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Inarticulate Quotes

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Inarticulate Quotes

“Your scorn for mediocrity blinds you to its vast primitive power. You stand in the glare of your own brilliance, unable to see into the dim corners of the room, to dilate your eyes and see the potential dangers of the mass, the wad of humanity. Even as I tell you this, dear student, you cannot quite believe that lesser men, in whatever numbers, can really defeat you. But we are in the age of the mediocre man. He is dull, colorless, boring — but inevitably victorious. The amoeba outlives the tiger because it divides and continues in its immortal monotony. The masses are the final tyrants. See how, in the arts, Kabuki wanes and withers while popular novels of violence and mindless action swamp the mind of the mass reader. And even in that timid genre, no author dares to produce a genuinely superior man as his hero, for in his rage of shame the mass man will send his yojimbo, the critic, to defend him. The roar of the plodders is inarticulate, but deafening. They have no brain, but they have a thousand arms to grasp and clutch at you, drag you down.”

HumanityMassesInarticulateShibumiWad
Book:Shibumi
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“The self you have betrayed is your mind; self-esteem is reliance on one’s power to think. The ego you seek, that essential “you” which you cannot express or define, is not your emotions or inarticulate dreams, but your intellect, that judge of your supreme tribunal whom you’ve impeached in order to drift at the mercy of any stray shyster you describe as your “feeling.””

ThinkingMindSelfFeelingsDreamOrderEmotionSelf EsteemJudgingEgoEssentialsMercyIntellectSupremeEsteemBetrayedRelianceInarticulateTribunals
Author:John Galt
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“[T]he democratic principle of "one man, one vote," viewed against a background of voting masses numbering several millions, only serves to demonstrate the pitiful helplessness of the inarticulate individual, who functions at the polls as the smallest indivisible arithmetical (and not always algebraic) unit. He acts in total anonymity, secrecy and legal irresponsibility.”

MenIndividualPrinciplesMillionsMassVoteFunctionDemocraticBackgroundsVotingOne ManSmallestUnitsPollsSecrecyHelplessnessAnonymityPitifulIndivisibleIrresponsibilityInarticulate
Author:Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
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“With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have all but outsung the bell. The inarticulate bell has found too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature.”

FoundLiteratureAnswersToo MuchPoetMusicianBirdPraiseAgreeTongueInterpretationBellsEchoesRhymeUtteranceInaccessibleInarticulateMimicry
Book:The Essential Alice Meynell Collection
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“just as violence is the last refuge of the inarticulate, so it is also the first resort of the incompetent, the easy out for the man who is capable of expressing himself only in the most primitive and vulgar of dramatic terms. He leaves us with only the obscenity of violence per se - and the pornographer thereof will always be with us, in film as in any other medium. And so will his audience.”

MenFirstsLastsFilmEasyTermAudienceViolenceHe ManCapableMediumsDramaticPrimitiveRefugeVulgarResortsIncompetentObscenityInarticulate
Book:The private eye, the cowboy, and the very naked girl: movies from Cleo to Clyde
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“Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.”

WorldHumansWellsMayHumanityHuman BeingsBreakGreedSpreadIgnorantSuperiorsCrueltyConfusedDictatorshipEnslavementWeaponryInarticulate
Book:We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness
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“The problem with love and God, the two of them, is how to say anything about them that doesn’t annihilate them instantly with the wrong words, with untruth. . . . In this sense, love and God are equivalents. We feel both, but because we cannot speak clearly about them, we end up–wordless, inarticulate—by denying their existence altogether, and, pfffffft, they die.”

FeelsTwoEndsProblemDiesSpeakExistenceSay AnythingUntruthInarticulateGod And LoveWrong Words
Book:The feast of love
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“She says, "But in contentment I still feel The need for imperishable bliss." Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires. Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? or do the boughs Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, With rivers like our own that seek for seas They never find, the same receding shores That never touch with inarticulate pang?”

NeedsFeelsDoeStillsDreamEarthDeathMotherDesireFallPerfectSeaSkyRiversFruitHeavyFulfillmentBlissParadiseContentmentShoreOur DreamsRipeUnchangingInarticulatePerishingRipe Fruit
Author:Wallace Stevens
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“They ended every speech with the word hiro, which means: like I said. Thus each man took responsibility for intruding into the inarticulate murmur of the spheres. To hiro they added the word koue, a cry of joy or distress, according to whether it was sung or howled. Thus they essayed to piece the mysterious curtain which hangs between all talking men: at the end of every utterance a man stepped back, so to speak, and attempted to interpret his words to the listener, attempted to subvert the beguiling intellect with the noise of true emotion.”

MenMeanSaidEndsJoySpeakEmotionResponsibilityTalkingPiecesCrySpeechIntellectNoiseMysteriousSpheresListenersDistressCurtainsUtteranceInarticulateTrue Emotions
Author:Leonard Cohen
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“You're so kind, Kazuhiko. That's what I like about you." I like you, too. I love you so much." If he weren't so inarticulate, Kazuhiko could have said so much more. How much her expression, her gentle manner, her pure untainted soul meant to him. How important, in short, her existence was to him. But he wasn't able to put into words. He was only a third-year student in junior high, and worst yet, composition was one of his worst subjects.”

IfsYearsKindSaidImportantSoulAbleExistenceWorstSubjectsLove YouStudentsExpressionLike YouPureThirdsGentleCompositionJuniorsJunior HighI Like YouInarticulateLove You So MuchI Love You So Much
Author:Koushun Takami
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“Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!”

HumansLongSometimesWishUnderstandingSoundSleepEmotionLaborPhrasesMeaninglessRefugeSublimeEloquenceDullnessSpeechlessInarticulateDoctor ZhivagoSound Sleep
Book:Roger Martin du Gard: Gabriela Mistral ; Boris Pasternak
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“Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.”

WayTryingKindDifferentUseFeelingsMessDifferent KindsVentureEquipmentNew BeginningsQuartetsShabbyNew StartInarticulateDeteriorating
Author:T. S. Eliot
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