Strange Phenomena Quotes

I don't have a Facebook or a Twitter account, and I don't know how I feel about this idea of, "Now, I'm eating dinner, and I want everyone to know that I'm having dinner at this time." or "I just mailed a letter and dropped off my kids." That, to me, is a very strange phenomenon. ~ Scarlett Johansson

It's surely one of the strange phenomena of this decade that the most thoughtful gift you can bring a date is not flowers, chocolates, or ankle-length pearls, but a note from your doctor. ~ Linda Sunshine

It's a very strange phenomenon being hated by people you've never met. Some journalists just seem to hate me and everything I do, and it's disconcerting because I've never met this person. ~ Moby

One of the strange phenomena of the last century is the spectacle of religion dropping the appeal of fear while other human interests have picked it up. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

One clear observation of Geller in action had an overpowering effect on me. I felt as if the whole framework with which I viewed the world had suddenly been destroyed. I seemed very naked an vulnerable, surrounded by a hostile iniverse. It was many days before I was able to come to terms with this sensation. Some of my collegues have even declined to face up to the problem by refusing to attend the demonstrations of such strange phenomena. That is a perfectly understandable position, but one that does not augur well for the future of science. ~ John G. Taylor

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Erroneous plurals of nouns, as vallies or echos.
Barbarous compound nouns, as viewpoint or upkeep.
Want of correspondence in number between noun and verb where the two are widely separated or the construction involved.
Ambiguous use of pronouns.
Erroneous case of pronouns, as whom for who, and vice versa, or phrases like "between you and I," or "Let we who are loyal, act promptly."
Erroneous use of shall and will, and of other auxiliary verbs.
Use of intransitive for transitive verbs, as "he was graduated from college," or vice versa, as "he ingratiated with the tyrant."
Use of nouns for verbs, as "he motored to Boston," or "he voiced a protest."
Errors in moods and tenses of verbs, as "If I was he, I should do otherwise," or "He said the earth was round."
The split infinitive, as "to calmly glide."
The erroneous perfect infinitive, as "Last week I expected to have met you."
False verb-forms, as "I pled with him."
Use of like for as, as "I strive to write like Pope wrote."
Misuse of prepositions, as "The gift was bestowed to an unworthy object," or "The gold was divided between the five men."
The superfluous conjunction, as "I wish for you to do this."
Use of words in wrong senses, as "The book greatly intrigued me," "Leave me take this," "He was obsessed with the idea," or "He is a meticulous writer."
Erroneous use of non-Anglicised foreign forms, as "a strange phenomena," or "two ~ H.P. Lovecraft

The subconscious mind will translate into its physical equivalent a thought impulse of a negative or destructive nature, just as readily as it will act upon thought impulses of a positive or constructive nature. This accounts for the strange phenomenon which so many millions of people experience, referred to as "misfortune" or "bad luck." ~ Napoleon Hill

Tennis is a funny game, and it takes a life-time of keeping one's eyes open on the circuit to have any chance of understanding the strange phenomena that exist in our exciting sport! ~ Sania Mirza

Photography is a strange phenomenon ... You trust your eye and cannot help but bare your soul. ~ Inge Morath

What an alliance, huh? A Dark-Hunter and a Spathi united to guard an Apollite. Who would have ever imagined? (Wulf)
Love makes strange bedfellows. (Acheron)
I thought that was politics. (Wulf)
It's both. (Acheron) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

It was a really strange way that I came into music. Once I gave voice to it, the pit of emotions that I guess I knew was inside of me for a long time, the stream never really stopped. ~ Matisyahu

Forgetting herself, she turned toward him and her eyes bulged. "You're naked!"
"It's what one tends to do in their home when it's time to sleep," he growled, now beginning to visibly get upset. And it seemed the more upset he got, the harder he got.
His cock was long and quickly turning rigid. She tried to look away without seeming like it affected her, but she knew her eyes were enormous in her face and her heart was definitely doing a strange stuttering.
"Stop acting like such a virgin. This isn't for you. ~ Marie Hall

I wandered in my mind, slowly, noting every detail of the labyrinth, its paths as familiar as those of my garden and yet ever new, as empty as the heart could wish or alive with strange encounters. ~ Samuel Beckett

The introduction of cinematography enabled us to corral time past and thus retain it not merely in the memory - at best, a falsifying receptacle - but in the objective preservative of a roll of film. But, if past, present and future are the dimensions of time, they are notoriously fluid. There is no tension in the tenses and yet they are always tremulously about to coagulate. The present is a liquid jelly which settles into a quivering, passive mass, the past, as soon as - if not sooner than - we are aware of it as present. Yet this mass was intangible and existed only conceptually until arrival of the preservative, cinema.
The motion picture is usually regarded as only a kind of shadow play and few bother to probe the ontological paradoxes it presents. For it offers us nothing less than the present tense experience of time irrefutably past. So that the coil of film has, as it were, lassoed inert phenomena from which the present had departed, and when projected upon a screen, they are granted a temporary revivification.
[...]
The images of cinematography, however, altogether lack autonomy. Locking in programmed patterns, they merely transpose time past into time present and cannot, by their nature, respond to the magnetic impulses of time future for the unachievable future which does not exist in any dimension, but nevertheless organizes phenomena towards its potential conclusions. The cinematographic model is one of cyclic recurrences alone, even if these recu ~ Angela Carter

How I wish to fly with the geese away from dreary November days, the "freeze-up," and cruel winter. Away from loneliness, isolation, and anxiety bred by blizzards. Most every local person I've talked to grudgingly admits to an autumn apprehension. It is part and parcel of an Adirondacker's psychological makeup. The geese contaminate us with this strange depression on their southbound flight and cure us with their northbound. In between, we try to tolerate winter, each in his or her own way. ~ Anne LaBastille

What a strange circumstance she found herself in: baking brownies for a handful of gods from the Underworld. ~ Eva Pohler

In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, as far as possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience. ~ Niels Bohr

Mafia landmarks are found everywhere in beautiful Sicily, an unfortunate byproduct of the island's tragic history. By mapping theses strange sites and telling the amazing stories behind them, I hope to remind readers that the Mafia is not a romantic relic of the past. ~ Carl Russo

Love is a strange animal. You can't always tame it and make it behave the way you want it to. For years, I thought I could. I thought I could use love the way I used lipstick and perfume. Just to get what I wanted. But real love isn't that way. Real love bangs you around and makes you do things you never thought you would do. ~ Ann H. Gabhart

Her first husband (poor child, such a grief to her) was reported dead in Africa. A mysterious country - Africa."
"A mysterious continent," Poirot corrected her. "Possibly. What part -"
She swept on. "Central Africa. The home of voodoo, of the zhombie -"
"The zhombie is in the West Indies."
Mrs Cloade swept on: "- of black magic - of strange and secret practices - a country where a man could disappear and never be heard of again."
"Possibly, possibly," said Poirot. "But the same is true of Piccadilly Circus."
Mrs Cloade waved away Piccadilly Circus. ~ Agatha Christie

I have this recurring nightmare where I'm lost in a strange forest, and my only hope is your sense of direction. Enough to give a fellow the sweats, it is. ~ Gerald Morris

Indeed, theological discourse offers its strange jubilation only to the strict extent that it permits and, dangerously, demands of it wokman that he speak beyond his means, precisely because he does not speak of himself. Hence the danger of a speech that, in a sense, speaks against the one who lends himself to it. One must obtain forgiveness for every essay in theology. In all senses. ~ Jean-Luc Marion

I am a part of all that I have met. To you, whether or not you know, having wandered into the tissue of my life, and out again, you have left a momentary part of you which I will work into something. There is nothing but that it will suffer a sea change into something rich and strange. Through me transmuted. ~ Sylvia Plath

Here was opportunity to make an audience walk and move, be sociable in a way never dreamed of by the rigors of cinema-watching, in circumstances where many different perspectives could be brought to bear on a series of phenomena associated with the topics under consideration. Yet all the time it was a subjective creation under the auspices of light and sound, dealing with a large slice of cinema's vocabulary. ~ Peter Greenaway

By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Your species," M-Bot said in my ear, "has a diet roughly similar to a human one - though with more nuts and less meat. Also, no milk"
"Seriously?" I whispered, moving with Morriumur toward the vegetable line. I waved at my chest. "Alanik has breasts. What are they for? Decoration?"
"No milk from other creatures, I should say," M-Bot said. Your species finds it extremely gross. As do I by the way. Do you even stop to think how many strange liquids you organics squirt from your orifices?"
"No stranger than the ideas that squirt from your orifice sometimes, M-Bot". ~ Brandon Sanderson

The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince" ... was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long" ... well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told ... ~ Terry Pratchett

Shows are really strange. Sometimes you really don't know what to expect. ~ Maynard James Keenan

There is, however, a strange, musty smell in the air that reminds me of something ... hmm ... yes ... I've got it ... there's a VMS nearby, or I'm a Blit. ~ Larry Wall

(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes - the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable - the unloving and the unloved - there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death - the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain. ("The Lifted Veil") ~ George Eliot

I know surely you're thinking of me, for
I am strange, and you're kind to the stranger ~ Zubair Ahsan

They rode for a while in silence, a tiny island in the smoky stream of marching men. Then Lee said slowly, in a strange, soft, slow tone of voice, "Soldiering has one great trap."
Longstreet turned to see his face. Lee was riding slowly ahead, without expression. He spoke in that same slow voice. "To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. This is...a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men."
Lee rarely lectured. Longstreet sensed a message beyond it. He waited. Lee said, "We don't fear our own deaths, you and I." He smiled slightly, then glanced away. "We protect ourselves out of military necessity, not do not protect yourself enough and must give thought to it. I need you. But the point is, we are afraid to die. We are prepared for our own deaths, and for the deaths of comrades. We learn that at the Point. But I have seen this happen: we are not prepared for as many deaths as we have to face, inevitably as the war goes on. There comes a time..."
He paused. He had been gazing straight ahead, away from Longstreet. Now, black-eyed, he turned back, glanced once quickly into Longstreet's eyes, then looked away.
"We are never prepared for so many to die. So you understand? No one is. We expect some chosen few. We expect an occasional empty chair, a toast to d ~ Michael Shaara

A metaphysical tour de force of untethered meaning and involuting interlocking contrapuntal rhythms, 'The Clock' is more than a movie or even a work of art. It is so strange and other-ish that it becomes a stream-of-consciousness algorithm unto itself - something almost inhuman. ~ Jerry Saltz

She didn't look like anyone else Marsha had ever seen, and she lived in New York where eventually you saw everyone, more or less. Her pale hair; her skin was practically albino; those strange silvery blue-green eyes . . . You didn't quite notice her at first glance; she was average . . . then you took a closer look and she was extremely striking. Her voice when she spoke wasn't always easy to understand, but it sounded to Marsha like music. Please, she thought to herself. Let her be kind. But not too kind. ~ Jenny Colgan

From the earliest days of man there has endured the conviction that there is an order of existence which is entirely strange to him. It does indeed seem that the strict order of the visible world is only a semblance, one providing certain gross materials which become the basis for subtle improvisations of invisible powers. Hence, it may appear to some that a leafless tree is not a tree but a signpost to another realm; that an old house is not a house but a thing possessing a will of its own; that the dead may throw off that heavy blanket of earth to walk in their sleep, and in ours. And these are merely a few of the infinite variations on the themes of the natural order as it is usually conceived.

But is there really a strange world? Of course. Are there, then, two worlds? Not at all. There is only our own world and it alone is alien to us, intrinsically so by virtue of its lack of mysteries. If only it actually were deranged by invisible powers, if only it were susceptible to real strangeness, perhaps it would seem more like a home to us, and less like an empty room filled with the echoes of this dreadful improvising. To think that we might have found comfort in a world suited to our nature, only to end up in one so resoundingly strange! ~ Thomas Ligotti

I would not have my sheep branded with any other mark than my own, or follow the whistle of a strange shepherd. ~ Elizabeth I

Nobody says 'a working man,' but they say, 'a working woman.' And there is still a strange connotation to that. ~ Ivanka Trump

The albino found himself brooding upon the nature of all unholy bargains, of his own dependency upon the hellsword Stormbringer, of his willingness to summon supernatural aid without thought of any spiritual consequences to himself and, perhaps most significant, of his unwillingness to find a way to cure himself of the occult's seductive attraction; for there was a part of his strange brain that was curious to follow its own fate; to learn whatever disastrous conclusion lay in store for it - it needed to know the end of the saga: the value, perhaps, of its torment. ~ Michael Moorcock

I write in a very strange way. Things are very fragmentary for a very long time, and then they come together very quickly near the end of the process. ~ Todd Rundgren

Animals are molded by natural forces they do not comprehend. To their minds there is no past and no future. There is only the everlasting present of a single generation, its trails in the forest, its hidden pathways in the the air and in the sea. There is nothing in the Universe more alone than Man. He has entered into the strange world of history. ~ Loren Eiseley

It's always strange to read the things you've hoped for in the past because by now those hopes may be spoken for or gone, transformed or altogether forgotten. Like time, hope can be so senseless. It can carry us up mountains or lie us in the quicksand. But like time, hope is unstoppable, inevitable, and blind. Sometimes we travel fast, hurdling towards the unknown, sometimes the unknown comes hurdling towards us while we watch time standing still. ~ Andrew McMahon

IN DISCUSSING SHUNYATA, we found that we impose our preconceptions, our ideas, our version of things onto phenomena instead of seeing things as they are. Once we are able to see through our veil of preconception, we realize that it is an unnecessary and confused way of attaching handles to experiences without considering whether the handles fit or not. In other words, preconceptions are a form of security. When we see something, immediately we name it and place it in a category. But form is empty; it does not need our categorizations to express its full nature, to be what it is. Form is in itself empty of preconception. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

I have been giving the best of my advice to this project since 1975. At first I was extremely hopeful. The original objectives of the language included reliability, readability of programs, formality of language definition, and even simplicity. Gradually these objectives have been sacrificed in favor of power, supposedly achieved by a plethora of features and notational conventions, many of them unnecessary and some of them, like exception handling, even dangerous ...
It is not too late! I believe that by careful pruning of the ADA language, it is still possible to select a very powerful subset that would be reliable and efficient in implementation and safe and economic in use. The sponsors of the language have declared unequivocally, however, that there shall be no subsets. This is the strangest paradox of the whole strange project. If you want a language with no subsets, you must make it small. ~ C.A.R. Hoare

It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.

Lygiai taip gyvenime keičiasi ir mūsų širdis, ir tai skaudžiausia; tačiau patiriame tą skausmą tik skaitydami knygas, vaizduotėje; tikrovėje jos keitimasis, kaip ir kai kurių gamtos reiškinių vyksmas yra toks lėtas, kad nors ir galime konstatuoti kiekvieną atskirą būseną, paties keitimosi pajusti nepajėgiame. ~ Marcel Proust