Quotes About Obscurity

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.

Don't try it," he said. The mutant was reading my mind. "You, boy, you're a literary trainspotter...

Je bent hier namelijk in de donkere kamer. Maar nergens ter wereld komt zoveel aan het licht als in een donkere kamer.

Were there darker provinces of night he would have found them. —CORMAC MCCARTHY, Child of God, 1973

The man wore a dark fedora and beneath its brim the fierce empty eyes looked out as if they were coming from a thousand miles away, and were off immediately another thousand in some other direction.

One thing—one thing exceeds the eternity of the star, he cries, and that is the dark which surrounds it.

Infinite are the mortifications of the bare attempt to emerge from obscurity; numberless the failures; and greater and more galling still the vicissitudes and tormenting accompaniments of success.

existe una violencia peor que el dolor de que no lo publiquen a uno: ¡que te publiquen y no salgas del más absoluto anonimato!

Quería seguirlo en la sombra, y quería seguirlo en la

ce jour-là, il pleuvait démesurément. On ne voyait rien, si ben qu'on aurait pur être partout ailleurs.

In the Middle Ages, most people in other parts of the world who actually knew anything about northern Europe at all considered it an obscure and uninviting backwater full of religious fanatics who, aside from occasional attacks on their neighbours ('the Crusades'), were largely irrelevant to global trade and world politics

Volcker and Thatcher both plucked from the shadows of relative obscurity a particular doctrine that went under the name of 'neoliberalism' and transformed it into the central guiding principle of economic thought and management.

All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.

While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy, so agreeable to the natural vanity and curiosity of men; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.

Reading the stories was like trying to make out an object through the refracted light of a heavy snowstorm. He could see the snowflakes, immediate and particular, and he could discern the more distant objects that were coated in white: trees, roofs, roads, buildings. But he couldn't actually see any particular object for itself, only the covered outlines.

Browning, whose verse is famously obscure, was once approached by a woman who asked the meaning of a particular stanza. "Madame," he answered, "when I wrote that only God and I knew what it meant. Now, only God knows.

Faith is obscure. By faith a man moves through darkness; but he moves securely, his hand in the hand of God. He is literally seeing through the eyes of God.

I watch many, many, many independent films every year that you see once in a film festival and they're never heard of ever again. Many of them are very, very good.

There have been as great souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous.

The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

The people I find most impressive are generally unknown at the time of their actions and forgotten in history.

When we died, no one would know, and that fraction of a moment that was so important to who we were would be gone.

Records can ruin you. That's why it's important to be as intimately familiar as possible with the history of recorded music, I guess. In a way, it's an argument for record collecting.

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.