A Fixed Idea Quotes

I always work out of uncertainty but when a painting's finished it becomes a fixed idea, apparently a final statement. In time though, uncertainty returns ... your thought process goes on. ~ Georg Baselitz

If any man has drunk a little too deeply from the cup of physical pleasure; if he has spent too much time at his desk that should have been spent asleep; if his fine spirits have become temporarily dulled; if he finds the air too damp, the minutes too slow, and the atmosphere too heavy to withstand; if he is obsessed by a fixed idea which bars him from any freedom of thought: if he is any of these poor creatures, we say, let him be given a good pint of amber-flavored chocolate ... and marvels will be performed. ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

The thing is, it's very dangerous to have a fixed idea. A person with a fixed idea will always find some way of convincing himself in the end that he is right ~ Atle Selberg

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains. ~ Hippolyte Taine

In order not to make him a fixed idea, a regret, a struggle, - three things which poison life. ~ Honore De Balzac

Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done. ~ Anton Chekhov

Might not certain vices have the same relation to character that the rigidity of a fixed idea as to intellect? Whether as a moral kink or a crooked twist given to the will, vice has often the appearance of a curvature for the soul. Doubtless there are vices into which the soul plunges deeply with all its pregnant potency, which it rejuvenates and drags along with it into a moving circle of reincarnations. Those are tragic vices. But the vice capable of making us comic is, on the contrary, that which is brought from without, like a ready-made frame into which we are to step. It lends us its own rigidity instead of borrowing from us our flexibility. We do not render it more complicated; on the contrary, it simplifies us. Here, as we shall see later in the concluding section of this study, lies the essential difference between comedy and drama. A drama, even when portraying passions or vices that bear a name, so completely incorporates them that the person is forgotten, their general characteristics effaced, and we no longer think of them at all, but rather of the person in whom they are assimilated; hence, the title of a drama can seldom be anything else than a proper noun. On the other hand, many comedies have a common noun as their title: L'Avare, Le Joueur etc. ~ Henri Bergson

That was what the Army did to you. It turned you into an imitation gentleman and gave you a fixed idea that there'd always be a bit of money coming from somewhere. ~ George Orwell

Ecthelion must be similarly from Aegthelion. Latter element is a derivative of √stel 'remain firm'. The form with prefix 'sundóma', estel, was used in Q{uenya} and S{indarin} for 'hope' – sc. a temper of mind, steady, fixed in purpose, and difficult to dissuade and unlikely to fall into despair or abandon its purpose. The unprefixed stel- gave [? S verb] thel 'intend, mean, purpose, resolve, will'. So Q ? þelma 'a fixed idea,..., will. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

You lie upon my heart as on a nest,
Folded in peace, for you can never know
How crushed I am with having you at rest
Heavy upon my life. I love you so
You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.
In mercy lift your drooping wings and go. ~ Amy Lowell

Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea! ~ Max Stirner

It's tragic that extremists co-opt the notion of God, and that hipsters and artists reject spirituality out of hand. I don't have a fixed idea of God. But I feel that it's us - the messed-up, the half-crazy, the burning, the questing - that need God, a lot more than the goody-two-shoes do. ~ Mike Doughty

When passion is not fed, it changes to need. At this juncture, marriage becomes a fixed idea in the mind of the bourgeois, being the only means whereby he can win a woman and appropriate her to his uses. ~ Honore De Balzac

Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison detre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself. ~ Andre Kertesz

The causes which ruined the Republic of Athens illustrate the connection of ethics with politics rather than the vices inherent to democracy. A State which has only 30,000 full citizens in a population of 500,000, and is governed, practically, by about 3000 people at a public meeting, is scarcely democratic. The short triumph of Athenian liberty, and its quick decline, belong to an age which possessed no fixed standard of right and wrong. An unparalleled activity of intellect was shaking the credit of the gods, and the gods were the givers of the law. It was a very short step from the suspicion of Protagoras, that there were no gods, to the assertion of Critias that there is no sanction for laws. If nothing was certain in theology, there was no certainty in ethics and no moral obligation. The will of man, not the will of God, was the rule of life, and every man and body of men had the right to do what they had the means of doing. Tyranny was no wrong, and it was hypocrisy to deny oneself the enjoyment it affords. The doctrine of the Sophists gave no limits to power and no security to freedom; it inspired that cry of the Athenians, that they must not be hindered from doing what they pleased, and the speeches of men like Athenagoras and Euphemus, that the democracy may punish men who have done no wrong, and that nothing that is profitable is amiss. And Socrates perished by the reaction which they provoked. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

When at last he finally hooked one, despite Elizabeth's best efforts to prevent it, she scrambled to her feet and backed up a step. "You-you're hurting it!" she cried as he pulled the hook from its mouth.
"Hurting what? The fish?" he asked in disbelief.
"Yes!"
"Nonsense," said he, looking at her as if she was daft, then he tossed the fish on the bank.
"It can't breathe, I tell you!" she wailed, her eyes fixed on the flapping fish.
"It doesn't need to breathe," he retorted. "We're going to eat it for lunch."
"I certainly won't!" she cried, managing to look at him as if he were a cold-blooded murderer.
"Lady Cameron," he said sternly, "am I to believe you've never eaten a fish?"
"Well, of course I have."
"And where do you think the fish you've eaten came from?" he continued with irate logic.
"It came from a nice tidy package wrapped in paper," Elizabeth announced with a vacuous look. "They come in nice, tidy paper wrapping."
"Well, they weren't born in that tidy paper," he replied, and Elizabeth had a dreadful time hiding her admiration for his patience as well as for the firm tone he was finally taking with her. He was not, as she had originally thought, a fool or a namby-pamby. "Before that," he persisted, "where was the fish? How did that fish get to the market in the first place?"
Elizabeth gave her head a haughty toss, glanced sympathetically at the flapping fish, then gazed at him with haughty condemnation in her ~ Judith McNaught

Temperance pursed her lips, her eyes firmly fixed on the growing mound of chopped turnip roots. "Do you think anyone really likes turnips?"

"Temperance…"

Temperance poked the tip of her knife into a white cube and held it up. "They are very filling, of course, but really, when was the last time you heard someone say, 'Oh, I'm so very fond of turnips'? ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect; the second have a much longer duration; but the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

In fact, the average programming manager would prefer that a project be estimated at twelve months and take twelve than that the same project be estimated at six months and take nine. This is an area where some psychological study could be rewarding, but there are indications from other situations that it is not the mean length of estimated time that annoys people but, rather, the standard deviation in the actual time taken. Thus, most people would prefer to wait a fixed ten minutes for the bus each morning than to wait one minute on four days and twenty-six minutes once a week-. Even though the average wait is six minutes in the second case, the derangement caused by one long and unexpected delay more than compensates for this disadvantage. If ~ Gerald M. Weinberg

So it is. Once a book is fathomed, once it is known, and its meaning is fixed or established, it is dead. A book only lives while it has power to move us, and move us differently; so long as we find it different every time we read it. Owing to the flood of shallow books which really are exhausted in one reading, the modern mind tends to think every book is the same, finished in one reading. But it is not so. And gradually the modern mind will realize it again. The real joy of a book lies in reading it over and over again, and always finding it different, coming upon another meaning, another level of meaning. It is, as usual, a question of values: we are so overwhelmed with quantities of books that we hardly realize any more that a book can be valuable, valuable like a jewel, or a lovely picture, into which you can look deeper and deeper and get a more profound experience every time. It is far, far better to read one book six times, at intervals, than to read six several books. Because if a certain book can call you to read it six times, it will be a deeper and deeper experience each time, and will enrich the whole soul, emotional and mental. ~ D.H. Lawrence

A healthy soul must do two things for us. First, it must put some fire in our veins, keep us energized, vibrant, living with zest and full of hope as we sense that life is, ultimately beautiful and worth living ... Second, a healthy soul has to keep us fixed together. It has to continually give us a sense of who we are, where we came from, where we are going, and what sense there is in all of this. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

He was already telling me about the very important book
with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: "Take aim!" when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them:

"Long live the Republic! I'm one of them."

Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man.

He repeated: "Long live the Republic!" crossed the room with a firm stride and placed himself in front of the guns beside Enjolras.

"Finish both of us at one blow," said he.

And turning gently to Enjolras, he said to him:

"Do you permit it?"

Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile.

This smile was not ended when the report resounded.

Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning against the wall, as though the balls had nailed him there. Only, his head was bowed.

Grantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a thunderbolt. ~ Victor Hugo

If attachment becomes fixed on a 'Gnani' [The enlightened one], then it becomes Real attachment (prashastaraag). It will get one's work done. It will uproot attachment in all other places. Because the Gnani is Vitarag, attachment-free. Attachment for a Vitarag gives liberation from all the suffering. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable. ~ Neil Gaiman

A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view, until he had either fathomed it, or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed, and cusions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old brier pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upwards, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previ ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

'Single' is usually applied to women as though they are a problem to be fixed. ~ Rachel Sklar

You don't have to be here," William offered with his trademark quiet solemnity.
I shook my head but kept my eyes fixed on the closed doors at the end of the hall. "No. I wouldn't miss it." Would rather be home in my slippers watching Judge Judy, sure, but duty calls.
That was my style of party these days. Throw in a slice of Battenberg and some Werther's Originals and I could go wild on a sugar high. But no, today was William's birthday, so I was going to try and keep my grumpy old man behavior to a minimum.
Try being the operative word.
No promises.
My teammate, and the guest of honor for this particular party, tugged on the sleeve of my suit jacket and brought us to a stop. "Hey. Seriously. You're eighteen months sober."
"Has it been eighteen months already?" I stroked the stubble on my chin and cracked a grin. "Time flies when you're killing house plants. ~ L.H. Cosway

DON'T ABUSE ME, I've never flown one of these things before." Richard Reiss put the tip of his tongue between his teeth and squinted at the controls. While he did this, building blocks, tree limbs, and swirling leaves scudded past the plastic windscreen. Chaison stared at the ambassador. "Richard, why are you dressed as a clown?" Ballooning pantaloons and a polka-dotted top spilled out around the edges of Reiss's seat; he had red smudges on his cheeks that he'd obviously been trying to rub off. The ambassador turned with great dignity, fixed Chaison with a steely eye and said, "It is a very long story, and one I find I would rather not relate. ~ Karl Schroeder

I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home. ~ Marcel Proust

The power of giving life and taking by death belong to God alone. He won't allow what He hasn't already ordained. And since He fixed the number of days your mother would walk on this earth, neither you nor anyone could do anything to prolong it, not even if you helped in a dozen ways. ~ Jody Hedlund

Some things can be fixed in a day,
Some things can be fixed in a month, Some things can be fixed in a year
But, the heartache that you gave me
Is going to stay for the lifetime!

- Perhaps, my soul is bleeding from a long time. ~ Jyoti Patel

Like the philosophy credited to Jack Dempsey: The more punches a man takes, the closer he is to the end. Because a man has only a fixed number of punches he can take in his lifetime. Pa? ~ Joyce Carol Oates

The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Rhea, Randell, Daen, and Brian all froze, their attention fixed on the candy bar hanging in midair, a foot from Rhea's face. ~ C.L. McCourt

You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a muscle, you can build it up, draw on it when you need it. In that process you will figure out who you really are - and you just might become the very best version of yourself. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Later, the child climbs down from her mother's knee and clambers up onto Tom. He holds her wordlessly, trying to imprint everything about her: the smell of her hair, the softness of her skin, the shape of her tiny fingers, the sound of her breath as she puts her face so close to his.
The island swims away from them, fading into an ever more miniature version of itself, until it is just a flash of memory, held differently, imperfectly by each passenger. Tom watches Isabel, waits for her to return his glance, longs for her to give him one of the old smiles that used to remind him of Janus Light – a fixed, reliable point in the world, which meant he was never lost. But the flame has gone out – her face seems uninhabited now. ~ M. L. Stedman - The Light Between Oceans

Corran: "I thought Commander Antilles was in that TIE. I mean it had to be someone as good as him to get you three"
Nawara: "Apparently he is that good"
Rhysati: "He flew circles around me"
Ooryl: "At least you saw him. He caught Ooryl as Ooryl fixed on his wingman. Ooryl is free hydrogen in simspace. That man is very good."
Corran: "Sure, but who is he?"
Rhysati: "What difference does it make who he is?"
Corran: "Rhys, he shot up three of our best pilots, had me dead in space, and he says he's a bit RUSTY! ~ Michael A. Stackpole

Fear had absorbed her completely and remained there, fixed, tenacious, almost corporeal, as if it were some invisible person who had made up his mind not to leave the room. And the most upsetting part was that the fear had no justification at all, that it was a unique fear, without any reason, a fear just because. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

My big rattler was old, and had led too easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probably lived there for years, with a fat prairie-dog for breakfast whenever he felt like it, a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot that the world doesn't owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size, in fighting trim, would be more than any boy could handle. So in reality it was a mock adventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, as it probably was for many a dragon-slayer. ~ Willa Cather

We do not seek the unanimity that comes to those who water down all issues to the lowest common denominator - or to those who conceal their differences behind fixed smiles - or to those who measure unity by standards of popularity and affection, instead of trust and respect. We are allies. This is a partnership, not an empire. We are bound to have differences and disappointments - and we are equally bound to bring them out into the open, to settle them where they can be settled, and to respect each other's views when they cannot be settled. ~ John F. Kennedy

Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule ~ Donald A. Norman

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur. ~ Edward O. Sisson

O that we had, to make our woes more public,
Seas in our eyes, and brazen tongues by nature,
A yelling voice, and hearts composed of sorrow,
Breath made of flames, wits knowing naught but damage,
Our sports murd'ring ourselves, our musics wailing,
Our studies fixed upon the falls of fortune. ~ Philip Sidney

But if you haven't figured it out by now, then let me assure you, Lula - nobody's normal. And pretty much everybody you meet in life is trying to figure out how to be a so-called 'normal person'. As if it's some fixed point that you reach, like zero degrees Celsius. But everybody's just who they are. Weird, flawed, good at some things, bad at others. There's no single person who's doing everything right all the time. Trust me on that. There is no such thing as normal" -Sam ~ Meagan Brothers

But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus this so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life. ~ William Carlos Williams

Fixed mind-set individuals dread any sort of failure because to them it's a negative reflection on their abilities, which are immutable. Because of this, they devote a lot of effort to trying to look smart and avoiding looking stupid - they won't engage in situations where they can fail, especially publicly. ~ Rajat Paharia

We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited. ~ Alfred Adler

I need to buy some postcards to send to Mom and Dad,' said Ian, heading up the steas to the Captain's Quill Bookshop. 'I also want to send some funny ones to Jackson and some of my other friends.'
'I'll get one for my mom,' said Zoe.
But as she sorted through the postcards, she remembered her mom was travling all summer without a fixed address, and email was a no-go because Granddad didn't own a computer. She didn't have the addresses of any of her friends with her, either-not that she had many friends. ~ Christine Brodien-Jones

The world doesn't need to be fixed,it only needs to be balanced.And the art of balance demands you tread lightly,not leap ahead in a continual frenzy.The art of balance demands you know your designated role in the game of life,not start muscling in on everyone else's.The art of balance demands knowledge of timelessness,of birth and death and rebirth.The art of balance demands you know the world cannot be fixed it must be endured. It must simply forever be kept in a splendid play. ~ Tarun J. Tejpal

It seems to me that being the right size for your world
and knowing that both you and your world are not by any means fixed dimensions
is a valuable clue to learning how to live. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Kindness is not a fixed trait that we either have or lack, but more like a muscle that can be developed and strengthened. ~ Sharon Salzberg