Popular quotes about Absent! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.
Lord ChesterfieldI love what I'm doing here but I hate being away from home. I hate it. I look forward to one day raising a family myself, and I really look forward to children but when that day comes, I don't want to be an absent dad. I'm already an absent husband.
Chuck RaganMajority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group's normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.
Philip ZimbardoAbsent the net, we certainly couldn't have organized in 190 countries around the world. It's no substitution for face to face interaction - that's why we have "days of action" where people are in real contact with each other - but it's the cheap (and low-carbon) way to do an awful lot of the planning and organizing. And we can build, for $20k, a website as good as one Exxon can build for $20 million.
Bill McKibbenFor a few minutes, maybe, life lingers in the tissues of some outlying regions of the body. Then, one by one, the lights go out and there is total blackness. And ifsome part of the nonโentity we called George has indeed been absent at this moment of terminal shock, away out there on the deep water, then it will return to find itself homeless.
Christopher IsherwoodTo love in the sense of passion-love is the contrary of to live. It is an impoverishment of one's being, an askesis without sequel, an inability to enjoy the present without imagining it as absent, a never-ending flight from possession.
Denis de RougemontThe people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheI am the owner of my choices. I am the source for the perspectives I choose to hold regardless of how aware I am of why or how I come to possess that particular perspective. It takes courage to look into the mirror of our souls, absent excuses. I will look into that mirror little bits at a time. SEE and ACT. SEE what I can bear to see and ACT upon what I am able. This is the heart of a gentle invitation to personal responsibility.
Mary Anne RadmacherBy contemplating the impermanence of everything in the world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent. We will no longer sleepwalk through our life.
William Braxton IrvinePoverty arises and persists where corruption is endemic and enterprise is stifled, where basic fairness provided by the rule of law is absent. In such circumstances, poverty is an assault against human dignity, and in that assault lies the natural seed of human anger
Colin PowellAll the earth, though it were full of kind hearts, is but a desolation and desert place to a mother when her only child is absent.
Elizabeth GaskellI observed once to Goethe that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself.
Arthur SchopenhauerI knew that I wanted to be an illustrator since I was in kindergarten. I can remember the exact day. The art teacher usually came to our classroom once a week, but she was absent that day. Instead, our regular teacher gave us each a huge piece of paper and crayons, and we could do whatever we wanted.
Jan BrettLet us drink together, fellows, as we did in days of yore. And still enjoy the golden hours that Fortune has in store; The absent friends remembered be, in all thatโs sung or said, And Love immortal consecrate the memory of the dead.
Albert PikeNew York... is a city of geometric heights, a petrified desert of grids and lattices, an inferno of greenish abstraction under a flat sky, a real Metropolis from which man is absent by his very accumulation.
Roland BarthesNot keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenor of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal?
Jane AustenA good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example.
Georg C. LichtenbergKant does not think that along with choice of an action we also choose in each case the motive from which we do it. He thinks all is well if I act beneficently, realizing that it is my duty but also having sympathetic feelings for the person I help. But I ought to strive to be the sort of person who would still help even if these feelings were absent. And it is such a case that he presents when the sympathetic friend of humanity finds his sympathetic feelings overclouded by his own sorrows, and still acts beneficently from duty.
Allen W. WoodThe pain of loneliness is one way in which he wants to get our attention. We may be earnestly desiring to be obedient and holy. But we may be missing the fact that it is here, where we happen to be at this moment and not in another place or another time, that we may learn to love Him - here where it seems He is not at work, where He seems obscure or frightening, where He is not doing what we expected Him to do, where He is most absent. Here and nowhere else is the appointed place. If faith does not got to work here, it will not work at all.
Elisabeth ElliotWhat's funny is that the idea of popularity - even the use of the word 'popular' - is something that had been mostly absent from my life since junior high. In fact, the hallmark of life after junior high seemed to be the shedding of popularity as a central concern.
Susan OrleanStories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.
John HodgmanIt is just as cowardly to judge an absent person as it is wicked to strike a defenseless one. Only the ignorant and narrow-minded gossip, for they speak of persons instead of things.
Lawrence G. LovasikEmotional damage is never easy to measure, but mothers who are alive but psychically absent impose filial burdens which knot their children's feelings in a way biologic orphans are spared.
Eileen SimpsonEvery boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how tobe men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.
Frank PittmanThe same know contentment, for beauty is their lover, and beauty is never absent from this world.
Teresa of AvilaAbsent geopolitical crises, the role of government policy isn't as big as people think in the short run. In the immediate term, the potential to ignite an escalating trade war without really intending to ought to be high on our list of US dangers as should dangers of popping credit bubbles either internationally or here at home.
Austan GoolsbeeWhere the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;--and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.
Ralph Waldo EmersonKnowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
George SantayanaWe must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.
Gretchen RubinA FRIEND IS A PERSON . . . With whom you can be sincere. . . . To whom you never need to defend yourself. . . . On whom you can depend whether present or absent. . . . With whom you never need pretend. . . . To whom you can reveal yourself without fear of betrayal. . . . Who does not feel she owns you because you are her friend. . . . Who will not selfishly use you because she has your confidence. I WOULD HAVE SUCH A FRIEND. . . AND I WOULD BE SUCH A FRIEND. I DO HAVE SUCH A FRIEND!
Alfred Armand MontapertThis may be the very nature of love, a passion as fickle as the sea, full of certainty when the object of desire is absent, yet dubious when confronted again with the lover's presence.
Tobsha LearnerEmma was a shocking driver, simultaneously sloppy and petrified, and for the first fifty miles had been absent-mindedly driving with her spectacles on top of her contact lenses so that other traffic loomed menacingly out of nowhere like alien space cruisers.
David NichollsCREATIVITY is when you are not, because creativity is the fragrance of the creator. It is the presence of God in you. Creativity belongs to the creator, not to you. No man can ever be creative. Yes, man can compose, construct, but can never be a creator. When man disappears, when man becomes utterly absent, a new kind of presence enters his being - the presence of God. Then there is creativity. When God is inside you His light that starts falling around you is creativity. The climate that arises around you because of the presence of God within you is creativity.
RajneeshWriting a book is a bit like going on location for a movie. You're absent from your life, your family, and your friends. You're psychologically gone, so you might as well be physically gone.
Michael CrichtonMy mother is schizophrenic. I would love to be brave enough to learn more about it. I try to understand her, I try to be positive about it. She can be so absent and tired by her medication; sometimes she's so lucid, funny, and smart.
Pom KlementieffWhen a Pueblo Indian does not feel in the right mood, he stays away from the men's council. When an ancient Roman stumbled on the threshold as he left the house, he gave up his plans for the day. This seems to us senseless, but under primitive conditions of life such an omen inclines one at least to be cautious. When I am not in full control of myself, my bodily movements may be under a certain constraint; my attention is easily distracted; I am somewhat absent-minded. As a result I knock against something, stumble, let something fall, or forget something.
Carl JungBy enlivening this most basic level of life, Transcendental Meditation is that one simple procedure which can raise the life of every individual and every society to its full dignity, in which problems are absent and perfect health, happiness, and a rapid pace of progress are the natural features of life.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi