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Elements Quotes

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Elements Quotes

“In all things and in all ways, choice impacts virtually every element of our life. It bears repeating that even those things which seem out of reach of our choice are governed by how we choose to perceive them.”

WaySeemsChoicesTakenOur LivesBearsElementsAll ThingsImpactGrantedPerceiveOur ChoicesTranscendentalism
Book:Simply An Inspired Life: Consciously Choosing Unbounded Happiness in Good Times & Bad
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“One of the things I find fascinating about God's creation is the way he seems to temper the negative environmental elements with corresponding positive ones. For instance, without the nearly ceaseless rains of the northwest, no incomparable green scenery would greet the eye from all directions. And the snow that snuggles atop Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. St. Helens would not exist if, at lower elevations, there were no rain. . . . God's creative style ensures that something wonderful will offset something less than wonderful. In everything God seems to be balanced.”

IfsWaySeemsEyeCreativeWonderfulStyleCreationBalanceElementsRainNegativeGreenEnvironmentalSnowInstanceFascinatingTemperBalancedHoodSceneryElevationCorrespondingIncomparableGod's Creation
Author:Marilyn Meberg
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“As a result of changes which, over the last century, have modified our empirically based pictures of the world and hence the moral value of many of its elements, the "human religious ideal" inclines to stress certain tendencies and to express itself in terms which seem, at first sight, no longer to coincide with the "christian religious ideal".”

WorldFirstsHumansSeemsChristianLastsCertainValuesTermReligiousResultsMoralCenturyElementsIdealsSightStressTendenciesMoral ValuesIncline
Book:The Divine Milieu
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“A dream inspiring a story is different than placing a description of a dream in a story. When you describe a character's dream, it has to be sharper than reality in some way, and more meaningful. It has to somehow speak to plot, character, and all the rest. If you're writing something fantastical, it can be a really deadly choice because your story already has elements that can seem dreamlike.”

IfsWayWritingDifferentCharacterStoriesDreamRealitySeemsChoicesSpeakElementsMeaningfulDescriptionPlot
Author:Jeff VanderMeer
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“It really seems to me sometimes that the only hope is space. That is to say, perhaps the most energetic—in a bad sense—elements will move on to a new world in space. The problems of mass society will be transported into space, leaving behind this world as a kind of Europe, which then eventually tourists will visit. The Old World. I'm only half joking.”

WorldKindSometimesProblemSeemsMovingSpaceBehindsHalfThis WorldElementsMassEuropeLeavingNew WorldTouristsEnergeticSpace TravelOld World
Author:Mary McCarthy
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“American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.”

MaySeemsAmericaLife IsPowerfulElementsIntellectualToughOptimismAliensNativeGood WillComplacencyAmerican LifeFuseThoughtlessness
Book:Character & Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America
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“On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeated endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations. It is puzzling to realize that the elements, which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur. If the elements are different every time that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or town; these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate "atomic" constituents of space.”

IfsDifferentSeemsCertainRealizingSpaceLevelsBuildingElementsUltimateTownsEndlessBlockVarietyCombinationConstituentsBuilding BlocksPuzzlingGeometric
Author:Christopher Alexander
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“There is a geographical element in all belief-saying what seem profound truths in India have a way of seeming enormous platitudes in England, and vice versa . Perhaps the fundamental difference is that beneath a tropical sun individuality seems less distinct and the loss of it less important.”

WayImportantSeemsBeliefDifferencesLossSunElementsIndiaEnglandFundamentalsProfoundIndividualityVicesEnormousVice VersaSeemingTropicalPlatitudesProfound Truth
Book:A kind of compulsion, 1903-1936
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“There is little mysticism without an element of transcendence, and conversely, there is no transcendence without a certain degree of egocentrism. It may be that the genesis of these experiences is to be sought in the unique situation of the very young child in relation to adults. The theory of the filial origin of the religious sense seems to us singularly convincing in this connection.”

MayChildrenLittlesSeemsYoungCertainReligiousSituationTheoryDegreesElementsUniqueAdultsConnectionsRelationMysticismConvincingTranscendenceGenesisYoung ChildrenFilial
Book:The Moral Judgement of the Child
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“So powerfully does fortune appear to sway the destinies of men, putting a silver spoon into one man's mouth, and a wooden one into another's, that some of the most sagacious of men, as Cardinal Mazarin and Rothschild, seem to have been inclined to regard luck as the first element of worldly success; experience, sagacity, energy, and enterprise as nothing, if linked to an unlucky star.”

IfsMenFirstsDoeHas BeensSeemsEnergyStarsDestinyElementsMouthsRegardLuckFortuneEnterpriseSilverOne ManWorldlyLinkedSpoonsCardinalsUnluckySagacityRothschildSilver SpoonsLucky Star
Book:Getting on in the World: Or, Hints on Success in Life
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“You read reviews by top reviewers of films that not only had remarkably interesting scores, but films whose effectiveness was absolutely enhanced, and frequently created by the music, yet the reviewers seem unaware that their emotions and their nervous reactions to the films have been affected by the scoring. This is a serious flaw. Any film reviewer owes it to himself, and the public, to take every element of the film into account.”

Has BeensSeemsFilmInterestingEmotionSeriousElementsAccountsReactionsNervousScoreFlawsAffectedReviewsEffectivenessReviewers
Author:Jerry Goldsmith
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“Religions have been universal in the sense that all the people we know anything about have had a religion. But the differences among them are so great and so shocking that any common element that can be extracted is meaningless.... The older apologists for Christianity seem to have been better advised than some modern ones in condemning every religion but one as an impostor, as at bottom some kind of demon worship or at any rate a superstitious figment.”

PeopleKnowsKindHas BeensSeemsDifferencesCommonChristianityAtheismModernElementsWorshipUniversalBottomRatePositive AtheismDemonMeaninglessShockingSuperstitiousCondemningFigments
Book:The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, education, democracy
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“It seems strange that a butterfly's wing should be woven up so thin and gauzy in the monstrous loom of nature, and be so delicately tipped with fire from such a gross hand, and rainbowed all over in such a storm of thunderous elements. The marvel is that such great forces do such nice work.”

ShouldHandsSeemsForceNatureFireNiceStrangeElementsWingsStormButterflyGrossMonstrousWovenNice Work
Book:Centenary Edition [of the Writings of Theodore Parker]
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“My vocation is to write and I have known this for a long time. I hope I won't be misunderstood; I know nothing about the value of the things I am able to write. I know that writing is my vocation. When I sit down to write I feel extraordinarily at ease, and I move in an element which, it seems to me, I know extraordinarily well; I use tools that are familiar to me and they fit snugly in my hands. But when I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that are hers.”

KnowsFeelsWritingWellsChildrenLongCountryStoriesUseHandsSeemsAbleMovingValuesKnownTreeStreetsWallFitWalkingElementsLong TimeToolsFamiliarEaseVocationMisunderstood
Author:Natalia Ginzburg
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“I try when I'm writing to fill my head and my ears with all sorts of stuff and then let it settle and filter through. At a certain point it seems like fruitless activity because you're taking a lot of time and not seeming to get anything. And then, slowly, you realize you've actually digested elements and that your thinking is being freed up and the way you build up compositions is changed as a result of what you've been listening to.”

ThinkingWayWritingTryingSeemsCertainStuffRealizingResultsChangedListeningActivityElementsEarsSettlingCompositionSeemingFiltersBeing Free
Author:Peter Gabriel
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“True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of varietyis but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety.”

ArtRealSeemsArtistCreativityFlowerElementsExpectationsBlueVarietyBranchesUnexpectedVoidImitationFormalSpringtimeUniformityPlenitude
Author:Marcel Proust
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“The whole question of pornography seems to me a question of secrecy. Without secrecy there would be no pornography. But secrecy and modesty are two utterly different things. Secrecy has always an element of fear in it, amounting very often to hate. Modesty is gentle and reserved. Today, modesty is thrown to the winds, even in the presence of the grey guardians. But secrecy is hugged, being a vice in itself. And the attitude of the grey ones is: Dear young ladies, you may abandon all modesty, so long as you hug your dirty little secret.”

MayLittlesLongTwoDifferentWholeSeemsWould BeTodayYoungHateSecretAttitudeWindElementsDearVicesDirtyGentleThrownDifferent ThingsAbandonModestyHugGreyPornographyGuardianSecrecyReservedYoung LadiesHug You
Book:Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence
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“Is it not possible that the chimpanzees are responding to some feeling like awe? A feeling generated by the mystery of water; water that seems alive, always rushing past yet never going, always the same yet ever different. Was it perhaps similar feelings of awe that gave rise to the first animistic religions, the worship of the elements and the mysteries of nature over which there was no control? Only when our prehistoric ancestors developed language would it have been possible to discuss such internal feelings and create a shared religion.”

FirstsHas BeensDifferentFeelingsSeemsPastLanguageWaterAliveMysteryElementsWorshipAweInternalsAncestorRespondingRushingChimpanzeesPrehistoricMystery Of Nature
Author:Jane Goodall
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“I felt a gravitational pull to the material so that there's a certain element of acting that's not really necessary. I've really liked this in foreign movies before or I've observed others working with them and I've noticed that there's a method that goes on where the actors try and get the children, like the child actor, to interact with them in a real way. It seems like you're the adult trying to get the kid to fall in love with him.”

WayTryingChildrenRealSeemsKidsCertainFallActorsFeltActingMaterialsLike YouGoes OnElementsAdultsMethodFalling In LoveChild Actors
Author:Brendan Fraser
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“I don't fear death. I'm not obsessed with it the way everybody else seems to be. It's wrong to say "everybody," but in literature I see it all the time - preoccupation with it, philosophical preoccupation, in fact. That's a principle element of literature and philosophy, often cited as the main element, the only real element. I say give it up.”

WayGivingRealPhilosophyFactsSeemsLiteraturePrinciplesElementsPhilosophicalObsessedFear Of DeathPreoccupation
Author:James Salter
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“...As every one of us knows, there are some festivals and games in which everything goes right, and every element lifts up, animates, and exalts every other, just as there are theatrical and musical performances which without any clearly discernible cause seem to ascend miraculously to glorious climaxes and intensely felt experiences, whereas others, just as well prepared, remain no more than decent tries.”

KnowsTryingWellsSeemsGamesFeltCausesElementsPerformancesPreparedMusicalLiftsGloriousDecentFestivalsTheatricalClimaxMusical Performance
Author:Hermann Hesse
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“There were a lot of things I listened to, but so-called pop music never killed me, you know, the type of stuff that always seems to make it on the radio. The whole radio thing seems so... it's like they've accepted the whole "new wave" thing only because this kind of pop element came into it. In Europe they really love emotion, but here it's like, "let's stay away from it because we might cry or something".”

KnowsKindWholeSeemsMightStuffEmotionCryTypeElementsEuropeWaveRadioPopsAcceptedPop MusicLove Emotion
Author:Tom Verlaine
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“The humor of jazz is rich and many-sided. Some of it is obvious enough to make a dog laugh. Some is subtle, wry-mouthed, or back-handed. It is by turns bitter, agonized, and grotesque. Even in the hands of white composers it involuntarily reflects the half-forgotten suffering of the negro. Jazz has both white and black elements, and each in some respects has influenced the other. It's recent phase seems to throw the light of the white race's sophistication upon the anguish of the black.”

EnoughHandsLightSeemsSufferingTurnsBlackWhiteRaceHalfLaughingRichDogElementsJazzForgottenObviousBitterSubtleComposerPhasesAnguishGrotesqueSophisticationWryWhite Race
Author:Bix Beiderbecke
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“As some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility.”

ShouldDoeLightSeemsCertainImpossibleSpecialElementsCapableSensitiveNervesSensibilityOrganismsLowestNatural Selection
Book:On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life
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“I personally don't think of the music as being particularly dark, though many seem to disagree as I often have to answer that question. I try and make the Lustmord sound have a real mass and a tangible presence, which some choose to interpret as dark. It's an interesting distinction. Although there are dark elements interwoven within the whole, it's only one of many textures.”

ThinkingTryingRealWholeSeemsSoundDarkAnswersInterestingElementsMassDistinctionDisagreeTextureTangible
Author:Brian Williams
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“I guess I think that sex and desire and humiliation are central to my experience of consciousness - to my experience of humanness - and I wanted to explore the ways that they circle around and approach and fail to add up to love, or the ways that those three terms - sex, desire, love - can in some lights seem synonymous and in others like elements entirely alien to one another.”

ThinkingWayLightSeemsWantedDesireThreeSexTermConsciousnessFailingElementsApproachAddCirclesAliensHumiliationHumannessDesire Love
Author:Garth Greenwell
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“Our times seem to be so much about redefining where we are physical and where we're not. For me, it is really exciting to take the cutting edge technology and take it as far as it can get virtually, use it to describe/control the musicology or the behavior of raw natural elements, and then plug it with a sound source which is the most acoustic one there is - like gamelan and pipe organ. So you get the extremes: very virtual and very physical. In that way you shift the physicality.”

WayUseSeemsSoundNaturalTechnologyCuttingSourceBehaviorElementsExcitingEdgesExtremesOur TimeOrgansPipeAcousticsPlugsPhysicalityCutting EdgeRedefiningNatural ElementsPipe Organs
Author:Bjork
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“Lincoln is such an iconic figure in American history. He seems to reflect so many elements of American culture that we consider essential, whether it's the self-made man, the frontier hero, the politician who tries to act in a moral way as well as in a political way, Honest Abe. His career raises these questions that are still with us, the power of the federal government vis-à-vis the states, the question of race in American life, can we be a society of equals? There are so many issues central to Lincoln's career that are still part of our society one hundred and fifty years later.”

MenWayTryingYearsWellsMadeStillsSelfStatesSeemsGovernmentPoliticalCultureRaceMoralCareersIssuesHonestFiguresHeroPoliticianEssentialsElementsHundredRaisesFiftyOur SocietyAmerican HistoryFederal GovernmentFrontiersAmerican CultureIconicAmerican LifeSelf MadeAbeSelf Made Man
Author:Eric Foner
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“People even split up by text message, they dump each other by text. Everything seems so disposable, so throwaway, but you have to engage with that if you're writing about the modern world. You've also got all these pop references that you feel obligated to make. They're just part of the bricolage of the whole thing, whether or not these are actually significant elements themselves.”

PeopleIfsWorldFeelsWritingWholeSeemsModernElementsMessagesPopsSignificantSplitsModern WorldDumpDisposableText Message
Author:Irvine Welsh
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