Vanishing Point Quotes

This singularity of meaning
I was my face, I was ugliness
though sometimes unbearable, also offered a possible point of escape. It became the launching pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognizable place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life. Everything led to it, everything receded from it
my face as personal vanishing point. ~ Lucy Grealy

In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point. ~ Marshall McLuhan

... praise any word that can hold you. Praise all but the vanishing point where we stand now, not quite parted. Already memories fall like blows. But soon they will be treasure, dropped like gold through a miser's fingers as he makes his accounts ... Praise each insomniac hour, kept wide awake by your glow. Sleep would only have robbed more coins from this vandal hoarded store. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour. ~ George Santayana

for the days were so full of unthinking effort ~ Norman Matson

the spectator is the true vanishing point ~ Siri Hustvedt

I've reached the vanishing point
without you.
Here my heartache begins with your pain
trying to find an unborn start
in this fatal disappearance

From the poem 'Me with the Vanishing Point ~ Munia Khan

Plume"

Transfixed to the, by the, on the congruities, who is herself a vanishing point coming to closure - dusky flutter - trilling away like a watchdog on drugged sop, channeling her mother and grandmother who've engraved on her locket phrases in script: "glide on a blade" and "rustling precedes the shuck." This is not my teeming fate, my rind, my roiling ellipsis or valedictory spray of myrrh. Always it's morning, afternoon or evening - the loot of hours - a magic sack grasping vacuum but heavy in the hand, and from which, together, we pull a swarm of telepathic bees, melons beached in a green bin, a lithograph of the city from its crumbling ramparts, crackled pitchers and the mouth of a cave. Perhaps this is my open weave, my phantom rialto or plume of light. We bow to each other in the mash of flickering things. We are completely surrounded. ~ Aaron Shurin

To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself. The ~ Tana French

Your eye level is your reference point for drawing the perspective lines. All lines above your eye level will go down to the horizon vanishing point and all lines below your eye level will go up to the horizon vanishing point. ~ Robert A. Lovett

Authority seems to be nothing other than the vanishing-point of textuality. And Nature is authority whose textual origins have been forgotten. ~ Barbara Johnson

Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made. One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It is better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go whither I push thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls into the great hole. End. Finis. Total liquidation. This is the vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me. I laugh at the idea of there being any one who has anything to tell me on that subject. Fables of nurses; bugaboo for children; Jehovah for men. No; our to-morrow is the night. Beyond the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness. ~ Victor Hugo

What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit. ~ Wallace Stegner

Necessary, since every moment in our lives is marked by death, like a shadow from another realm, it appear to us like a vanishing point for everything. How can one meditate on live without meditating too on its brevity, its precariousness, its fragility? ~ Andre Comte Sponville

Whenever someone says the word "month" to me, I call up an empty square filled with other empty squares, days, and hours and minutes, bricks on bricks spiraling inward, pinwheel and diamond, and herringbone patterns marching smaller and smaller to some vanishing point. ~ Patricia Lockwood

What could have been simply bizarre, sentimental or contrived here becomes an utterly absorbing love story; This is early days in the festival, but Rust and Bone has to be a real contender for prizes, and, the odds will be shortening to vanishing point for Cotillard getting the best actress award. ~ Peter Bradshaw

I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others? ~ Wallace Stegner

Love and hate, black and white,
Right or wrong, who is right?
Some smoke joints to anoint their brain
To the vanishing point ... so they won't go insane. ~ Pharoahe Monch

What I call innocence is the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration. One needn't be, shouldn't be, reduced to a puppy. If you wish to tell me that the city offers galleries, I'll pour you a drink and enjoy your company while it lasts; but I'll bear with me to my grave those pure moments at the Tate (was it the Tate?) where I stood planted, open-mouthed, born, before that one particular canvas, that river up to my neck, gasping, lost, receding into watercolor depth and depth to the vanishing point, buoyant, awed, and had to be literally hauled away. These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present. ~ Annie Dillard

It would seem to me that by the time a race has achieved deep space capability it would have matured to a point where it would have no thought of dominating another intelligent species. ~ Clifford D. Simak

Oh, well. I don't mind helping you to feel guilty if you must. On the other hand, I should point out that of all our various encounters, today is the only time you have favoured me with two civil words in sequence. I found it quite worrying. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil
or else an absolute ignorance. ~ Graham Greene

By itself," he said, "pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable - something that cannot be contemplated. ~ George Orwell

He is cold to the point of being an asshole. A demander instead of an asker - expecting me to perform as instructed. But that is what I am - a hired orgasm-deliverer. ~ Alessandra Torre

I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, 'Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn't, then there's a point to it. ~ Harry Nilsson

The American Way is so restlessly creative as to be essentially destructive; the American Way is to carry common sense itself almost to the point of madness. ~ Louis Kronenberger

It dawned on me at some point that our music makes certain people happy - I never thought we'd have that effect and it's really gratifying and humbling. My least favorite is the exhaustion that comes with traveling a lot, the touring related exhaustion. And the crazy thing is that we've all been doing this for years and your body never gets used to it - you always feel messed up. But it's a good problem to have. ~ David Macklovitch

Come to think of it, pet, you are a liar, possessor of false identification, and a murderer." "Your point?" I snapped. "Not to mention a tease," he continued as if I hadn't spoken. "Foulmouthed, as well. Yep, you and I will get along famously. ~ Jeaniene Frost

Throw overboard all idea of jealousy and egotism, once for all. Come on to the practical field with tremendous energy; to work, in the fullness of strength! As to the rest, the Lord will point out the way. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Yes was without a singer at that point, cause they were doing ABWH, so you had ABWH, and then you had the 90125 band without a singer. ~ Billy Sherwood

I'm playing against men who are bigger and stronger than I'm used to. I've definitely got to bulk up at some point. ~ Patrick Kane

I would put How Green Was My Valley in the same class as Uncle Tom's Cabin: a work that leaves an ineradicable "scratch on the mind," to borrow Harold Isaacs's useful phrase. There was another element as well. At a certain point, on some springy-turfed Welsh hillside far above the scenes of alienation and exploitation that lay below, young Huw contrived to part with his irksome virginity. Richard Llewellyn handled this transition with very slightly too much quasi-poetic euphemism, his crucial error being (to my fevered imagining) the idea that the inflamed heat of young manhood could be assuaged only by the relative "coolness" of a feminine interior. One had had a vague hope that the ardency would be appeased by an even greater heat, rather than sizzled like a red-hot horseshoe dipped in water, but at this stage I would have been willing to settle for anything that offered incandescence in either direction. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Well, the memories were obviously - every match is important, every point counts, especially the last sort of 18, 20 years when the matches have been so tight. ~ Bernhard Langer

I didn't get the time to tell you, or to hold you, or get there to holding you without any awkwardness. It breaks my heart, not a little but a lot, to see how things have turned out and once upon a time i would try to set them right, but now i know there is no point, in trying or in hoping, because it is how it is, and not much can be done, or should be done, but i still wanted to tell you, maybe one of these days I will, maybe I won't but I wanted to tell you that I wanted those things with you.

Meeting you for coffee on a rainy day, in a cafe somewhere between our homes. Spending the evening sitting by the sea, looking at the waves, listening to the noise and chaos of the city around us. Talking a walk with you in that park where we met the second time. Watching a movie with you. Having you over, coming over to yours. Going out to bars, birthday celebrations. Fighting sometimes, crazy loving the next. I wanted these things, and a few more. Oh god, i really wanted them with you. ~ Preeti Bhonsle

I had a really tough time for a few years. My show was gone. My phone wasn't ringing. There wasn't one job offer. And at that point, I thought I knew for sure that I wouldn't work in Hollywood again. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

You wouldn't die in here, nothing ever dies in here, but if you stayed here for too long, after a while just a little of you would exist everywhere, all spread out. And that's not a good thing. Never enough of you all together in one place, so t here wouldn't be anything left that would think of itself as an 'I.' No point of view any longer, because you'd be an infinite sequence of views and of points ... ~ Neil Gaiman

One thing I had figured out by then was that talent, like everything else, was just a starting point. What counted was what you did with it. I knew I wasn't the most talented guitar player or the best singer or the best writer, but I could do all of those things, and I had a complete vision of what it was going to take to succeed---a vision that included working, working, working. ~ Paul Stanley

The conventions of hedonism and of utility can, in fact, be extremely elaborate. Its motives, however, though perhaps wholly free of greed, remain strictly those of need. Goodness remains reducible to utility, rightness to prudence, beauty to aesthetic enjoyment. The point of reference is individual preference, not the generically human vision of a moral sense of life. What is missing is the recognition of intrinsic beauty, rightness, goodness. ~ Erazim V. Kohák

Adventure is the point where you toss your life on the scales of chance and wait for the pointer to stop. ~ Murray Leinster

PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I would like to ofer some exercises that can help us use the Five Precepts to cultivate and strengthen mindfulness. It is best to choose one of these exercises and work with it meticulously for a week. Then examine the results and choose another for a subsequent week. These practices can help us understand and find ways to work with each precept.

1. Refrain from killing: reverence for life. Undertake for one week to purposefully bring no harm in thought, word, or deed to any living creature. Particularly, become aware of any living beings in your world (people, animals, even plants) whom you ignore, and cultivate a sense of care and reverence for them too.

2. Refraining from stealing: care with material goods. Undertake for one week to act on every single thought of generosity that arises spontaneously in your heart.

3. Refraining from sexual misconduct: conscious sexuality. Undertake for one week to observe meticulously how often sexual feelings arise in your consciousness. Each time, note what particular mind states you find associated with them such as love, tension, compulsion, caring, loneliness, desire for communication, greed, pleasure, agression, and so forth.

4. Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party).

5. Refraining from intoxicants to the point of heedlessness ~ Jack Kornfield

NumbersUSA's work was critical to derailing the 2007 comprehensive federal immigration bill, which had, at that point, received the support of President Buch, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the high-tech industry, the Catholic Church, immigrant-advocacy organizations, and several industries reliant on immigration labor, including farming, food services, and construction. During the weeks leading up to the floor vote on the bill, NumbersUSA coordinated weekly phone calls with the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, mobilized its members to engage key senators, and provided those senators with information and arguments necessary to oppose the bill. Several actors, including pro-immigrant advocates, restrictionists, and members of Congress, have credited NumbersUSA with causing the collapse of the bill in the Senate. ~ Pratheepan Gulasekaram

When we recognize that our personal good coincides with the Good of everyone, our inner light is turned on: at this point, when a human being becomes a Human Angel, their light, like a beacon, shines all around.
The more lights are lit, the more humanity will be enlightened in these dark times, when the world of the ego, driven to its extreme, has begun its dramatic collapse. ~ Human Angels

The important point of this report [Montague, Massachusetts; July 7, 1774] may be summed up in six resolutions: 1. We approve of the plan for a Continental Congress September 1, at Philadelphia. 2. We urge the disuse of India teas and British goods. 3. We will act for the suppression of pedlers and petty chapmen (supposably vendors of dutiable wares). 4. And work to promote American manufacturing. 5. We ought to relieve Boston. 6. We appoint the 14th day of July, a day of humiliation and prayer. ~ Edward Pearson Pressey

Surreal fiction is a sophisticated art form. Events happen divorced from conventional logic, as events in a dream may happen. But unlike dreams, everything in the story contributes to an overall coherent point, impression or emotion. ~ Nancy Kress

We are not compelled in naturalism, or even in materialism, to ignore immaterial things; the point is that any immaterial things which are recognized shall be regarded as names, aspects, functions, or concomitant products of those physical things among which action goes on. ~ George Santayana

I don't really see the point in washing your hair. If you don't care if your hair's clean or not then why would you wash it? ~ Robert Pattinson

I write incessantly, I'm very productive, I write for a dozen publications and blogs and websites. A lot of very hardcore political stuff. I write a weekly feature. I express myself. But when time comes to make music [with the] same absolutely unleashing of total honesty zero inhibitions, it just flows like a stream of conscientiousness because I will not be silenced no matter what my point might be. ~ Ted Nugent

I'd dropped out of high school without really doing it on purpose - I'd just go home at lunch 'cos I didn't have friends, then stay there all afternoon listening to rap. It got to the point where I wouldn't have passed even if I'd gone back. I was depressed, basically. ~ Iggy Azalea

Deciding that at the moment it behooved her to, as Wiry had put it, behave, Heather inclined her head, first to the woman alongside her, "Martha," then to the barrel-chested man, shorter than Wiry but of heavier build, who'd remained quietly seated in the far corner of the coach. "Cobbins."
She turned her gaze on Wiry. "And you are?"
He smiled. "You may call me Fletcher, Miss Wallace."
Heather thought of a few other epithets she might call him, but she merely inclined her head. Settling on the seat, she leaned her head back against the squabs and ventured nothing more. She sensed that Fletcher expected her to protest, perhaps beg for mercy, or try to subvert him and the others from their goal, but she saw no point in lowering herself to that.
No point at all.
The more she thought of all Fletcher had let fall, the more she felt certain of that. This had to be the strangest abduction she'd ever heard of...well, she hadn't heard the details of any abduction attempts, but it seemed distinctly odd that they were treating her so considerately, so...sensibly. So terribly calmly and confidently. ~ Stephanie Laurens

Work, work, work, but what mark do we leave, what point do we make? People who are too beholden to work become like erasers: as things move forward, they leave in their wake no trace of themselves. ~ Yann Martel

I guess there is also an element of deliberate change involved. Each of my books has been, at least from my point of view, radically different from the last. ~ George Murray

So many words went through her head, but none of them were the right ones. It was like being stuck on the next plot point of a story. She'd lost the voice. ~ Laura Ambrose

The jest loses its point when he who makes it is the first to laugh. ~ Friedrich Schiller

He, who has blended the useful with the sweet, has gained every point . ~ Horace

I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend. ~ Elizabeth Strout

When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper ... the fountain of all thought has been opened to him ... the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Apathy. Pretending to be happy, pretending to be sad, pretending to have an orgasm, pretending to be having fun, pretending that you've slept well, pretending that you're alive. Until there comes a point where you reach an imaginary red line and realize that if you cross it, there will be no turning back. Then you stop complaining, because complaining means that you are at least still battling something. You accept the vegetative state and try to conceal it from everyone. And that's hard work. ~ Paulo Coelho

One tends to look back at the mistakes as the same thing - relinquishing control of something at some point in your career. ~ Nick Mason

Kissinger traces the balances made in foreign policy, including that of realism and idealism, from the times of Cardinal Richelieu through chapters on Theodore Roosevelt the realist and Woodrow Wilson the idealist. Kissinger, a European refugee who has read Metternich more avidly than Jefferson, is unabashedly in the realist camp. "No other nation," he wrote in Diplomacy, "has ever rested its claim to international leadership on its altruism." Other Americans might proclaim this as a point of pride; when Kissinger says it, his attitude seems that of an anthropologist examining a rather unsettling tribal ritual. The practice of basing policy on ideals rather than interests, he pointed out, can make a nation seem dangerously unpredictable. ~ Walter Isaacson

If you ain't killin' 'em, maybe your point ain't sharp enough. ~ Kevin Welch

The center-point of riding a motorcycle, and of life itself, is Freedom. ~ Foster Kinn