Abstract Imaginings Quotes

Love is like that, fragile and light. No wonder it rests upon our hearts in intangible moments, bids us follow fleeting thoughts and ideas and pursue our abstract imaginings. ~ Belinda Jeffrey

That image - of a little child being suffocated, or almost suffocated, by others who thought the whole thing was a game - melded with the furtive nocturnal slugs, and my solitary pacing and singing, and the separate, claustrophobic stairway, and the charmless abstract painting, and the gold-framed mirror, and the slithery green satin bedspread, and became inseperable from them. It wasn't a cheerful composite. As a memory, it is more like a fog bank than a sunlit meadow.
Yet I think of that period as having been a happy time in my life.
Happy is the wrong word. Important. ~ Margaret Atwood

Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. ~ Kahlil Gibran

I think that magic, at its root, is a very abstract notion. There's no real, approved definition. And, in that sense, it's like love; you can only see magic by the effect it has on people. ~ Drummond Money-Coutts

History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody's own vacancy. ~ Robert Smithson

By his own assessment, he was no genius. He had "no great quickness of apprehension or wit" or "power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought." On the many occasions when I share those feelings, I find it encouraging to review those words because that Englishman did okay for himself - his name was Charles Darwin. ~ Leonard Mlodinow

It is after these rare calls that I experience the only moments of depression from which I ever suffer, and then I am angry at myself, a well-nourished person, for allowing even a single precious hour of life to be spoil: by anything so indifferent. That is the worst of being fed enough, and clothed enough, and warmed enough, and of having everything you can reasonably desire - on the least provocation you are made uncomfortable and unhappy by such abstract discomforts as being shut out from a nearer approach to your neighbour's soul; which is on the face of it foolish, the probability being that he hasn't got one. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation. ~ Alexander Herzen

There are two sides to life for every individual: a personal life, in which his freedom exists in proportion to the abstract nature of his interests, and an elemental life within the swarm of humanity, in which a man inevitably follows laws laid down for him. ~ Leo Tolstoy

If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered, in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form which was added to external things without changing anything in their nature. And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder - naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Not all doors open in the same direction and with the same effort! ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Such altruism, generated in the seclusion of one's own thoughts, becomes a subtle means of evading concrete inter-personal responsibility and of justifying to oneself a life of peaceful uninvolved isolation from others. We proclaim to ourselves our love and compassion for such abstract entities as 'humanity' or 'all sentient beings' in order to avoid having to love any one person. ~ Stephen Batchelor

Hope isn't an abstract theory about where human aspirations end and the impossible begins; it's a never-ending experiment, continually expanding the boundaries of the possible. ~ Paul Rogat Loeb

Scientific education is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the world, in which the individual, as a merely marginal phenomenon, plays no role. The individual, however, as an irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality, the concrete man as opposed to the unreal ideal or "normal" man to whom the scientific statements refer. ~ C. G. Jung

We value apology in the abstract, but turn our backs on it in practice. ~ John Kador

They had managed to convert their wealth, which had originally been in the form of factories or stores or other demanding enterprises, into a form so liquid and abstract, negotiable representations of money on paper, that there were few reminders coming from anywhere that they might be responsible for anyone outside their own circle of friends and relatives. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I loved surrealism and abstract painting, and anything related to those. I always thought painting was the highest form of art. What led me to drawing was seeing so much self-important, pretentious, conceptual-type art in university. I wanted to reject that by making quick, fun art. ~ Neil Farber

He believed in mission. But . . . he did not believe in it as an intellectual imperative, or even as a professional standard. Mission . . . was an abstract notion that took meaning in concrete situations. ~ Tim O'Brien

General abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings; without it, man is blind; it is the eye of reason. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We don't treat each other very well, I suppose. Even from the start. It was as though we had the seven-year itch the day we met. The day she went into a coma, I heard her telling her friend Shelley that I was useless, that I leave my socks hanging on every doorknob in the house. At weddings we roll our eyes at the burgeoning love around us, the vows that we know will morph into new kinds of promises: I vow not to kiss you when you're trying to read. I will tolerate you in sickness and ignore you in health. I promise to let you watch that stupid news show about celebrities, since you're so disenchanted with your own life.

Joanie and I were urged by her brother, Barry, to subject ourselves to counseling as a decent couple would. Barry is a man of the couch, a believer in weekly therapy, affirmations, and pulse points. Once he tried to show us exercises he'd been doing in session with his girlfriend. We were instructed to trade reasons, abstract or specific, why we stayed with each other. I started off by saying that Joanie would get drunk and pretend I was someone else and do this neat thing with her tongue. Joanie said tax breaks. Barry cried. Openly. His second wife had recently left him for someone who understood that a man didn't do volunteer work. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

And so on, until you arrive at the other side, among the purely abstract self-harming: the grinding over your failures, the refusal to remember anything good, the determination to ensure - if anyone falls into the mistake of making it clear they actually like you - that the next time round they change their opinion pronto. Emotional self-cannibalism, in other words, like those tessellated pictures of a person grappling with a mirror image of himself. ~ Alexander Masters

Genuine trust involves allowing another to matter and have an impact in our lives. For that reason, many who hate and do battle with God trust Him more deeply than those whose complacent faith permits an abstract and motionless stance before Him. Those who trust God most are those whose faith permits them to risk wrestling with Him over the deepest questions of life. Good hearts are captured in a divine wrestling match; fearful, doubting hearts stay clear of the mat. ~ Dan B. Allender

Intolerance is a form of divided consciousness in which abstract, conceptual, ideological hatred vanquishes concrete, real and individual moments of identification. ~ Michael Ignatieff

If statistical reality is the only one, then that is the sole authority. There is then only one condition, and since no contrary condition exists, judgment and decision are not only superfluous but impossible. Then the individual is bound to be a function of statistics and hence a function of the State or whatever the abstract principle of order may be called. ~ C. G. Jung

I can't actually explain why my lines got shorter, but they did. Just as I can't explain why my early poems were 'all image' and my current ones are relatively abstract. The sense of the line changed with the theme, somehow my ear (or brain or heart/mind) fell in love with a short line and very very simple words. ~ Gregory Orr

Where then is this self, if it is neither in the body nor the soul? And how can one love the body or the soul except for the sake of such qualities, which are not what makes up the self, since they are perishable? Would we love the substance of a person's soul, in the abstract, whatever qualities might be in it? That is not possible, and it would be wrong. Therefore we never love anyone, but only qualities. ~ Blaise Pascal

To really be on stage and not know what you're going to say, and to be able to say something that makes people laugh, or do something that's sort of abstract or off the beaten path and have people connect to it by just putting your ideas together, that really makes me happy. ~ Mary Lynn Rajskub

The most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge. ~ Lev Vygotsky

I love her with all my soul. Why, she is a child! She's a child now - a real child. Oh! you know nothing about it at all, I see."

"And are you assured, at the same time, that you love Aglaya too?"

"Yes - yes - oh; yes!"

"How so? Do you want to make out that you love them BOTH?"

"Yes - yes - both! I do!"

"Excuse me, prince, but think what you are saying! Recollect yourself!"

"Without Aglaya - I - I MUST see Aglaya! - I shall die in my sleep very soon - I thought I was dying in my sleep last night. Oh! if Aglaya only knew all - I mean really, REALLY all! Because she must know ALL - that's the first condition towards understanding. Why cannot we ever know all about another, especially when that other has been guilty? But I don't know what I'm talking about - I'm so confused. You pained me so dreadfully. Surely - surely Aglaya has not the same expression now as she had at the moment when she ran away? Oh, yes! I am guilty and I know it - I know it! Probably I am in fault all round - I don't quite know how - but I am in fault, no doubt. There is something else, but I cannot explain it to you, Evgenie Pavlovitch. I have no words; but Aglaya will understand. I have always believed Aglaya will understand - I am assured she will."

"No, prince, she will not. Aglaya loved like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince? The most p ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The world is moving into a phase when landscape design may well be recognized as the most comprehensive of the arts. Man creates around him an environment that is a projection into nature of his abstract ideas. It is only in the present century that the collective landscape has emerged as a social necessity. We are promoting a landscape art on a scale never conceived of in history (Geoffrey Jellicoe, Landscape of man) ~ Tom Turner

The real determinant of society is hidden behind the state and the economy: it is the way in which our everyday activity is organised, the subordination of our doing to the dictates of abstract labour, that is, of value, money, profit. It is this abstraction which is, after all, the very existence of the state. If we want to change society, we must stop the subordination of our activity to abstract labour, do something else. ~ John Holloway

This tired abstract anger; inarticulate passive opposition; always the same thing in dublin ~ Samuel Beckett

The level on which Japan seems to have picked up on my music seems to be on a more abstract level. ~ James Blake

Explain yourself!" he commanded.
"Isn't that rather much for a man to ask of a woman?"
"I don't know. I have no experience of women. In the abstract, it seems to me that every man has a
right to some explanation from the woman who has ruined his life." (page 90) ~ Max Beerbohm

The source of so much of my anxiety in life and the tensions in my relationship is my anxiety about my kid. It's all very abstract and unfounded and ungrounded. ~ Lisa Cholodenko

We must praise God or live in unreality and poverty. We cannot merely believe in our minds that he is loving or wise or great. We must praise him for those things - and praise him to others - if we are to move beyond abstract knowledge to heart-changing engagement. ~ Timothy Keller

So long as the paternal plan to make a State functionary contradicted my own inclinations only in the abstract, the conflict was easy to bear. ~ Adolf Hitler

judgment is the most important faculty we have. An animal, or a man, may get on very well without 'abstract attitude' but will speedily perish if deprived of judgment. Judgment must be the first faculty of higher life or mind - yet it is ignored, or misinterpreted, by classical (computational) neurology. And if we wonder how such an absurdity can arise, we find it in the assumptions, or the evolution, of neurology itself. ~ Oliver Sacks

Lenin thought abstract art was a conspiracy by the bourgeois to demoralize the proletariat. Yeah, socialist realism! ~ Carl Andre

'Environment' is not an abstract concern, or simply a matter of aesthetics, or of personal taste - although it can and should involve these as well. Man is shaped to a great extent by his surroundings. Our physical nature, our mental health, our culture and institutions, our opportunities for challenge and fulfillment, our very survival - all of these are directly related to and affected by the environment in which we live. They depend upon the continued healthy functioning of the natural systems of the Earth. ~ Richard M. Nixon

Meme A term introduced by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins defined memes as small cultural units of transmission, analogous to genes, which are spread from person to person by copying or imitation. Examples of memes in his pioneering essay include cultural artifacts such as melodies, catchphrases, and clothing fashions, as well as abstract beliefs. Like genes, memes are defined as replicators that undergo variation, competition, selection, and retention. At any given moment, many memes are competing for the attention of hosts; however, only memes suited to their sociocultural environment spread successfully, while others become extinct. ~ Limor Shifman

I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abstract ideas about them and more and more exactly to let them be physically uniquely themselves. This means for me: knowing more and more not what I think a sound is but what it actually is in all of its acoustical details and then letting this sound exist, itself, changing in a changing sonorous environment. ~ John Cage

I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum, alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory, merging the practical with the academic. ~ James Dyson

Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings. ~ Idries Shah

The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on! ~ LeRoy Neiman

I wanted to weep. Everywhere I went, it seemed that people wanted to discuss slavery, yet they talked about it as if it was an abstract concept. It wasn't abstract to me. Slaves were real-life people with individual faces and souls. I knew some of those faces, loved some of those souls, and it broke my heart to be reminded of the truth about them - that Josiah and Tessie weren't allowed to be man and wife; that Grady had been torn without warning from his mother's arms; that Eli could be whipped for secretly preaching about Jesus in the pine grove or killed for knowing how to read. ~ Lynn Austin

Woman in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It's a bit like falling in love -- that terrifying realization that your fate is linked to someone else's, that you are no longer your own. But isn't that closer to the truth anyway? Our fates are linked, to each other, to the places where we are, and everyone and everything that lives in them. How much more real my responsibility feels when I think about it this way! This is much more than just an abstract understanding that our survival is threatened by global warming, or even a cerebral appreciation for other living beings and systems. Instead this is an urgent, personal recognition that my emotional and physical survival are bound up with theses 'strangers', not just now, but for life. ~ Jenny Odell