Quotes About Absence

There is no such thing as experience here. You seem to know, you imagine. Imagination must come to an end...I don't know how to put it. The absence of imagination, the absence of will, the absence of effort, the absence of all movement in any direction, on any level, in any dimension - THAT is the thing. That is a thing that cannot be experienced at all. It is not an experience.

In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle.

To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.

Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of fear accounts for this phenomenon. Indeed, the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child.

History will help to remedy intellectual faults such as excessive concentration on one line of thought, absence of understanding for other points of view, belief in simple solutions, lack of balance of mind, absence of an imaginative understanding.

The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.

Peace is not merely the absence of warfare, any more than true health is simply the absence of disease. Nor is peace simply a quiet state of equilibrium-impossible to achieve in an evolving system. Though refraining from harm is an essential first step, lasting peace is created by actively redressing harm done. Peace is a creative process of actively joining I and thou into a co-creative we. It requires authentic communication, empathic listening, and wildly creative solutions.

Many are the fools who say that Jesus stood in His own path and opposed Himself; that He knew not His own mind, and in the absence of that knowledge confounded Himself.

It is said that courage isn’t the absence of fear but the fortitude to confront fear. And as long as homophobia continues to be an accepted element of the locker room culture and homophobic language a coach’s motivational tool, we can never dismiss the courage it takes for an athlete-on any level-to be openly gay. Bobby Blair may not be a household name, but his journey-from frightened collegiate athlete to empowered advocate-is one that has an important lesson for anyone who believes in the unifying power of sports.

I began to measure things in absence instead of presence.

Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.

The attachment to a rationalistic, teleological notion of progress indicates the absence of true progress; he whose life does not unfold satisfyingly under its own momentum is driven to moralize it, to set up goals and rationalize their achievement as progress.

My only real solace? Sleep. In the absence of an explanation of anything, for everything, I live for it and what it can bring.

When I spoke with psychoanalysts, they confirmed to me that the most neurotic relationship is always between mother and daughter. The cliché is to think it's because of the father, the absence of the father.

I took a leave of absence from the internet company where I was working and bought a camera and a copy of Final Cut Pro editing software and made my first feature film, "Street Fight." It followed a crazy, racially charged mayoral election in Newark, NJ in which a young guy named Cory Booker was taking on the political machine of that city. It went on to be nominated for an Oscar and Emmy and was a real example of DIY film-making.

According to true military art, one should never push one's enemy to the point of despair, because such a state multiplies his strength and increases his courage which had already been crushed and failing, and because there is no better remedy for the health of beaten and overwhelmed men than the absence of all hope.

You say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse.

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.

Part of the pleasure of giving a reading comes from the rapport between the audience and the poet. I don't want to get mystical here, but there's an energy flow that begins with the poet, and the energy goes out to the audience, and they're energized, and then they return that energy to the poet. As someone standing up there alone, facing these people, I can feel that rapport (or its absence).

But the absence of him is everywhere I look. It's like a huge hole has been punched through my chest.

In fall 1967, I was given leave of absence by the National Public Affairs Research Foundation to move to Redondo Beach, California, to work on a short-term research contract with TRW.

I make the other’s absence responsible for my worldliness.

What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.

Considering the absence of legal coercion, the surprising thing is that men have for so long, and, on the whole, so reliably, adhered to what we might call the breadwinner ethic.

I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.

Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.

Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.

There is a wise old saying 'Eat it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without'. Thrift is a practice of not wasting anything. Some people are able to get by because of the absence of expense. They have their shoes resoled, they patch, they mend, they sew, and they save money. They avoid installment buying, and make purchases only after saving enough to pay cash, thus avoiding interest charges. Frugality means to practice careful economy.

The riches of successful entrepreneurs is not the cause of anybody's poverty; it is the consequence of the fact that the consumers are better supplied than they would have been in the absence of the entrepreneur's efforts.

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.

Personally, I do not see in Canada it would be a feasible thing if any Ministry organized taking over both the Health and the Disease of the entire community... even in the most favourable circumstances... there would be that absence of competition and that sense of independence... I do not believe it would be good for the profession or good for the Public.

The strength of your faith is not measured by the absence of doubt, but by the faithfulness of your life in the face of doubt.

Tyranny is usually tempered with assassination, and Democracy must be tempered with culture. In the absence of this, it turns into a representation of collective folly.

I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.

We are taught to understand, correctly, that courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity for action despite our fears.

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.

A truly free society must not include a peace which oppresses us. We must learn on our own terms what peace and freedom mean together. There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights, because external and internal peace are inseparable. Peace is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.

But I still always felt the absence of a mother.

Peace is neither the absence of war nor the presence of a disarmament agreement. Peace is a change of heart.

How torturous is the "churchly" language one must speak in church - the tone, style, habit. It is all artificial; there is a total absence of a simple human language. With what a sigh of relief one leaves this world of cassocks, and kissing and church gossip. As soon as one leaves, one sees: wet bare branches, fog which floats over fields, trees, homes. Sky. Early dusk. And it all tells an incredibly simple truth.

Young men have strong passions and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they show absence of control...They are changeable and fickle in their desires which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep rooted.

Man's history is woven into waterways, for not only did he live beside them, but he used them as highways for hunting, exploration, and trade. Water assured his welfare, its absence meant migration or death, its constancy nourished his spirit. A mountain, a desert, or a great forest might serve his need of strength, but water reflects his inner needs.

In the absence of any short term in common use to represent all desirable things, or things that satisfy human wants, we may use the term Goods for that purpose.

Just as darkness is born of the absence of light, the shadow side of our collective experience is born of ignorance of the underlying truth of the unity of life.

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.

Inherent to socialism is the absence of choice. If I want to choose my own pretzels or books or iphones, they prevent me - they fine me, or imprison me. And those systems, not infrequently have historically, have developed into systems where there are pogroms.