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Surface Quotes

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Surface Quotes

“It is a waste of time to see people who have only a social surface to show. I will make every effort to find out the real person, but if I can't, then I am upset and cross. Time wasted is poison.”

People Ifs Persons I Can Real Shows Social Effort Waste Crosses Surface Upset Poison Wasting Time Wasted Time Real Person

Book:Journal of a Solitude

Source: Journal of a Solitude

“When you sit quiet and watch yourself, many things may come to the surface. Do nothing about them, don't react to them. As they have come, so will they go, by themselves. All that matters is mindfulness, total awareness of oneself, or rather, of one's mind.”

Mind May Matter Watches Awareness Quiet Mindfulness Oneself Surface

Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“I don't try to call myself a poet. But I know that my stuff is pretty literal, in that the themes are pretty simple and on the surface.”

Knows Trying Stuff Simple Poet Surface Theme Literal

Author:Bo Burnham

“Moods are in the mind and do not matter. Go within, go beyond. Cease being fascinated by the content of your consciousness. When you reach the deep layers of your true being, you will find that the mind's surface-play affects you very little.”

Mind Littles Matter Play Consciousness Surface Mood Cease Fascinated Layers

Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“The challenge of yoga is to go beyond our limits - within reason. We continually expand the frame of the mind by using the canvas of the body. It is as if you were to stretch a canvas more and create a larger surface for a painting. But we must respect the present form of our body. If you pull too much at once, we will rip the canvas. If the practice of today damages the practice of tomorrow, it is not correct practice.”

Ifs Mind Reason Body Today Form Challenges Practice Too Much Painting Tomorrow Limits Yoga Surface Damage Canvas Rip

Author:B.K.S. Iyengar

“See how peaceful it is here. The sea is everything. An immense reservoir of nature where I roam at will.... Think of it. On the surface there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves their reign ceases, their evil drowns. Here on the ocean floor is the only independence. Here I am free.”

Thinking Men Stills Law Fighting Evil Pieces Sea Feet Tears Exercise Ocean Independence Mere Hunger Wave Surface Cease Peaceful Immense Reign Unjust Here I Am Reservoirs Unjust Laws

Author:Earl Felton

“Once a new social stage appears in a culture, it will spread its instructional codes and life-priority messages throughout that culture's surface-level expressions: religion, economic and political arrangements, psychological and anthro-pological theories, and views of human nature, our future destiny, globalization, and even architectural patterns and sports preferences. We all live in flow states; there is always new wine, always old wineskins. We, indeed, find ourselves pursuing a neverending quest.”

“Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface”

Eye Society Surface Grass Delighted Lawns Velvet Roughness

Book:The Complete Short Stories of Washington Irving: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a Traveler, The Alhambra, Woolfert’s Roost & The Crayon Papers Collections (Illustrated): The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, Old Christmas, The Voyage, Roscoe, The Widow’s Retinue, An Old Soldier, Mountjoy, Don Juan, Woolfert’s Roost, Tales of The Alhambra and many more

Source: The Complete Short Stories of Washington Irving: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a Traveler, The Alhambra, Woolfert’s Roost & The Crayon Papers Collections (Illustrated): The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, Old Christmas, The Voyage, Roscoe, The Widow’s Retinue, An Old Soldier, Mountjoy, Don Juan, Woolfert’s Roost, Tales of The Alhambra and many more

“There is no clear distinction anywhere on the Earth's surface between living and nonliving matter. There is merely a hierarchy of intensity going from the 'material' environment of the rocks and the atmosphere to the living cells.”

Life Matter Earth Growth Clear Environment Rocks Materials Birth Surface Cells Atmosphere Distinction Intensity Rebirth Hierarchy

Book:The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth

Source: The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth

“You and I can profit by asking ourselves: What do I see when I look through the lens of my attitude toward myself? Am I more a critic than a friend? Do I look beyond the surface blemishes to find the truly beautiful and unique person that I am? Or do I play the destructive "comparison game"? What verdict does the juror of my mind pass on me: "good at heart" or "guilty on all counts"?”

Mind Looks Heart Persons Doe I Can Self Play Beautiful Games Attitude Unique Asking Critics Profit Surface Guilty Destructive Comparison Lenses Of My Mind My Attitude Verdict Jurors

Author:John Powell

“"You know, I've wondered if it's more painful to lose someone you love to death or to lose someone you love because she no longer loves you back." "I don't know," I said. "On the surface, it seems an easy question. It should be so much easier to lose someone who doesn't love you, because why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want you? But rejection's not an east road. A part of you always wonders what makes you so unlovable."”

Source: Richard Paul Evans: The Complete Walk Series eBook Boxed Set: The Walk, Miles to Go, Road to Grace, Step of Faith, Walking on Water

“Doubt is nothing but a trivial agitation on the surface of the soul, while deep down there is a calm certainty.”

Soul Doubt Calm Surface Certainty Deep Down Agitation

Author:Francois Mauriac

“Only on the surface of things have I ever trod the beaten path. So long as I could keep from hurting anyone else, I have lived, as completely as it was possible, the life of my choice. I have been free. . . . I have done the work I wished to do for the sake of that work alone.”

Long Has Beens Done Choices Hurt Freedom Path Sake Surface Beaten Beaten Path

Author:Ellen Glasgow

“The most important thing to teach your children is that the sun does not rise and set. It is the Earth that revolves around the sun. Then teach them the concepts of North, South, East and West, and that they relate to where they happen to be on the planet's surface at that time. Everything else will follow.”

Children Doe Important Happens Earth Teach Sun Planets Concepts Our Children Important Things West South Surface East Relate Your Children East And West

Author:R. Buckminster Fuller

“I love the vast surface of silence; and it is my chief delight to break it.”

Silence Break Delight Surface Chiefs

Author:Carl Nielsen

“You have to get rid of borders, limits, and classifications; then light comes. We see everything on the screen of our ideas. We must get rid of that screen to be able to see what is behind. X's ideas are limited, that is why he remains on the surface. Y got rid of the limits, so she always goes to the depths. We should always meet people and new subjects with no set frame of mind. We have to live like that even after long acquaintance. We must get rid of every set idea to approach everything and everyone with love.”

People Should Mind Long Ideas Light Able Behinds Subjects Limits Approach Remains Depth Surface Screens Borders Acquaintance Classification Frame Of Mind

Author:B.K.S. Iyengar

“Books entered my house under cover of night, from the four winds, smuggled in by woodland creatures, and then they never left. Books collected on every surface; I believe that somehow they managed to breed”

Believe Book Night House Left I Believe Four Wind Creatures Surface Woodland Woodland Creatures

Author:Luc Sante

“When you move as openness and softness of heart you’re moving in this life within your self in the same way that your being is. When you move as openness and softness of heart, you are all the way into the surface moving and growing, developing as oneness.”

Way Heart Self Moving Growing Surface Oneness This Life Developing Openness Moving In Softness

Author:John de Ruiter

“Youth and age touch only the surface of our lives.”

Age Our Lives Youth Surface

Book:That Hideous Strength

Source: That Hideous Strength

“Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.”

Men Hard Levels Wise Imagine Fool Mets Absolutes Surface Giants Dwarfs

Book:Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)

“One thing that really interests me is-and it comes out of Chinese and Japanese painting-where you have a number of different kinds of space in the same painting. You have a kind of deep space, and then you have something like right up on the surface.”

Kind Different Interest Space Numbers One Thing Painting Surface Chinese Different Kinds Deep Space

Author:Mary Heilmann

“I like neurotic people. I like troubled people. Not that I don't like squared-away people, but I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.”

People Surface Neurotic Beneath The Surface

Author:Stephen Sondheim

“Our psychological reality, which lies below the surface, frightens us because it endlessly surprises us and drives us in a direction which society's rules and organizations define as wrong or dangerous.”

Reality Lying Dangerous Organization Surprise Individuality Surface Psychological Below The Surface

Author:Anais Nin

“If one's conscious life is too rigid, too regimented, then the surface may crack at times, and we are unprepared for the strange emotions or sensations we experience.”

Ifs Life May Life Is Emotion Strange Conscious Surface Cracks Sensations Unprepared

Author:Anais Nin

“Few persons are made of such strong fiber that they will make a costly outlay when surface work will pass as well in the market.”

Wells Persons Made Character Strong Surface Fiber

Book:Power Through Prayer

Source: Power Through Prayer

“There were sins that were too subtle to be explained, and there were others that were too terrible to be clearly mentioned. For example, there was sex, which was always smouldering just under the surface and which suddenly blew up into a tremendous row when I was about twelve.”

Sex Sin Example Terrible Surface Subtle Twelve

Book:A Collection of Essays

Source: A Collection of Essays

“The ocean, whose tides respond, like women's menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins, the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves... it is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.”

Humans Earth Moon Ocean Eternal Female Depth Surface Monsters Human Life Daily Life Tides Threatening New Life Vessel Fluid Sailor Unstable Indestructible Spawn

Author:Adrienne Rich

“There is a rowdy strain in American life, living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask, it can display itself suddenly with terrifying effect.”

Running Behinds Effects Surface Mask Display Strain Apes Very Deep American Life Life Living Rowdy

Book:This Hallowed Ground: A History of the Civil War

Source: This Hallowed Ground: A History of the Civil War

“But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune 70 times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.”

Source: Benchley Lost and Found: 39 Prodigal Pieces

“One can think of a secretary actively operating a filing system, of a librarian actively cataloguing books, of a computer actively sorting out information. The mind however does not actively sort out information. The information sorts itself out and organises itself into patterns. The mind is passive. The mind only provides an opportunity for the information to behave in this way. The mind provides a special environment in which information can become self-organising. This special environment is a memory surface with special characteristics.”

Source: Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step

“Happiness, I think, lies on the surface... when one plunges under the surface all the buoyant things disappear, and the farther down one gets the more cold and dark it seems: and the more oppressive space feels.”

Thinking Feels Seems Happiness Lying Dark Space Cold Surface Disappear Plunge

Book:My works and days: a personal chronicle

Source: My works and days: a personal chronicle

“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”

Men World Ends Hard Lasts Three Century Possibility Discipline Moon Machines Surface Practicals Cycles Barren Coming To An End

Book:The Culture of Cities

Source: The Culture of Cities

“What is more beautiful than a sea of water with a number of white-winged boats skirting its surface? Poetry and beauty contesting with the wind and the waves!”

Beautiful Water White Numbers Sea Wind Wave Surface Boat

Author:George Matthew Adams

“There is no one who has cooked but has discovered that each particular dish depends for its rightness upon some little point which he is never told. It is not only so of cooking: it is so of splicing a rope; of painting a surface of wood; of mixing mortar; of almost anything you like to name among the immemorial human arts.”

Humans Littles Art Names Particular Painting Depends Cooking Woods Surface Dishes Rope Mixing Mortar

Book:One thing and another

Source: One thing and another

“We've created an unnatural form of running. It's not just the shoes, but we run on artificial surfaces - straight ahead, hard and steady - instead of speeding up and slowing down, reacting to the terrain with changes of pace and rhythm.”

Hard Running Form Shoes Surface Rhythm Pace Steady Artificial Slow Down Unnatural Reacting Terrain Slowing Speeding Speeding Up

Author:Christopher McDougall

“If you're in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.”

Ifs Nature Quality Tree Effects Strange Surface Forests Echoes Itchy Ricochet

Author:Brian Eno

“I loved Wimbledon and what it meant, but the surface felt uncomfortable. I just didn't like it, I was a hard-court guy, a Californian kid.”

Hard Kids Guy Felt Court Surface Uncomfortable Wimbledon Californians

Author:Pete Sampras

“There is no agreement on the extent to which metabolism could develop independently of a genetic material. In my opinion, there is no basis in known chemistry for the belief that long sequences of reactions can organize spontaneously -- and every reason to believe that they cannot. The problem of achieving sufficient specificity, whether in aqueous solution or on the surface of a mineral, is so severe that the chance of closing a cycle of reactions as complex as the reverse citric acid cycle, for example, is negligible.”

“The tubular steel chair is surely rational from technical and constructive points of view. It is light, suitable for mass production, and so on. But steel and chromium surfaces are not satisfactory from the human point of view.”

Humans Light Views Mass Productions Surface Point Of View Rational Chairs Steel Constructive Suitable Mass Production Chromium

Book:Alvar Aalto, Furniture and Glass: Exhibition the Museum of Modern Art, New York

Source: Alvar Aalto, Furniture and Glass: Exhibition the Museum of Modern Art, New York

“May I repeat what I told you here: treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything brought into proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth... lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need to introduce into our light vibrations, represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blueness to give the feel of air.”

“In order to find reality, each must search for his own universe, look for the details that contribute to this reality7 that one feels under the surface of things. To be an artist means to search, to find and look at these realities. To be an artist means never to look away.”

Feels Looks Mean Reality Artist Order Universe Details Surface

Author:Akira Kurosawa

“In the city one clings to nostalgic and unreal signs of community, takes forced refuge in codes, badges and coteries; the city's life, of surfaces and locomotion, usually seems too dangerous and demanding to live through with any confidence.”

Seems Community Cities Dangerous Surface Code Refuge Unreal Nostalgic Badges

Author:Jonathan Raban

“The vast majority of terrestrial species are in fact microbes, and scientists have only begun scratching the surface of the microbial realm. It is entirely possible that examples of life as we don't know it have so far been overlooked.”

Knows Facts Example Scientist Majority Species Surface Realms Overlooked Microbes Scratching The Surface

Author:Paul Davies

“NFL owners should quit worrying about silly things like players celebrating in the end zone. They should give them something to really celebrate. Get rid of the artificial surfaces.”

Giving Should Ends Worry Player Football Surface Quitting Silly Celebrate Nfl Zone Owners Artificial Silly Things

Author:O. J. Simpson

“As far as the surface is concerned - oil on canvas, conventionally applied - my pictures have little to do with the original photograph. They are totally painting (whatever that may mean). On the other hand, they are so like the photograph that the thing that distinguished the photograph from all other pictures remains intact.”

May Mean Littles Art Hands Painting Concerned Originals Remains Photograph Surface Oil Canvas Distinguished

Author:Gerhard Richter

“Perhaps the Doors, Curtains, Surface Pictures, Panes of Glass, etc. are metaphors of despair, prompted by the dilemma that our sense of sight causes us to apprehend things, but at the same time restricts and partly precludes our apprehension of reality.”

Art Reality Causes Doors Painting Despair Sight Metaphor Glasses Surface Etc Curtains Dilemma Apprehension

Book:Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting

Source: Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting

“When I first painted a number of canvases grey all over (about eight years ago), I did so because I did not know what to paint, or what there might be to paint: so wretched a start could lead to nothing meaningful. As time went on, however, I observed differences of quality among the grey surfaces - and also that these betrayed nothing of the destructive motivation that lay behind them. The pictures began to teach me. By generalizing a personal dilemma, they resolved it.”

Knows Years Firsts Art Might Motivation Differences Numbers Behinds Quality Teach Painting Years Ago Lays Paint Eight Surface Meaningful Destructive Grey Betrayed Wretched Dilemma

Author:Gerhard Richter

“The grey paintings, for example, a painted grey surface, completely monochromatic - they come from a motivation, or result from a state, that was very negative. It has a lot to do with hopelessness, depression and such things. But it has to be turned on its head in the end, and has to come to a form where these paintings possess beauty. And in this case, it's not a carefree beauty, but rather a serious one.”

Art Ends States Form Motivation Results Cases Example Painting Serious Negative Surface Grey Hopelessness Carefree Monochromatic

Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007

Source: Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007

“In this noisy, restless, bewildering age, there is a great need for quietness of spirit. Even in our communion with God we are so busy presenting our problems, asking for help, seeking relief that we leave no moments of silence to listen for God's answers. By practice we can learn to submerge our spirits beneath the turbulent surface waves of life and reach that depth of our being where all is still, where no storms can reach us. Here only can we forget the material world and its demands on us.”

Source: My Pillow Book

“Just beneath the surface of all experiences in life is God's, or the Guru's, compassionate face.”

Faces Spiritual Life Is Surface Compassionate Spiritual Life Guru Beneath The Surface

Author:Mata Amritanandamayi