Obscured Quotes

Naturally, when life's lessons knock at the door of our life, happiness can be momentarily obscured. ~ Michael Beckwith

What distinguishes a technological world is that the terms of nature are obscured; one need not live quite in the present or the local. ~ Rebecca Solnit

The culture of a given time and place is a product of inherited tradition, of the recovery of lost or obscured forms of thought, of innovation. Such seeds, fertilized by prosperity, tended by leisure, and warmed by the sun of peace, may produce an abundant bloom. ~ Morris Bishop

The realities of motherhood are often obscured by a halo of illusions. The future mother tends to fantasize about love and happiness and overlooks the other aspects of child-rearing: the exhaustion, frustration, loneliness, and even depression, with its attendant state of guilt. ~ Elisabeth Badinter

Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is.
They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need ~ Aldous Huxley

[T]he recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing is to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. ~ Oscar Wilde

What you must realize, what you must even come to praise, is the fact that there is no right way that is going to become apparent to you once and for all. The most blinding illumination that strikes and perhaps radically changes your life will be so attenuated and obscured by doubts and dailiness that you may one day come to suspect the truth of that moment at all. The calling that seemed so clear will be lost in echoes of questionings and indecision; the church that seemed to save you will fester with egos, complacencies, banalities; the deepest love of your life will work itself like a thorn in your heart until all you can think of is plucking it out. Wisdom is accepting the truth of this. Courage is persisting with life in spite of it. And faith is finding yourself, in the deepest part of your soul, in the very heart of who you are, moved to praise it. ~ Christian Wiman

However, the daily life of the slaves in the South, as observed by many travelers, was obscured for all time by the relentless promotion of a single book, Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Even today, any black who dares to say that perhaps we are not as badly off as our brethren in the jungles of Africa is hooted down as an "Uncle Tom." [ ... ] It was no accident that Harriet Beecher Stowe's book became the greatest best seller of its time - it was tirelessly promoted throughout the entire nation, in the most successful book promotion campaign in our history. ~ Eustace Mullins

Through systematic meditation one can awaken the third eye and touch the cosmic awareness. Sushumna nadi is the subtle pathway in the spinal cord which passes through the main psychic centers. The awakening of these centers means a gradual expansion of awareness, until it reaches the cosmic awareness. Each center has its own beauty and gracefulness. Through generations of ignorance and unconsciousness, this channel of awareness becomes obscured and hidden. Meditation is to become aware about this internal life energy. Meditation is the procedure to rearrange, harmonize, activate, and integrate the individual life energy with the cosmic life energy. ~ Amit Ray

Eventually, I developed my own image of teh "befriending" impulse behind my depression. Imagine that from early in my life, a friendly figure, standing a block away, was trying to get my attention by shouting my name, wanting to teach me some hard but healing truths about myself. But I-- fearful of what I might hear or arrogantly trying to live wihtout help or simply too busy with my ideas and ego and ethics to bother-- ignored teh shouts and walked away.

So this figure, still with friendly intent, came closer and shouted more loudly, but AI kept walking. Ever closer it came, close enough to tap me on the shoulder, but I walked on. Frustrated by my unresponsiveness, the figure threw stones at my back, then struck me with a stick, still wanting simply to get my attention. But despite teh pain, I kept walking away.

Over teh years, teh befriending intent of this figure never disapppeared but became obscured by the frustration cuased by my refusal to turn around. Since shouts and taps, stones and sticks had failed to do the trick, there was only one thing left: drop the nuclear bomb called depression on me, not with the intent to kill but as a last-ditch effort to get me to turn and ask the simple question, "What do you want?" When I was finally able to make the turn-- and start to absorb and act on the self-knowledge that then became available to me-- I began to get well.

The figure calling to me all those years was, I believe, what Thomas Merto ~ Parker J. Palmer

He carried with him, obscured by only the lightest of veils, the awareness that a door was open and that one quick step could carry him to freedom whenever he chose. ~ Hermann Hesse

Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable? One symbol, indeed, has obscured all others
the minted round of metal. And one may safely say that, of all the ages since a coin first became the symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's contentment. ~ George Gissing

So quiet and subtle is the beauty of December that escapes the notice of many people their whole lives through.. Colour gives way to form. every branch distinct, in a delicate tracery against the sky.. new vistas obscured all Summer by leafage, now open up. ~ Flora Thompson

The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music. ~ W. H. Auden

For what, after all, is the difference between a memory and a fantasy? Are not both a succession of imprecisely rendered images further obscured by imprecisely chosen words and animated only by the wistful effort of one's imagination? And who is to say that a vividly imagined moment of happiness is not, in the end, more enriching to the spirit than a hazy semi-recollection of some pallid pastime? ~ Olga Grushin

How often has an inspired notion been misinterpreted and obscured by later scribes and interpreters … who then created stodgy traditions and rigid dogmas? This happens to religions, cultures and teachings and, as we will see, to individuals on their own interpretations of what is true or not. From the trivial to the profound, opinions have their say, and short sighted viewpoints have their sway. Fanatics have been shortened to fans. It is always good to know the origins of words, ideas and beliefs. ~ Stephen Poplin

Behind the door was where bad things happen. No matter how many blankets I used or extra pairs of panties I wore. None of it mattered. The monster always came. His face obscured in the shadows, partially hidden behind the cloak rack. Hot breath breathing over my face as soon as I closed my eyes. ~ Hannah Baston

George Pocock learned much about the hearts and souls of young men. He learned to see hope where a boy thought there was no hope, to see skill where skill was obscured by ego or by anxiety. He observed the fragility of confidence and the redemptive power of trust. ~ Daniel James Brown

How has it happened that we've lost sight of this ancient woman shaman and what she represents? For despite the proof of language and artifacts, despite pictorial representations, ethnographic narratives, and eyewitness accounts, the importance - no, the primacy - of women in shamanic traditions has been obscured and denied. ~ Barbara Tedlock

Very great personages are not likely to form very just estimates either of others or of themselves; their knowledge of themselves is obscured by the flattery of others; their knowledge of others is equally clouded by circumstances peculiar to themselves. For in the presence of the great, the modest are sure to suffer from too much diffidence, and the confident from too much display. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Something really big happened in the world's wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I'm always struck that Facebook , Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago. ~ Thomas Friedman

What it love, you ask. Dear child, love is like the light and there are two kinds, the bursting fireworks of the moment and the solid, fixed stars that sometimes become obscured in the heavens, but are always there, year after year, for a lifetime. You must experience the first in order to appreciate the second. ~ Ann Rinaldi

If all the Bibles in America were simultaneously dusted, the sun would be obscured for a week. It's not a magic talisman that works without being read. A Bible does us no harm as long as it remains closed. ~ Randy Alcorn

There is no chain of philosophical reasoning or method of philosophical enquiry through which we can arrive at the truths of faith as conclusions. But once by faith we have acknowledged those truths we are able to understand why there is good reason to acknowledge them. This, as he was to argue a little later, is because of the effects of sin on the human mind. It is "because human minds are obscured by familiarity with darkness, which covers them in a night of sins and bad habits, and are unable to perceive with the clarity and purity proper to reason" that authority has been provided to bring "the faltering eye into the light of truth" (De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 31.2.31). ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

The ambition which he felt astir at times in the darkness of his soul sought no outlet. A dusk like that of the outer world obscured his mind as he heard the mare's hoofs clattering along the tramtrack on the Rock Road and the great can swaying and rattling behind him. ~ James Joyce

Philip obliged, opening his left hand, palm upwards, and forcing his energy into the creation of an orb of light, formed, tangible, and alive. The small suns Philip could create out of nothing, were miniatures of the original, with molten plasma lying almost invisible at their cores, obscured by the bright rays of light emitted from them, making them seem harmless. ~ D.M. Enslin

We were quite naturally unhappy; feeling a definite need, unbearably keen at moments, which was never to be satisfied. But that was recognizable pain, and the sharp pang grew to be almost welcome in the midst of the sultry and opaque life which was not felt, had nothing real in it, and yet swam about us, and choked us and blinded us. All these tears and groans, reproaches and protestations of affection, high talk of duty and work and living for others, were doubtless what we should feel if we felt properly, and yet we had but a dull sense of gloom which could not honestly be referred to the dead; unfortunately it did not quicken our feeling for the living; but hideous as it was, obscured both living and dead; and for long did unpardonable mischief by substituting for the shape of a true and most vivid mother, nothing better than an unlovable phantom. ~ Virginia Woolf

If anything could be a book, there was no telling what you could learn, if you knew what to look for. Smooth river stones spelled out across a mossy floor. Lines drawn in the sand. Or inscribed on the side of a fallen log, half-obscured by twigs and mulch: This is a book. ~ Traci Chee

In the picture, Ava Gardner's tousled black hair obscured her right eye, and her full, closed lips were pulled slightly to the right, resulting in something less than a smile. They looked as if they'd been smeared shut with red paint, though the photo was in black and white. It wasn't so much a fuck-me face as a I've-been-there-and-back look, the kind of expression you see only on the most expensive whores. ~ Barry Gifford

I think long and carefully about what novels ought to do. They should clarify the roles that have become obscured; they ought to identify those things in the past that are useful and those things that are not; and they ought to give nourishment. ~ Toni Morrison

Quality is better seen up at the timberline than here obscured by smoky windows and oceans of words, and he sees that what he is talking about can never really be accepted here because to see it one has to be free of social authority and this is an institution of social authority. Quality for sheep is what the shepherd says. And if you take a sheep and put it up at the timberline at night when the wind is roaring, that sheep will be panicked half to death and will call and call until the shepherd comes, or comes the wolf. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

What say you, can you love the gentleman?
This night you shall behold him at our feast.
Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content;
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less. ~ William Shakespeare

In regard to the past, where contemplation is not obscured by desire and the need for action, we see, more clearly than in the lives about us, the value for good and evil, of the aims men have pursued and the means they have adopted. It is good, from time to time, to view the present as already past, and to examine what elements it contains that will add to the world's store of permanent possessions, that will live and give life when we and all our generation have perished. ~ Bertrand Russell

Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality. ~ Wallace Stegner

That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come - watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart -

'My daughter, flee temptation.'

'Mother, I will.'

So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. ~ Charlotte Bronte

The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette, and resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window, took another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This left the room in a twilight. This done, he returned with an easier air to the table and his meal. The poor soul's had an accident or an operation ~ H.G.Wells

There is no rationality in the Nazi hatred: it is hate that is not in us, it is outside of man.. We cannot understand it, but we must understand from where it springs, and we must be on our guard. If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again. Consciences can be seduced and obscured again - even our consciences. For this reason, it is everyone duty to reflect on what happened. Everybody must know, or remember, that when Hitler and Mussolini spoke in public, they were believed, applauded, admired, adored like gods. They were "charismatic leaders" ; they possessed a secret power of seduction that did not proceed from the soundness of things they said but from the suggestive way in which they said them, from their eloquence, from their histrionic art, perhaps instinctive, perhaps patiently learned and practised. The ideas they proclaimed were not always the same and were, in general, aberrant or silly or cruel. And yet they were acclaimed with hosannas and followed to the death by millions of the faithful. ~ Primo Levi

The gorgeous breathlessness and thrilling pulse
those are sensations that the years have layered on top of the initial emptiness, like sheet after sheet of silk covering a bare table. More than fifty years later I can only see the cloth; the table has been obscured. ~ Tash

It is always a sad thing to understand those who were once obscured by the mystery and intangibility of the thoughtlessly loved. ~ Howard Spring

So much was lost - names, faces, ages, ethnic identities - that African Americans must do what no other ethnic group writ large must do: take a completely shattered vessel and piece it together, knowing that some pieces will never be recovered. This is not quite as harrowing or hopeless as it might sound I liken it to the Japanese art of kintsugi, repairing broken vessels using gold. The scars of the object are not concealed, but highlighted and embraced, thus giving them their own dignity and power. The brokenness and its subsequent repair are a recognized part of the story of the journey of the vessel, not to be obscured, and change, transition, and transformation are seen as important as honoring the original structure and its traditional meaning and beauty. ~ Michael W. Twitty

Religion is not a fractional thing that can be doled out in fixed weekly or daily measures as one among various subjects in the school syllabus. It is the truth of our complete being, the consciousness of our personal relationship with the infinite; it is the true center of gravity of our life. This we can attain during our childhood by daily living in a place where the truth of the spiritual world is not obscured by a crowd of necessities assuming artificial importance; where life is simple, surrounded by fullness of leisure, by ample space and pure air and profound peace of nature; and where men live with a perfect faith in the eternal life before them. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Yes, in the obscured sky a moon does float, newly, a wishing moon, a sliver of ancient rock, a goddess, a wink. ~ Margaret Atwood

Idolatry, especially that of the body, is for Athanasius a kind of barometer, measuring the perversity into which humans have fallen, the degree to which their knowledge of God has been lost, and the extent to which the image of God in them obscured, the consequence of which is corruption and death. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

When we want something that bad, it's easy to mistake what we truly need for the thing we really want. When this sort of thing happens, and it seems to happen to everyone, I've found it's because what God has for us is obscured from view, just around another bend in the road. ~ Bob Goff

As if the weather knew the calendar the last day of August broke with a hard killing frost. Where the sun fell the world spangled, autumn arriving in glacial brilliance, almost suggesting snow over the grass and low shrubbery. Where the sun has not yet struck it was ghostly, a pewter finish over the sagging grass and wilted goldenrod stems. The pods of milkweed were brittle and broke open to release their slight spherical webs of seed onto any straggle of breeze. Smoke streamed white straight up from chimney tops and mist obscured the lake, hanging in sheets of cold vapor that disintegrated slowly from the top down as the sun came over the hills. A third-quarter moon hung against the endless fathoms of a colbalt heaven, the moon a quartzite river stone. ~ Jeffrey Lent

Sometimes, we supposedly grown-up people are as blind as newborn kittens. Our vision is inevitably obscured by someone else's negative experience – an unwanted opinion, the moralising of both those close to us and indifferent strangers – and we are prevented from seeing the shortest and straightest road to the unlimited happiness put aside for us by a higher power. ~ Victoria Sobolev

...it is essential that we make an important distinction between issues of politics and problems in psychology. We should see this as a distinction between what we do in order to influence the political and economic relations in the society and what, in a more personal way, we do to achieve self-knowledge and identity. Now I do not think that these are hard and fast categories that totally exclude one another. A just society certainly encourages a healthy psychology, and individuals can find personal fulfillment through political involvement. But I think we must make this distinction, because in periods of great social upheaval--and we are living through such a period--there is a tendency to politicize all things, including scholarship, art, friendship, and love. The most extreme form of this total politicization is totalitarianism, a stage we have not yet reached. But even a moderate form of it can be dangerous since it can lead to a politics so preoccupied with psychological issues that the goals of political action are obscured and even rendered unobtainable. ~ Bayard Rustin

Meditate upon the Knowledge and Bliss Eternal , and you will also have bliss. The Bliss indeed is eternal, only it is covered and obscured by ignorance. The less your attachment is towards the senses, the more will be your love towards God . ~ Ramakrishna

This commitment to truth is something one senses more and more Americans yearning for, just as they are becoming more and more sophisticated at knowing when the truth is being obscured - an irony that seems to elude most of today's elected officials. ~ Michael Musto

When the Sun Clearest shineth Serenest in the heaven, Quickly are obscured All over the earth Other stars. ~ Alfred The Great

One thing I love about politicians; they won't allow the truth to be obscured by a bunch of facts. ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

When the symbols are 'public' they usually act in an oblique manner, revealing themselves as archetypal symbols, which though familiar, have their central meanings obscured as is usual in esoteric imagery. ~ Kenneth Coutts-Smith

I see a lot of movies. I love films as a spectator, and that's never obscured by the part of me that does the work myself. I just love going to the movies. ~ Daniel Day-Lewis

Plato said: 'He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration in the belief that craftmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.' ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The Nelazan believed that there was beauty in darkness, and that the daylight was more profane. They saw the stars as the Thousand Eyes of Trell watching them. The sun was the single, jealous eye of Trell's brother, Nalt. Since Nalt only had one eye, he made it blaze brightly to outshine his brother. The Nelazan, however, were not impressed, and preferred to worship the quiet Trell, who watched over them even when Nalt obscured the sky. ~ Brandon Sanderson

We learn
that all life
is scarce yet abundant.
Profane yet
sacred.
Loving
yet hateful.
Enlightened
yet obscured.
Isolated yet
collective.
That life is
somehow derived from love. ~ A.P. Sweet

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death's bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps. ~ Hart Crane

When you are isolated and obscured, your achievements may be wonderful but unknown. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Why are we so desperate to escape the material world? Is it really so bleak? Or could it be, rather, that we have made it bleak: obscured its vibrant mystery with our ideological blinders, severed its infinite connectedness with our categories, suppressed its spontaneous order with our pavement, reduced its infinite variety with our commodities, shattered its eternity with our time-keeping, and denied its abundance with our money system? ~ Charles Eisenstein

Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer, there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the face of death, especially violent death, things don't make sense anymore. So death is the dissolution of either physical form or psychological form. And when a form dissolves, always something shines through that had been obscured by the form. This is the formless One Life, the formless One Consciousness. ~ Eckhart Tolle

The intelligence that shaped the universe, shaped you. There is an inner part of us, for ever obscured, for ever mysterious, which is most alive during the process of composition. And that inner part, that inner glow, is timeless, and it functions beyond time. It drinks from deep waters. It has the stillness and the dance and the radiance of firmament. When one is most absorbed in the act of creation one almost feels that one is wandering in the great corridors of all minds. Creativity makes us part of it all. ~ Ben Okri

It's tucked away in a quiet corner, shadowed and obscured, no part of the Nightside's usual bright gaudy neon noir. It doesn't advertise and it doesn't care if you habitually pass by on the other side. It's just there for when you need it. Dedicated to the patron saint of lost causes, St. Jude's is an old old place ... St. Jude's isn't a place for comfort for frills and fancies and the trappings of religion. just a place where you can talk to your god and sometimes get an answer. ~ Simon R. Green

The truth of faith is a slender, glowing element that runs through even the seemingly ordinary and undramatic moments of existence. Even at low intensity, it is a steady source of illumination. Such religious truth is powerful even when it seems faint, even when it seems obscured by the larger events of history. ~ Eugene Kennedy

In many patriarchies, language, as well as cultural tradition, reserve the human condition for the male. With the Indo-European languages this is a nearly inescapable habit of mind, for despite all the customary pretense that 'man' and 'humanity' are terms which apply equally to both sexes, the fact is hardly obscured that in practice, general application favors the male far more often than the female as referent, or even sole referent, for such designations. ~ Kate Millett

English was so heavy, so desiccated and hardened by meaning, by pain and anger and even the jests and the petty quibbles, everything under the sun that obscured the basic truth. But the sound of his voice as he spoke to her now, she heard the wind in it, the stillness of the night. Stars above. The things that had kept her going. Always in her memory they had been there. ~ Meredith Duran

Every Christian who struggles with depression struggles to keep their hope clear. There is nothing wrong with the object of their hope - Jesus Christ is not defective in any way whatsoever. But the view from the struggling Christian's heart of their objective hope could be obscured by disease and pain, the pressures of life, and by Satanic fiery darts shot against them ... All discouragement and depression is related to the obscuring of our hope, and we need to get those clouds out of the way and fight like crazy to see clearly how precious Christ is. ~ John Piper

It is not pleasant to experience decay, to find yourself exposed to the ravages of an almost daily rain, and to know that you are turning into something feeble, that more and more of you will blow off with the first strong wind, making you less and less. Some people accumulate more emotional rust than others. Depression starts out insipid, fogs the days into a dull color, weakens ordinary actions until their clear shapes are obscured by the effort they require, leaves you tired and bored and self-obsessed- but you can get through all that. No happily, perhaps, but you can get through. No one has ever been able to define the collapse point that marks major depression, but when you get there, there's not much mistaking it. ~ Andrew Solomon

I now believe that fears are not born of darkness; rather, fears are like the stars
always there, but obscured by the glare of daylight. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart. ~ Margaret Chase Smith

Our exclusive dependence on rational thought and language has obscured our natural ability to sense the flow of energy. ~ Ilchi Lee

It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain. Without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such a state, were but a fallacy in nature; unsatisfied considerators would quarrel the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower; whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures, and, being framed below the circumference of these hopes, or cognition of better being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment: but the superior ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all present felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able at last to tell us, we are more than our present selves, and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own accomplishments. ~ Thomas Browne

The most recent phase of the alternation between Occidentalism and primitivism has therefore concealed the essential thing, the universality of violence. A selective blindness in one of two forms has obscured the fact that all cultures, and all individuals without exception, participate in violence; that violence is what structures our collective sense of belonging and our personal identities. ~ Rene Girard

Why was he alive on Earth? Very often the meaning was obscured. Very often it required some digging. The meaning of his life was an elusive stream of water hundreds of feet below the surface, and he would periodically drop a bucket down the well, fill it, bring it up and drink from it. But this did not sustain him for long. ~ Dave Eggers

Hymn
At morn- at noon- at twilight dim-
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe- in good and ill-
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;
Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine! ~ Edgar Allan Poe

It might have been like someone vomiting, but before the liquid got all the way to the top and fully obscured the vocal cords. It was without a doubt mucousy, like damaged tissue sloughing free, egg sacs ripping; gluten, bile, chyme, and vanilla custard being dumped and sloshed in a ten-gallon bucket and the flappety-blapping of gasses ripping free from bloated corpses. ~ Sunday Williams

Tao is obscured when men understand only one pair of opposites, or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being. Then clear expression also becomes muddled by mere wordplay, affirming this one aspect and denying all the rest. The pivot of Tao passes through the center where all affirmations and denials converge. He who grasps the pivot is at the still-point from which all movements and oppositions can be seen in their right relationship ... Abandoning all thought of imposing a limit or taking sides, he rests in direct intuition. ~ Zhuangzi

The world seems almost physically wider when up to just now the
right-hand side was always obscured by the proximity of someone else;
and all of a sudden you stand there, astonished, in a wide
semi-circle: alone. ~ Robert Musil

An excellent conception can be quite obscured by faulty technical execution or clarified by faultless technique. ~ Edward Weston

The strongest among us are the ones who cry behind closed doors, have the ability to smile through silent pain, and fight battles that are obscured by shame. ~ A.L. Smith

The commandment, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself', is the strongest defence against human aggressiveness and an excellent example of the unpsychological [expectations] of the cultural super-ego. The commandment is impossible to fulfil; such an enormous inflation of love can only lower its value, not get rid of the difficulty. Civilization pays no attention to all this; it merely admonishes us that the harder it is to obey the precept the more meritorious it is to do so. But anyone who follows such a precept in present-day civilization only puts himself at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the person who disregards it. What a potent obstacle to civilization aggressiveness must be, if the defence against it can cause as much unhappiness as aggressiveness itself! 'Natural' ethics, as it is called, has nothing to offer here except the narcissistic satisfaction of being able to think oneself better than others. At this point the ethics based on religion introduces its promises of a better after-life. But so long as virtue is not rewarded here on earth, ethics will, I fancy, preach in vain. I too think it quite certain that a real change in the relations of human beings to possessions would be of more help in this direction than any ethical commands; but the recognition of this fact among socialists has been obscured and made useless for practical purposes by a fresh idealistic misconception of human nature. ~ Sigmund Freud

What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the unusual position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the duration. The characters have the trajectories now, while you just observe. And this stirs compassion that, in real life, is so often obscured by our own motives. ~ Tom Rachman

I wrenched the door out of my way―ridiculously eager―and there he was, my personal miracle.
Time had not made me immune to the perfection of his face, and I was sure that I would never take any aspect of him for granted. My eyes traced over his pale white features: the hard square of his jaw, the softer curve of his full lips―twisted up into a smile now, the straight line of his nose, the sharp angle of his cheekbones, the smooth marble span of his forehead―partially obscured by a tangle of rain-darkened bronze hair . . .
I saved his eyes for last, knowing that when I looked into them I was likely to lose my train of thought. They were wide, warm with liquid gold, and framed by a thick fringe of black lashes. Staring into his eyes always made me feel extraordinary―sort of like my bone were turning spongy. I was also a little lightheaded, but that could have been because I'd forgotten to keep breathing. Again. ~ Stephenie Meyer

If it is possible genuinely to meet and discover each other as persons, actually to empathize with and understand both the cultural beliefs and political views of each other –then I think the obscured future may be penetrated with some clear rays of light that we may realistically hope for a better world. ~ Carl Rogers

For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. ~ Oscar Wilde

There was no portion of land in the world with so contradictory a nature as the Highlands. Now it was a land of sunlit moors stained red with heather, knowing only the peace of the quiet sky and the heart-shaking beauty of the blue hills; now it was a harsh and awesome place where silent mists obscured the peaks and a bitter relentless rain came down from bitter skies, where an angry sea washed against the shore, and sullen clouds reflected in sullen gray lochs.
Scotland in the sun and Scotland in the rain ... ~ Jan Cox Speas

I think I'll say goodnight here," Jack said.
"My dad's not so bad."
"Oh yeah,he was great...right up until the time I started dating his daughter."
I'd seen how my dad had become considerably colder toward Jack. There were little clues,like the other evening when out of nowhere he told Jack about how every football player he went to high school with had gotten fat after graduation.We'd been talking about what to make for dinner.
"Okay," I said. "Maybe next time." I leaned over to peck him on the cheek, but he grabbed my face in both of his hands and kissed me. His breath tasted like the mints the chaperones had passed out when the dance was over, and when he parted his lips against mine, I shivered, but not because of the cold. I pressed against him even more and hoped the dark inside the car obscured my dad's view.
But I knew better than to push it.As I was about to break away,Jack put his hands behind my waist and pulled me even closer,practically lifting me over the center console,so I was sitting in his lap.
I pulled back. "My dad's going to love that-"
He put his finger over my lips, cutting me off. "Please don't talk about your dad when I'm kissing you. Besides, unless he's enacted a law against it-"
"Which he may well do after tonight," I interrupted.
He smiled and then brought my face to his again for a few moments before finally releasing me.
"After that kiss,we'd better dream of the same thing tonight," he said with ~ Brodi Ashton

There comes an inevitable time in every life when we must cross a threshold and encounter that invisible divider between who we are and who we must become. Sometimes, the passage is evident - a sudden catastrophe that tests our mettle, a tragic loss that opens our eyes to the bane of our mortality, or a personal triumph that instills in us the confidence we need to cast aside our fears. Other times, our passage is obscured by the minutiae of an overcrowded life until we catch it in a glimpse of forbidden desire; in an inexplicable sense of melancholic emptiness or a craving for more, always more, than what we already possess.

Sometimes we embrace the chance to embark on our passage, welcoming it as a chance to finally shed the adolescent skin and prove our worth against the incessant vagaries of fate. Other times, we rail against its unexpected cruelty, against the sharp thrust into a world we're not ready to explore, one we do not know or trust. For us, the past is a haven that we are loathe to depart, lest the future corrupt our soul.

Better not to change at all, rather than become someone we will not recognize. ~ C.W. Gortner

I feel sad when I realize how much truth is being changed or obscured in the American media. ~ Sharon Stone

He watched her for her reaction, or possibly watched her just to watch, his eyes hooded by his lashes and his mouth impassive. A faceless man - such as the one she had dreamed of since she was a child - his identity not obscured by mist or flying sand or swirling dust, but by a mask he readily employed whenever he wished. As a shutter closed against a gale. Closed against her, no matter the impact of his words. He seemed to speak them against his will, just as he seemed to care for her against his will. ~ V.S. Carnes

The emotions commanding him were similarly simple and straightforward. He feared what he could not understand, and he despised what he feared. But acknowledging fear did not make him a coward – for he had proclaimed for himself an eternal war against all that threatened him, be it a devious wife who had raised walls round her soul, or conspirators against the empire of Lether. His enemies, he well understood, were the true cowards. They thought within clouds that obscured all the harsh truths of the world. Their struggles to 'understand' led, inevitably, to seditious positions against authority. Even as they forgave the empire's enemies, they condemned the weaknesses of their own homeland – not recognizing that they themselves personified such weaknesses.

An empire such as Lether was ever under siege. (...) A siege, inside and out, yes – the very privileges the empire granted were exploited by those who would see the empire destroyed. And there could be no room for 'understanding' such people – they were evil, and evil must be expurgated. ~ Steven Erikson

While Annabel possessed the sylphid grace of a fairy-tale princess, unstudied and seemingly spontaneous, yet with a dreamy air, Willy presented a dramatic contrast: brash, brusque, heavy-jawed, with eyes that engaged too directly, and too often ironically. Willy's considerable charm was at first obscured, to the superficial eye, by a certain stolidity in her figure, as in her character. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

A gathering nimbus obscured the sun's light and out from the gathered clouds looped and coiled the guardian of the avian world. With a trail of inferno in her wake, it was Alicanto ~ Soroosh Shahrivar

Hell is to be contemplated strictly as a matter which concerns me alone. As part of the spiritual life it belongs behind the 'closed door' of my own room. From the standpoint of living faith, I cannot fundamentally believe in anyone's damnation but my own; as far as my neighbor is concerned, the light of resurrection can never be so obscured that I would be allowed or obliged to stop hoping for him. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Limitation of scope, however, could represent a profound advantage from an ecological point of view. The sun, the wind and the earth are experiential realities to which men have responded sensuously and reverently from time immemorial. Out of these primal elements man developed his sense of dependence on - and respect for - the natural environment, a dependence that kept his destructive activities in check. The Industrial Revolution and the urbanized world that followed obscured nature's role in human experience - hiding the sun with a pall of smoke, blocking the winds with massive buildings, desecrating the earth with sprawling cities. Man's dependence on the natural world became invisible; it became theoretical and intellectual in character, the subject matter of textbooks, monographs and lectures. True, this theoretical dependence supplied us with insights (partial ones at best) into the natural world, but its onesidedness robbed us of all sensuous dependence on and all visible contact and unity with nature. In losing these, we lost a part of ourselves as feeling beings. We became alienated from nature. Our technology and environment became totally inanimate, totally synthetic - a purely inorganic physical milieu that promoted the deanimization of man and his thought. ~ Murray Bookchin

Those who think that it is only necessary to feed and clothe the prisoner, and to act towards him in all things according to the law, are much mistaken. However much debased he may be, a man exacts instinctively respect for his character as a man. Every prisoner knows perfectly that he is a convict and a reprobate, and knows the distance which separates him from his superiors; but neither the branding irons nor chains will make him forget that he is a man. He must, therefore, be treated with humanity. Humane treatment may raise up one in whom the divine image has long been obscured. It is with the "unfortunate," above all, that humane conduct is necessary. It is their salvation, their only joy. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I thought of how Midori had once articulated the idea of mono no aware, a sensibility that, though frequently obscured during cherry blossom viewing by the cacophony of drunken doggerel and generator-powered television sets, remains steadfast in one of the two cultures from which I come. She had called it "the sadness of being human." A wise, accepting sadness, she had said. I admired her for the depths of character such a description indicated. For me, sad has always been a synonym for bitter, and I suspect this will always be so. ~ Barry Eisler

That is how a farmer walks across the soil in spring--and later, in summer, the traces of his steps are obscured by the billowing richness of the wheat he once sowed. ~ Joseph Roth

The gospel is life giving, because it generates changes that are received only by grace through faith. This foundational truth, however, gets bypassed, obscured, and forgotten, because, as Martin Luther noted, religion forms the default mode of the human heart. ~ J.D. Greear

The door shut behind them all, and locked. The women stared at it, mesmerized, and observed across it the wavering shadow of an uncanny cloud. Behind the chamfered windows the sun was obscured by drifting wreaths of grey smoke, and the silence filled with the crackling of flames. The youngest surviving Crawford, in leaving, had deftly set fire to the castle. ~ Dorothy Dunnett