Quotes About Clarity

Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

D'autre part la langue écrite, la langue littéraire, surchargée, pompeuse, pâteuse, prétentieuse, gorgée de digressions ineptes, absconse, évasive, allusive, ne réussissait qu'à lui transmettre un vilain bruit et de vilaines évidences très mal formulées (Black Village p. 123)

Whether this was fashion or indigence was never clear to me.

If you cry "Forward," you must make plain in what direction to go.

God, help me. Help me to be wise and full of courage and sound judgment. Harden my heart to the sights that I must see so soon again, grant me only the power to think clearly, boldly, resolutely, no matter how unnerving the peril. Let me not fail them.

It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution.

You ask What is life? That is the same as asking What is a carrot? A carrot is a carrot and we know nothing more.

It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesnt understand.

The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.

In this way we will be reminded of their true nature and come to a more 'objective' judgement. It is, Marcus says, like: 'seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood. Or making love – something rubbing against your penis, a brief seizure and a little cloudy liquid.

The relationship between the calm absorption of meditation and insight is captured with a simile: just like we would not be able to see our reflection in a bowl of water that had been mixed with a dye, or was bubbling over a fire, or was muddy or had algae growing in it, in the same way we need a calm mind to see things clearly.

Mistaken about good and bad, unwittingly taken in by things that are ultimately harmful for us, we suffer from something akin to a perceptual illusion, only much deeper and more problematic. It's like the Müller-Lyer illusion: we can't help experiencing the lines as of different length, even if we know they're not.

Everybody knew everything now. Or did everybody know nothing? Nobody knew anything... Nobody could know everything.

You don't understand at all. It doesn't matter what's true and what's a fairy tale. That's not what matters. The dividing lines aren't as straight and simple as you think. - Raka

How hard is it, when everything encourages us to sleep, though we may look about us with conscious, clinging eyes, to wake and yet look about us as in a dream, with eyes that no longer know their function and whose gaze is turned inward.

But more often the language is not plain and unambiguous, so that to figure out its meaning, the implicit process of interpretation that we apply to plain and unambiguous language must be made express.

Second, the purpose must be defined precisely, and not in a fashion that smuggles in the answer to the question before the decision-maker.

Third, the purpose is to be described as concretely as possible, not abstractly.

British grammarian: "It is clearly desirable that an anaphoric (backward-looking) or cataphoric (forward-looking) pronoun should be placed as near as the construction allows to the noun or noun phrase to which it refers, and in such a manner that there is no risk of ambiguity.

the serial comma—that is, the comma after the penultimate item in a series and just before the conjunction (a, b, and c). Authorities on English usage overwhelmingly recommend using the serial comma to prevent ambiguities.

I think there is writing genius as well—which consists primarily, I think, of the ability to place oneself in the shoes of one's audience; to assume only what they assume; to anticipate what they anticipate; to explain what they need explained; to think what they must be thinking; to feel what they must be feeling.

One thing I have clear is that I don't want to work for money anymore.

Happiness is realizing that nothing is too important.