp if it lacks a solid foundation of perseverence and fanatical tenacity. This is the most important thing in all of human life.

  Adolf Hitler

  Important, Foundation, Genius

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• If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek. If leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they will escape us like a will-o'-the-wisp.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Running, Rights, Leaving

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Ronald Duncan (2005). “Gandhi: Selected Writings”, p.243, Courier Corporation

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• I tried to hold on to this compassion, sensing its preciousness, but even as I reached to grasp it, it dissipated into wisps. No revelation can endure unless it is bolstered by a calm pure mind- and I'm afraid I didn't possess that.

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Compassion, Mind, Calm

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• Light That's how I feel- like the winter-fringed breeze might scoop me up into its wings, fly away with me trapped in its feathered embrace. I am a snowflake. A wisp of eiderdown, liberated from gravity. My body is light. Ephemeral. My head is light. I want to sway beneath the weight of air, dizzy with thought. Light filters through my closed eyelids. The sun, chasing shadows, tells me I'm not afloat in dreams.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Dream, Winter, Light

  Ellen Hopkins (2013). “Perfect”, p.109, Simon and Schuster

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• I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. So at this wonderful, young age of 65, I don't know yet what the Lord has for me to do. I try to live up to the energy and to the calling, but I wouldn't dare say I have even scratched the surface yet.

  Maya Angelou

  Believe, Age, Trying

  "America's Renaissance Woman". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. January 22, 1997.

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• The next day the Indian told me their name for this light,--artoosoq',--and on my inquiring concerning the will-o'-the-wisp, and the like phenomena, he said that his "folks" sometimes saw fires passing along at various heights, even as high as the trees, and making a noise. I was prepared after this to hear of the most startling and unimagined phenomena, witnessed by "his folks"; they are abroad at all hours and seasons in scenes so unfrequented by white men. Nature must have made a thousand revelations to them which are still secrets to us.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Science, Men

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• Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something-an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Struggle, Men, Air

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2007). “The Great Gatsby”, p.127, Broadview Press

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• Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot shawl.

  Gerald Durrell

  Cake, Tea, Rising

  Gerald Durrell, Lee Durrell (1996). “The best of Gerald Durrell”, Harpercollins

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• For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world, into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor fire-fly has shown me the cause-way to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Moon, Fire

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• My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel--not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.

  Clara Barton

  Home, Writing, Men

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• So we and our elaborately evolving computers may meet each other halfway. Someday a human being, named perhaps Fred White, may shoot a robot named Pete Something-or-other, which has come out of a General Electric factory, and to his surprise see it weep and bleed. And the dying robot may shoot back and, to its surprise, see a wisp of gray smoke arise from the electric pump that it supposed was Mr. White's beating heart. It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them.

  Philip K. Dick

  Heart, White, Dying

  Philip K. Dick (1995). “The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings”, Vintage

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• Adam Smith saw the greed of modern capitalism for what it was - a form of destructive ambition that may have favorable effects on the productive capacities of society, but which is of no direct benefit to anyone - not even to the greedy themselves, whose illusory chase after a will-o-the-wisp leaves them morally bankrupt and unhappy.

  Allen W. Wood

  Ambition, Greed, Unhappy

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• This is the day of wonders. The land is covered with trees like a head with hair and behind the ship the sun rises tipping the top trees with light. The sky is clear and shining as a china plate and the water playfully ruffled with wind. Every wisp of fog is gone and the air is full of the resinous smell of the trees. Seabirds are flashing above the sails golden like creatures from Heaven, but the sailors raise a few shots to keep them from the rigging.

  Alice Munro

  Smell, Light, Hair

  Alice Munro (2011). “New Selected Stories”, p.322, Random House

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• We have already shown that there is no such thing as free will. That's a will-o'-the-wisp. You never make choices without reasons, not as a responsible or a rational person

  John Gerstner

  Choices, Free Will, Reason

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• It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.

  Neil Gaiman

  Dream, Hurt, Memories

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• All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

  Diane Setterfield

  Morning, Book, Reading

  Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.289, Simon and Schuster

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• A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairy lands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Real, Love Is, Flames

  Theodore Dreiser (2016). “Sister Carrie”, p.230, Simon and Schuster

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• If we were always conscious of the fact that people precious to us are frighteningly mortal, hanging not even by a thread, but by a wisp of gossamer, perhaps we would be kinder to them and more grateful for the love and friendship they give to us.

  Dean Koontz

  Grateful, People, Giving

  Dean Koontz (1999). “Seize the Night”, Bantam

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• But there was another, secret Ruby. This one was as thin as a wisp of air, and had struggled for so long just to be. This was the one that Liam carried with him, without knowing. The one that would ride in his back pocket, whisper words of encouragement, tell him he was born to chase the light.

  Alexandra Bracken

  Encouragement, Light, Air

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• History was not a matter of missing minutes on the tape. I did not stand helpless before it. I hewed to the texture of collected knowledge, took faith from the solid and availing stuff of our experience. Even if we believe that history is a workwheel powered by human blood -- read the speeches of Mussolini -- at least we've known the thing together. A single narrative sweep, not ten thousand wisps of disinformation. (82)

  Don DeLillo

  Believe, Blood, Missing

  Don DeLillo (2015). “Underworld: Picador Classic”, p.84, Pan Macmillan

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• Have a care how you speak to me, Imp. Doubtless he meant to sound threatening, but that absurd wisp of a mustache ruined the effect.

  George R. R. Martin

  Mustache, Sound, Care

  George R. R. Martin (2012). “George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons”, p.1038, Bantam

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• To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp.

  William Crookes

  Knowledge, Science, Light

  "Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science". "Nature", No. 1506, Vol. 58, (p. 438), September 8, 1989.

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• The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Flower, Dark, Flames

  Cormac McCarthy (2007). “The Road”, p.40, Vintage

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• Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moonnor firefly has shown me the causeway to it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Firefly, Bogs, Natural

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Natural History Essays”, p.130, Gibbs Smith

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• In pulp fiction it is a rigid convention that the hero's shoulders and the heroine's balcon constantly threaten to burst their bonds, a possibility which keeps the audience in a state of tense expectancy. Unfortunately for the fans, however, recent tests reveal that the wisp of chiffon which stands between the publisher and the postal laws has the tensile strength of drop-forged steel.

  S. J. Perelman

  Hero, Law, Fans

  "Captain Future, Block That Kick!". "The Most of S. J. Perelman", p. 72, 1992.

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