Quotes About Depth

The problem with cliches is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones. The sun is often on fire at sunset and the moon discreet, but if we keep saying this every time we encounter a sun or a moon, we will end up believing that this is the last rather than the first word to be said on the subject. Cliches are detrimental insofar as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation while merely grazing its surface.

A fundamental truth, is that there is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing. People are only in danger of coming across as such when they either fail to understand their deeper selves or don't dare or know how to communicate them to others. 

Therefore, in the mature account of love, we should never fall at first glance. We should reserve our leap until we have completed a clear-eyed investigation of the depths and nature of the waters. Only after we have undertaken a thorough exchange of opinions on parenting, politics, art, science, and appropriate snacks for the kitchen should two people ever decide they are ready to love each other.

A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and more vital than does a man of genius who interests us.

The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones. The sun

One could compare a lover's gaze to a barbecue skewer. Within the complexity of our nature, every lover pics up on certain elements and neglects others.

Taking trauma to be a primary route to growth and depth, Rabih wants his own sadness to find an echo in his partner's character.

Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.

The darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter.

Solo quello che vedi con la coda dell'occhio ti tocca nel profondo. (E.M. Forster)

The sky too is deep, the water immeasurably deep. Of heaven and earth we know nothing [unnamed poet]

There is beauty,' she said, 'in the least beautiful of things.

a first encounter with a worthwhile book is never a complete encounter, and we are usually in error to make it a final one.

Does the human heart know chasms so abysmal?

With your depth of field and curious soul, allowing something to evolve or to see meaning in playful accidents can make the difference between creating the same old thing, or something that is unique, valuable, lasting, beautiful.

He believes that this man has looped a bit of the thread-leash through a corner of his soul.

My story can never be your story (that is called colonization—something I hope we are leaving behind). But my story might inform yours, or be like yours, or maybe even add depth or another dimension to yours. If nothing else, sharing our stories might lead to greater understanding, tolerance, appreciation, and perhaps even celebration of our differences.

We must abandon the external height images in which the theistic God has historically been perceived and replace them with internal depth images of a deity who is not apart from us, but who is the very core and ground of all that is. —Paul Tillich

As he read the long narrative poem, Lewis was struck by two qualities in particular. He admired the realism of Tolkien's sub-created world, the depth and detail of Middle-earth. He also praised the mythical value of the story, the way the events were good in themselves and yet also suggested deeper layers of meaning to the reader. But

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

But he had a story. I guess everybody did. People walked around with this thick dark film sticking to them and until you scratched it, you had no idea.

what I have with Laurel is public and shallow. What I have with you is private and deep. Which part of me would you rather have?

the process of revising a poem is no arbitrary tinkering, but a continued honing of the self at the deepest level. —Jane Hirshfield

The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.