Universal Themes Quotes

Never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, the depth of content, the universal themes. And I don't care what those themes are- they're yours to uncover and stand behind-so long as, at the very least, there is courage. ~ Marisha Pessl

The thing I like about the sci-fi genre is that you get to examine universal themes and polarizing moral choices. The characters have a lot on their shoulders and are often trying to survive in some very difficult and hostile environments. ~ Jaime Murray

Whatever is being investigated, created or produced now, in movies or TV, needs to consider the context in which it is being distributed. It's not a vacuum. There are certain universal themes of love, conflict, loyalty or family that are everlasting and that need to be presented in a way that makes it feel relevant, even if it's a period piece. You need to consider what context that film, that story and those characters are being seen in. ~ J.J. Abrams

Above these universal themes 'Truth Will Set U Free' is also a song composed for those who were born gay. I am a straight man so I do not profess to understand or know what a LGBT person experiences but I do recognize injustice when I see it. ~ Corey Hart

My book had a universal theme. It's not a "racial" novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization, not necessarily Southern civilization. ~ Harper Lee

I mean these are universal themes. I try not to preach, for sure. I don't enjoy movies that preach - so I don't want to preach myself when I tell stories because I just feel all of these themes are built into us in terms of redemption and mercy and love and compassion and all these things. And the negative sides, as well. ~ Michael Landon, Jr.

Literature recounts history, explores knowledge, narrates universal themes of human existence, actives human conscience, enhances understanding of human motives, and explicates the nuances of human behavior. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I always think back to the original movies and to those quieter moments where Luke is out in A New Hope, and there are the two suns setting. It is the equivalent, basically, of a farm boy dying to get out of his small town and do something bigger. It's those kinds of universal themes that ground this whole thing in space. ~ Adam Driver

And of course Marc Cherry heightens it and makes it hilarious. But there's so many universal themes in the show, and he made it so funny. We knew he was onto something if he could keep it up and, thankfully, he did. ~ James Denton

I love big ensemble shows where there are a lot of things going on and you have to really pay attention because there's a lot of nuanced work and universal themes are being explored. ~ Janina Gavankar

A theatrical spectacle is inherent whenever family members congregate and reacquaint themselves with powerful universal themes educed from homecomings including hugs, food, drink, conversation, politics, games, music, conflict, terror, mercy, smiles, tears, prayers, misfortune, and self-discovery. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

'The 5th Wave' is sci-fi, but I tried very hard to ground the story in very human terms and in those universal themes that transcend genre. How do we define ourselves? What, exactly, does it mean to be human? What remains after everything we trust, everything we believe in and rely upon, has been stripped away? ~ Rick Yancey

When I write I'm never really thinking about themes or the universal. ~ Lena Dunham

Because kids are physically smaller, there's an assumption by people who haven't read a kids' book for a long time that their ideas and themes and problems and ambitions must be commensurately smaller and less important. I would venture that sometimes the opposite is true. ~ Morris Gleitzman

I believe in revelation, but not in revelation which each religion claims to possess ... but in the living revelation which surrounds us on every side - mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die. ~ Jose Rizal

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right, nor do Two Rights Make a Left.

Which ever side you think is Correct. Great. That is what resonates with your perception... Dive deep within yourself to discover why you think you need to judge or change the person in your perception.. when the real change is the reflection in the mirror..reflected by the person you are trying to change... out of fear. Fear is the negative energies keeping you from the light of truth.

Be Yourself and Honor others for who they are. If we were all the same.. the world wouldn't have so many pretty colors and changes. ~ Jonathan Bailey

The self embodies what the culture believes is humankind's place in the cosmos-- its limits, talents, expectations and prohibitions... There is no universal, trans-historical self, only local selves; there is no universal theory about the self, only local theories. ~ Philip Cushman

The letter e may now no longer be used to denote anything other than this positive universal constant. ~ Edmund Landau

Travel Tip: The term is in situ -- in the place of origin. We travel to put ourselves in situ , in a place where we belong. The feeling that one was born in the wrong place is an ancient an universal experience, such that I suspect (a) it is part of our human DNA; and (b) is why our kind are born wanderers. We travel to find the place where we can recognize ourselves for once. Be on the lookout for that jolt of unexpected familiarity in a foreign land: that's how you'll know you are in situ . ~ Vivian Swift

Contemporary writers use animal-transformation themes to explore issues of gender, sexuality, race, culture, and the process of transformation...just as storytellers have done, all over the world, for many centuries past. One distinct change marks modern retellings, however, reflecting our changed relationship to animals and nature. In a society in which most of us will never encounter true danger in the woods, the big white bear who comes knocking at the door [in fairy tales] is not such a frightening prospective husband now; instead, he's exotic, almost appealing.

Whereas once wilderness was threatening to civilization, now it's been tamed and cultivated; the dangers of the animal world have a nostalgic quality, removed as they are from our daily existence. This removal gives "the wild" a different kind of power; it's something we long for rather than fear. The shape-shifter, the were-creature, the stag-headed god from the heart of the woods--they come from a place we'd almost forgotten: the untracked forests of the past; the primeval forests of the mythic imagination; the forests of our childhood fantasies: untouched, unspoiled, limitless.

Likewise, tales of Animal Brides and Bridegrooms are steeped in an ancient magic and yet powerfully relevant to our lives today. They remind us of the wild within us...and also within our lovers and spouses, the part of them we can never quite know. They represent the Others who live beside us--cat and mouse and coy ~ Terri Windling

May the sound of the bell penetrate deep into the cosmos. Even in the darkest spots living beings are able to hear it clearly. So that all suffering in them cease. Understanding comes to their heart, and they transcend the path of sorrow and death." "The universal dharma door is already open; the sound of the rising tide is already heard clearly. The miracle happens. A beautiful child appears in the heart of the lotus flower. One single drop of this compassionate water is enough to bring back the refreshing spring to our mountains and rivers." "Listening to the bell I feel the afflictions in me dissolve. My mind is calm, my body relaxed. A smile is born on my lips. Following the sound of the bell, my breath brings me back to the safe island of mindfulness. In the garden of my heart, the flowers of peace bloom beautifully. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Lansdale was a victim in Vietnam of his success in the Phillipines. Men who succeed at an enterprise of great moment often tie a snare for themselves by assuming that they have discovered some universal truth. ~ Neil Sheehan

The good news is that I believe every woman who wants to can find a great partner. You're just going to need to get rid of the idea that marriage will make you happy. It won't. Once the initial high wears off, you'll just be you, except with twice as much laundry.
Because ultimately, marriage is not about getting something
it's about giving it. Strangely, men understand this more than we do. Probably because for them marriage involves sacrificing their most treasured possession
a free-agent penis
and for us, it's the culmination of a princess fantasy so universal, it built Disneyland. ~ Tracy McMillan

Mind control survivors have identified doctors used by the CIA under Project MKULTRA as having used different aliases. I have personally spoken and corresponded with many of these child Cold War survivors. It seems colors were one of the most commonly used themes. Many survivors have identified Josef Mengele as using the aliases Dr. Green, Dr. Black, Dr. Swartz (black in German), Father Joseph, or Vaterchen (daddy) when he did their programming. The experiments and programming he used on us were of such a heinous nature, that they were not unlike some of those performed at Auschwitz.

In 1937, Mengele was appointed research assistant at the Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity. Mengele provided "experimental materials" to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology from twins including eyes, blood, and other body parts from Auschwitz. Mengele fled Auschwitz in January 1945 before the Russians liberated the camp. French government documents state that the Americans captured Mengele in 1946. According to the French, Mengele "was released without explanation by the Americans on November 19, 1946." The French claimed that American authorities confirmed the Mengele arrest and release on Feb. 29, 1947. ~ Carol Rutz

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. ~ James Baldwin

Boys are universal giver, women remains universal receiver. ~ Santosh Kalwar

This book is dedicated to only those who are worthy.
Calling myself an Author and taking own name as a body is an ego, concluding my spiritual achievement is an ignorance, explaining to those who are busy in this materialistic world would be my immaturity.

(Author representing the Universal Consciousness). ~ Vishal Chipkar

The person talking to you never looks directly at you, but rather around the room, searching for the answer to the universal cocktail party question, 'Who's here tonight? ~ Letitia Baldrige

Artists who shared (Paul) Klee's fundamental beliefs, such as (Piet) Mondrian, were searching for universal truths, often derived from nature and having "all-mighty power." For some, a traditional notion of God was part of this; for others, it was of no consequence. What mattered was not the precise character of the object of worship, but the shared belief in its superiority to the cult of self. (104) ~ Nicholas Fox Weber

Bob Marley stood for universal peace and love. He tried to break racial barriers. ~ Wyclef Jean

You don't have to be a Christian to recognize that materialism does not match reality. Materialism is not true to universal human experience - what we all know about ourselves. ~ Nancy Pearcey

Falling in love isn't about expectations or an outcome.

It is about the sheer, weightless, joyous terror of falling into the universal embrace. ~ Joyce Wycoff

I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures. ~ Judith Martin

I started collecting aerial photographs of Native American and South Pacific architecture; only the African ones were fractal. And if you think about it, all these different societies have different geometric design themes that they use. So Native Americans use a combination of circular symmetry and fourfold symmetry. ~ Ron Eglash

Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is the queen of all devotions. It is the central devotion of the Church. All others gather round it, and group themselves there as satellites; for others celebrate his mysteries; this is Himself. It is the universal devotion. No one can be without it, in order to be a Christian. How can a man be a Christian who does not worship the living Presence of Christ? ~ Frederick William Faber

It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:
"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!"
"What is it?" cried Fred.
"It's your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to "Is it a bear?" ought to have been "Yes;" inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way. ~ Charles Dickens

I believe that God is the source of all the universal, timeless principles. And to Him, I give all the credit and the glory. However, to a person who is not religious, I believe they can live to the highest level of their conscience and develop spiritual intelligence that surpasses most people, including many religious people, who profess but do not practice. ~ Stephen Covey

From what I can tell, the chief distinguishing factor between children and adults is that children hear everything while appearing not to and adults hear nothing while pretending to listen. ~ Stephen McCauley

I realized that if I wanted to truly talk about vastness and the sublime and scale and the West - recurrent themes in my overall work - I needed to engage with the vast ocean that is Los Angeles. ~ Michael Light

After all, we know that the foraging societies in which human beings evolved were small-scale, highly egalitarian groups who shared almost everything. There is a remarkable consistency to how immediate return foragers live - wherever they are.* The !Kung San of Botswana have a great deal in common with Aboriginal people living in outback Australia and tribes in remote pockets of the Amazon rainforest. Anthropologists have demonstrated time and again that immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies are nearly universal in their fierce egalitarianism. Sharing is not just encouraged; it's mandatory. Hoarding or hiding food, for example, is considered deeply shameful, almost unforgivable behavior in these societies. ~ Christopher Ryan

Contained within a given lesson or particular technique is the essence of all techniques. You imitate and study a particular form to grasp the universal principles that allow the technique to work in the first place and that will finally enable you to transcend the form itself to discover the formless. ~ H.E. Davey

A sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal powers, souls are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us, and which we can love. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever you believe, you get the proof of. With proof, your belief becomes stronger. ~ Sirshree

I did a cake for the 60th birthday of Elton John, for Britney Spears' 27th birthday and for the 'Circus' album she put out - the cake had circus themes. I prepared a cake for a surprise 82nd birthday event for the architect Frank Gehry; the cake was comprised of mini-replicas of his buildings. ~ Ron Ben-Israel

Aikido is not ultimately Japanese: It is an art of universal truth and international significance. ~ Linda Holiday

An admirable line of Pablo Neruda's, "My creatures are born of a long denial," seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge ... It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it. ~ Julio Cortazar

I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes or variations that lead to mastery ... I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty. Other qualities may be more conducive to achievement, publicity, success; but they are all outworn - as outworn as ideologies, opinions, concepts and names for things. ~ Gerhard Richter

There is only one I actually. That I is Consciousness. When you follow the personal I to the source, it turns into the universal I, which is Consciousness. Begin to catch yourself. begin to realize your divine nature. You do this by keeping quiet. The fastest way to realization is to keep quiet. ~ Robert Adams

Consider how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down in the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist's arm-chair and confuse his "Rinse the mouth-rinse the mouth" with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us - when we think of this, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature ~ Virginia Woolf

Reviewer: 'One of your themes was very similar to one of Beethoven's!' Brahms replied, 'Of course it is. Everyone steals - the important thing is to do it brilliantly. ~ Johannes Brahms

What captivated my fancy was that I, Axel Heyst, the most detached of creatures in this earthly captivity, the veriest tramp on this earth, an indifferent stroller going through the world's bustle - that I should have been there to step into the situation of an agent of Providence. I, a man of universal scorn and unbelief ... ~ Joseph Conrad

The wrong way to go about this is to say: Well, researchers have 'proved' that animals only understand fifty words or something similarly absurd. Or that communication with other species is an illusion. Communication is not the preserve of humans; it is the one thing that is truly universal. ~ Lawrence Anthony

I love Buster Keaton. I was a big fan of the stunt shows at Universal Studios. I'm a huge Cirque du Soleil nut. ~ Neil Patrick Harris

I observed with disillusioned clarity the despicable nonentity of the street; its porches; its window curtains; the drab clothes, the cupidity and complacency of shopping women; and old men taking the air in comforters; the caution of people crossing; the universal determination to go on living, when really, fools and gulls that you are, I said, any slate may fly from a roof, any car may swerve, for there is neither rhyme nor reason when a drunk man staggers about with a club in his hand - that is all. ~ Virginia Woolf

Climbers are a universal tribe: we share the knowledge that things are not important. Experience is important. Feeling is important. ~ Steve House

As the late Edward W Said wrote after the attack on the World Trade Center, 'Western humanism is not enough: we need a universal humanism.' I agree with that. The question is how to get it, and my own view is that it can't be had unless we raise our demands on ourselves a long way beyond decorating our lives with enough cultivation to make the pursuit of ambition look civilized. ~ Clive James