Obscurity famous quotes

Permit us to labor on in obscurity, and at the end of twenty years you may hear from us again.
-- Adoniram Judson

#Years #Twenties #Obscurity

One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.
-- Albert Camus

#Philosophical #Men #Obscurity

I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
-- Aldous Huxley

#Sunset #Dark #Obscurity

The obscurity is more often in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.
-- Alexander Hamilton

#Passion #Prejudice #Obscurity

I would rather live a short life of glory than a long one of obscurity.
-- Alexander the Great

#Short Life #Long #Obscurity

Wir tappen im Labyrinth unsers Lebenswandels und im Dunkel unserer Forschungen umher: helleAugenblicke erleuchten dabei wie Blitze unsernWeg. We grope about in the labyrinth of our life and in the obscurity of our investigations; bright moments illuminate our path like flashes of lightning.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer

#Labyrinth #Lightning #Obscurity

There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition
-- Blaise Pascal

#Light #Desire #Obscurity

The human mind is indeed a cave swarming with strange forms of life, most of them unconscious and unilluminated. Unless we can understand something as to how the motives that issue from this obscurity are generated, we can hardly hope to foresee or control them.
-- Charles Horton Cooley

#Issues #Mind #Obscurity

The big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.
-- Cory Doctorow

#Obscurity #Problem #Bigs

You cannot be buried in obscurity: you are exposed upon a grand theater to the view of the world. If your actions are upright and benevolent, be assured they will augment your power and happiness.
-- Cyrus the Great

#Army #Views #Obscurity

Why, oh why must one grow up, why must one inherit this heavy, numbing responsibility of living an undiscovered life? Out of the nothingness and the undifferentiated mass, to make something of herself! But what? In the obscurity and pathlessness to take a direction! But whither? How take even one step? And yet, how stand still? This was torment indeed, to inherit the responsibility of one’s own life.
-- D. H. Lawrence

#Growing Up #Responsibility #Obscurity

I want to be famous so I can be humble about being famous. What good is my humility when I am stuck in this obscurity?
-- David Budbill

#Humble #Humility #Obscurity

Obscurantism is the academic theorist's revenge on society for having consigned him or her to relative obscurity - a way of proclaiming one's superiority in the face of one's diminished influence.
-- David Lehman

#Revenge #Obscurity #Way

My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.
-- Edward Gibbon

#Obscurity #Language #Decent

The obscurity, incredibility and obscenity, so conspicuous in many parts of it, would justly condemn the works of a modern writer. It contains a mixture of inconsistency and contradiction; to call which the word of God, is the highest pitch of extravagance: it is to attribute to the deity that which any person of common sense would blush to confess himself the author of.
-- Elihu Palmer

#Common Sense #Religion #Obscurity

How rare it is to come across a piece of writing that is unambiguous, unqualified, and also unblurred by understatements or subtleties, and yet at the same time urbane and tolerant. It is a vice of the scientific method when applied to human affairs that it fosters hemming and hawing and a scrupulousness that easily degenerates into obscurity and meaninglessness.
-- Eric Hoffer

#Writing #Vices #Obscurity

I shop a lot more for furniture than I do for clothes. I much prefer going to an antique shop full of obscurities.
-- Erin Wasson

#Clothes #Obscurity #Antiques

The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.
-- Ernest Gellner

#Paris #Car #Obscurity

I have gone from local obscurity to national obscurity to international obscurity. Once I learn how to monetize obscurity, I will be rich.
-- Ernie J Zelinski

#Obscurity #Gone #Rich

Critics should help people see for themselves; they should never try to define things, or impose their own explanations, though I admit that if... a critic's explanations serve to increase the general obscurity, that's all to the good.
-- Georges Braque

#People #Trying #Obscurity

It is better to be famous than notorious, but better to be notorious than obscure.
-- James Kern Feibleman

#Obscurity #Obscure #Notorious

People newly emerged from obscurity generally launch out into indiscriminate display.
-- Jean Ingelow

#People #Obscurity

The theory of interest was wrapped in utter obscurity, until Hume and Smith dispelled the vapor.
-- Jean-Baptiste Say

#Obscurity #Vapor #Theory

Art will never come except from some small disregarded corner where an isolated and inspired man is studying the mysteries of nature.
-- Jean-Francois Millet

#Art #Men #Obscurity

When (an advocate) is not thoroughly acquainted with the real strength and weakness of his cause, he knows not where to choose the most impressive argument. When the mark is shrouded in obscurity, the only substitute for accuracy in the aim is in the multitude of the shafts.
-- John Quincy Adams

#Real #Weakness #Obscurity

There is no defense against reproach, but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness.
-- Joseph Addison

#Greatness #Defense #Obscurity

I wanted to drag Shakespeare from obscurity. I've been a fan my whole life.
-- Joss Whedon

#Fans #Obscurity #Drag

Avoid an unusual and unfamiliar word just as you would a reef.
-- Julius Caesar

#Obscurity #Unusual

Well, you can implement a Perl peek() with unpack('P',...). Once you have that, there's only security through obscurity.
-- Larry Wall

#Obscurity #Wells #Security

I hate set dissertations,--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception.
-- Laurence Sterne

#Hate #Numbers #Obscurity

"Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always different from what was expected. Everything new is received with contempt-for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.
-- Ludwig Feuerbach

#Knowing #Different #Obscurity

The origins of poetry are clearly rooted in obscurity, in secretiveness, in incantation, in spells that must at once invoke and protect, tell the secret and keep it.
-- Mary Ruefle

#Secret #Obscurity #Protect

I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity.
-- Oliver Cromwell

#Gentleman #Height #Obscurity

If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity.
-- Oscar Wilde

#Differences #Three #Obscurity

Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity.
-- Ovid

#Solitude #Obscurity #Wells

The line between greatness and obscurity is very, very small.
-- Peabo Bryson

#Greatness #Obscurity #Lines

Many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life
-- Protagoras

#Obscurity #Human Life #Brevity

As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.
-- Protagoras

#Knowing #Touching #Obscurity

The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.
-- Quintilian

#Soul #Rust #Obscurity

The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
-- Quintilian

#Obscurity #Incapacity #Proportion

If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help.
-- Randall Jarrell

#Reading #Doe #Obscurity

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.
-- Robert A. Heinlein

#Artist #Obscurity #Use

Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.
-- Robert A. Heinlein

#Obscurity #Incompetence #Refuge

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code... obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.
-- Robert A. Heinlein

#Artist #Obscurity #Use

I mean, you hear the word 'globalization' over and over and over again. Globalization, globalization, globalization. Rarely has a word gone so directly from obscurity to meaninglessness without any intervening period of coherence.
-- Robert Reich

#Mean #Coherence #Obscurity

And all these questions I ask myself. It is not in a spirit of curiosity. I cannot be silent. About myself I need know nothing. Here all is clear. No, all is not clear. But the discourse must go on. So one invents obscurities. Rhetoric.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Curiosity #Needs #Obscurity

Do they [the publishers of Murphy] not understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and thatto compress it further can only make it more obscure?
-- Samuel Beckett

#Book #Obscurity #Obscure

I guess I didn't feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in certain directions or teach me certain things - not knowing what that would be.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Knowing #Would Be #Obscurity

I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.
-- Tallulah Bankhead

#Men #Rumor #Obscurity

It is human nature to instinctively rebel at obscurity or ordinariness.
-- Taylor Caldwell

#Rebel #Obscurity #Human Nature

As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Pearls #Obscurity #Shells

The spirit is often concealed within matter to such an extent that few people are generally capable of perceiving it.
-- Wassily Kandinsky

#People #Obscurity #Matter

For the most part, executions happen in obscurity. If people did hear about executions, if they were publicized, even televised, I fear more would enjoy them than be repelled by them.
-- Wendy Kaminer

#People #Execution #Obscurity

One must choose between obscurity with efficiency, and fame with its inevitable collateral of bluff.
-- William McFee

#Obscurity #Reputation #Fame

Maybe some people are better off in obscurity than trying to keep on expanding.
-- Erika M. Anderson

#People #Trying #Obscurity

To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.
-- John Warwick Montgomery

#Book #Obscurity #Ancient

I seem to have emerged from the relative obscurity of TV.
-- Peter Webber

#Obscurity #Tvs #Relative

The problem for most artists isn't piracy, it's obscurity.
-- Tim O'Reilly

#Artist #Obscurity #Problem

Obscurity is a bigger problem for authors than piracy.
-- Tim O'Reilly

#Obscurity #Problem #Bigger

Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
-- Tim O'Reilly

#Artist #Creative #Obscurity

In the future, everyone will have fifteen minutes of fame. Followed by fifteen minutes of legal problems, fifteen minutes of ridicule from late-night TV hosts, fifteen minutes of obscurity, and fifteen minutes of "Where are they now?".
-- Dan Piraro

#Night #Obscurity #Fifteen

A man will work and slave in obscurity for ten years and then become famous in ten minutes.
-- Robert Ripley

#Men #Years #Obscurity

Not everyone can be as successful a performer as myself, who gave 10 great performances the first time I ever did comedy, and then toiled in obscurity for years.
-- Scott Aukerman

#Successful #Years #Obscurity