Obscure Quotes

The obscure we always see sooner or later; the obvious always seems to take a little longer.

I try to take normal things – whether it’s a serious subject or something as obscure as a piece of toast – and put a very weird twist on them.

It flourished with the Saracens, and suffered in the obscure and fanatical days of the Middle Ages.

Being horrible in a big film is a quicker nosedive than doing an obscure film and making no money.

Without poetry, religion becomes obscure, false, and malignant; without philosophy, licentious in all wantonness, and lascivious to the point of self-castration.

Theater for me is about enduring human truth. Special effects can be part of that, but when they obscure what is the reason we come to theater – to see reflections of our confounded humanity – the theater has lost its way.

For I had rather die in the adventure ot noble achievements, then live in obscure and sluggish security.

Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.

Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity of making things plain to uninstructed people, was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one’s own mind.

The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.

Chinese dumpling and noodle trainspotters know that the best versions usually come from obscure hole-in-the-wall joints where personal space and flattering lighting isn’t a consideration and splatter-proof menus are customary.

If you find something obscure fascinating, learn as much about it as you can, because there’s a good chance it won’t be obscure for long.

The stress laid on upward social mobility in the United States has tended to obscure the fact that there can be more than one kind of mobility and more than one direction in which it can go. There can be ethical mobility as well as financial, and it can go down as well as up.

The more obscure our tastes, the greater the proof of our genius.

Shamanism is not some obscure concern of cultural anthropologists. Shamanism is how religion was practiced for its first million years. Up until about 12,000 years ago there was no other form of religion on this planet. That was how people attained some kind of access to the sacred.

The function of a great library is to store obscure books.

Obscure shadows on the mind are much scarier than the dark shadows of the night.

The divinity in man is the true vestal fire of the temple which is never permitted to go out, but burns as steadily and with as pure a flame on the obscure provincial altar as in Numa’s temple at Rome.

I always thought of myself as a very, very obscure artist.

I would say what was always on her[Harper Lee] mind was the stories she had to tell, and the story was pretty obvious in “To Kill A Mockingbird,” maybe a bit – little bit less obvious and more obscure in “Go Set A Watchman.”

How about a new game show called ‘Battle Begala?’ Contestants would pick any obscure bad thing that happened anywhere in the world, and Paul would have 10 seconds to explain why it is President Bush’s fault.

Years ago I realized that maybe I made mistake, politically, when I turned a lot of that stuff down. I would go off to obscure places and make movies that six people went to see.

Those quotations were really quite obscure. Anyone can see that he is a very well read man.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

I was very into New Order, Joy Division, all of that when I was younger. I had a lot of bootlegs that I saved up my pocket money to buy. I had all the obscure early EPs.

If I am ever obscure in my expressions, do not fancy that therefore I am deep. If I were really deep, all the world would understand, though they might not appreciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. To me an obscurity is a reason for suspecting a fallacy.

There is no such way to gain admittance, or give defence to strange and absurd Doctrines, as to guard them round about with Legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefin’d Words.

…many foolish persons, wanderers from other parts, have the vain fashion of graving their names and the obscure places whence they come, upon its stones, which is silly and marketh the doer for a fool.

For most people it’s easier to support an eminent person in deserved disgrace than an obscure one who has been wronged.

I went out of my way to try not to be an artist, because I thought I would end up leading a miserable, obscure life. I tried to escape it for as long as I could, until I had to admit at 25 that that was my path.

I know not whether, in the eyes of the world, a brilliant death is not preferred to an obscure life of rectitude. Most men are remembered as they died, and not as they lived. We gaze with admiration upon the glories of the setting sun, yet scarcely bestow a passing glance upon its noonday splendor.

I’ve been away writing songs and recording and doing albums that are much more obscure.

I went for endless auditions for tiny parts in obscure plays, and never got one job until I was in ‘Four Weddings’.

Obscure as still remains the origin of that ‘genre’ of romance to which the tales before us belong, there is little doubt that their models, if not their originals, were once extant at Constantinople.

With each thing that you do, all the fears in life and safeguards block out, or obscure, who you truly are. I think that just a glimpse of the person ever comes through in most material.

My bassist Jorgen Jorgensen opened up my life to a lot of great, obscure old soul records.

Speakers are not supposed to waste time on platitudes, but the capacity of this generation for ignoring the obvious and concentrating on the negative and the obscure is immense.

A little tough talk in the midst of a campaign or as part of a presidential debate cannot obscure a record of 30 years of being on the wrong side of defense issues.

In 2008, Bitcoin was mysteriously introduced to the world in an obscure, technical paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. By late 2013, the financial press was filled with reportage on Bitcoin and its dramatic price increase.

When I tour, it’s like, well, like a food tour as much as a comedy tour. I try to eat at all the weird places, the obscure barbecue joints, burger places. There are a few spots in L.A. that I’m obsessed with – one of them is the Taco Zone taco truck on Alvarado. There are secret off-menu items that are amazing.

A century ago, petroleum – what we call oil – was just an obscure commodity; today it is almost as vital to human existence as water.

On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.

I am utterly opposed to all equivocation or obscure expressions in our public acts. We are bound to say plainly what we mean to say. If we mean negotiation and compromise, let us say it distinctly and plainly instead of sending to the President a resolution on which he may put whatever interpretation he pleases.

I’m showbiz-fat. It’s so funny, in all the reviews that I read, no one wants to use the word ‘fat’ as an adjective. So I have to deal with ‘dimpled-kneed,’ ‘hefty,’ ‘plus-sized,’ the most obscure words you can imagine.

And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them.

War is such a peculiar thing – inaugurated by the whims of few, affecting the fate of many. It is difficult, if not impossible, thing to understand, yet we feel compelled to describe it as though it has meaning – even virtue. It starts for reasons often hopelessly obscure, meanders on, then stops

My God is rock’n’roll. It’s an obscure power that can change your life. The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.

Mothers will be fishing kids out of obscure cubby-holes for years!

Beneath the sun’s rays our shadow is our comrade;
When clouds obscure the sun our shadow flees.
So Fortune’s smiles the fickle crowd pursues,
But swift is gone whenever she veils her face.

A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.

Literature has become too psychological. We discount the physical, when in fact much of life is physical. People’s personalities are partly formed by, or in response to, how they take up space; the physical mask has some relation, howsoever obscure, to the mental work happening underneath.

Ministers should be stars to give light, not clouds to obscure.

The great success stories of chemotherapy were always in relatively obscure types of cancer. Childhood leukemia constitutes less than two percent of all cancers and many of chemotherapy’s other successes were in diseases so rare that many clinicians had never even seen a single case

I have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to me as a result of all that is that I think it did for some people, many people, obscure the kind of writer that I actually am.

When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books and watched obscure movies and only listened to obscure music.

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.

I still think the revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small.

Unexplained, obscure matters are regarded as more important than explained, clear ones.

The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.

Music should resonate with people on an emotional level. That’s one of the criterions I use for an idea. Does it speak simply and directly without obfuscation and without being unnecessarily complex or obscure?

You know you’re a hopeless record nerd when your time travel fantasies always come around to how cool it would be to go back to 1973 and buy all the great funk and jazz and salsa records that came out that year on tiny obscure labels and are now really rare and expensive.

I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.

I am poor – obscure – just eighteen years of age – with a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse.

Like the winds that we come we know not whence and blow whither soever they list, the forces of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin. They arise before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not the speculations of men.

If an image is powerful enough, if it resists us, if, by its obscure coherence, part of it escapes our understanding, then it means that something has been won from reality.

Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry.

[Phil wood] put on some [Igor] Stravinsky and say to follow the score, tell me to play me the opening to the Rite of Spring. Or, “I’m going to play you some 20th century obscure classical composer you don’t know”. Or, “Let’s listen to some Charles Ives, let’s sight read some Bartok violin duets”, etc.

The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of the worlds – to say nothing of stars or galaxies – humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal

How often does it happen that an obscure line finds its way into a periodical… is requoted in every book that comes out during the next three months, and “sleeps again!

There are not that many people who know how to edit. It’s a funny tiny little obscure talent but it’s very special. You have to have the feeling of popular taste.

I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.

I can’t impress people with the pedigree of obscure French filmmakers that got me into film. It was Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. I really thought I wanted to make dumb action movies.

All men are naturally included to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity.

It is better to be famous than notorious, but better to be notorious than obscure.

A victim to certain obscure forms of gout, he was in character neither stupid, nor inhuman, but he suffered from the usual drawbacks of his class, – too much money, and too few ideas.

Quibbling over the definition of genocide does nothing but help obscure the long history of vicious racism and undeniable suffering of Indigenous people in this country. It’s bad enough whatever you want to call it.

Declining to go to church with my parents in the morning, I would ostentatiously set out for the Monist Society in the afternoon, down an obscure street which it seemed a little improper to be walking on, as everything was closed for Sunday, upstairs through a sort of side entrance over a saloon.

Rock roll is not obscure, it’s really easy to understand. So is my painting.

The mathematician who is without value to mathematicians, the thinker who is obscure or meaningless to thinkers, the dramatist who fails to move the pit, may be wise, may be eminent, but as an author he has failed.

Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve; we may give somewhat of novelty to that which was old, condensation to that which was diffuse, perspicuity to that which was obscure, and currency to that which was recondite.

Even in the obscure vast history of a planet the time it takes to make a forest counts. It takes a while. And not every planet can do it; it is no common effect, that tangling of the sun’s first cool light in the shadow and complexity of innumberable wind-stirred branches.

My mom watches really obscure stuff on IFC. She’s a real comedy fan. She knows everything that’s going on.

And after hearing what our Church can say, If still our reason runs another way, That private reason ’tis more just to curb, Than by disputes the public peace disturb; For points obscure are of small use to learn, But common quiet is mankind’s concern.

We may have city lights and the glow of touch screens to obscure our view, but God’s world is still near at hand, even right here in New York City where I live.

Thread of their days without pity, and in the midst of life, without ever concerning themselves with this fatal moment, living as though they were to exist for ever, they disappear into the obscure cloud of immortality, uncertain of the fate which lies in store for them.

Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent ‘Basement Tapes’ will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson’s reasons for the destruction of the tapes for ‘Smile.’

Astronomy is useful because it raises us above ourselves; it is useful because it is grand; …. It shows us how small is man’s body, how great his mind, since his intelligence can embrace the whole of this dazzling immensity, where his body is only an obscure point, and enjoy its silent harmony.

You — you strange — you almost unearthly thing! — I love as my own flesh. You — poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are — I entreat to accept me as a husband.

Be obscure clearly.

It’s just so obscure to take a folk song in a different language and be a pretty well-respected English-speaking rock band and totally take a song and twist it around and have fun with it.

I feel the need… the need for speed.

Twenty years from now if there is some obscure Trivial Pursuit question, I am confident I will be the answer.

A Constitution should be short and obscure.

I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God.

This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.

A multitude of words doth rather obscure than illustrate, they being a burden to the memory, and the first apt to be forgotten, before we come to the last. So that he that uses many words for the explaining of any subject, doth, like the cuttle-fish, hide himself, for the most part, in his own ink.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum. (Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.)

In trying to be concise I become obscure.

A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure.

Bull markets and Bear markets can obscure mathematical laws, they cannot repeal them.

Don’t worry about the situation of the world. You must be very happy, very very happy! Only through happiness and waves of bliss you will be able to help your country and the entire world in an automatic manner. You will remain ever invincible when you don’t allow anything to obscure
your happiness.

Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.

On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century…First of all, what style should I employ?

A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.
[Lat., Prudens futuri temporis exitum
Caliginosa nocte premit deus.]

The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!

If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,–a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress.

If you do not specify and confront real issues, what you say will surely obscure them. If you do not embody controversy, what you say will be an acceptance of the drift to the coming human hell.

God and other artists are always a little obscure.

Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge. It is in the darker. It is in the darker regions of science that great men are recognized; they are marked by ideas which light up phenomena hitherto obscure and carry science forward.

Our early days – our audiences were always very sparse. We played very obscure places in very obscure parts of the world, mainly Kansas. We played frat parties, we played high school proms, we played clubs.

With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing.

It’s like all my life I’ve been this tower standing at the edge of the ocean for some obscure purpose, and only now, almost eighteen years in, has someone thought to flip the switch that reveals that I’m not a tower at all. I’m a lighthouse. It’s like waking up. I am incandescent.

I used to work at NASA in Virginia. It was nothing glamorous; I was just tasked with making code compile for obscure projects, and I wasn’t very good at it. Now I spend most of my time drawing pictures and looking at funny things on the Internet, which in retrospect is largely what I did at my old job, too.

Sometimes, you try something, and it works in terms of success. That doesn’t mean you like what is a hit. Sometimes you like the most obscure song on your album.

I’ve always kind of been a little skeptical about bands that won’t play their hits. That’s really arrogant to me as a music fan. I do want to hear obscure songs, but like most people, I want to hear the hits, so we always play them.

Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader.

And would it not be proud romance Falling in some obscure advance, To rise, a poppy field of France?

The deepest life of nature is silent and obscure; so often the elements that move and mould society are the results of the sister’s counsel and the mother’s prayer.

The task is not primarily to have a story, but to penetrate the story, to discard the elements of it that are merely shell, or husk, that give apparent form to the story, but actually obscure the essence. In other words, the problem is to transcend the givens of a narrative.

I’m a bit of a nerd, I wouldn’t mind working in a shop selling records, or having a radio show where I could play obscure singles.

There is a culture among academics to be obscure. If you’re too clear, you can’t be saying anything interesting. The issue isn’t word length. The issue is a commitment to speaking in a way an audience can understand.

Computer vision and machine learning have really started to take off, but for most people, the whole idea of what is a computer seeing when it’s looking at an image is relatively obscure.

If there is anything in life in which I take a pardonable pride, it is my friendship for certain old woodsmen and hunters; obscure men, as far as the world is concerned, but faithful friends, loyal comrades.

Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.

For a long time, I didn’t think I wanted to live in the Ozarks or write about the region. It seemed to be a sure recipe for obscurity, and to be obscure was not my conscious ambition.

The “Kumulipo” is an old Hawaiian prayer chant that poetically describes the creation of the world. The word literally means “beginning-in-deep-darkness.” Here darkness doesn’t connote gloom and evil. Rather, it’s about the inscrutability of the embryonic state; the obscure chaos that reigns before germination.

Every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and it is in the nature of things that he cannot really improve himself without in some degree improving other men.

The whole purpose of propaganda is to make the obvious seem obscure, or offensive

I sponsored every team in the Park Slope Little League for years.I sponsor two soccer teams in England, one of which is called Broadley F.C. A kid wrote to me through Facebook because they started a team in honor of their friend who died of leukemia, and he played in the band of this very obscure team in England.

Backpacks are obtrusive. They’re great for school kids and mountaineers, but a woman is supposed to look enticing and glamorous at night. They obscure one of a woman’s most erogenous zones, the nape of her neck. I suppose they’re good if you want to keep men away.

You can be so dignified that you obscure the reality of what is going on.

A ‘philosophical dictionary’ is not a dictionary of philosophy that you use to look up obscure thinkers or recondite terms. It is a collection of brief and pithy essays on diverse topics, informed by one vision, and usually arranged in alphabetical order.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

To love it too much is to obscure and not see what is there.

My own belief is that in most ages and in most places obscure psychological forces led men to adopt systems involving quite unnecessary cruelty, and that this is still the case among the most civilized races at the present day.

The historical religions have the tendency to become ends in themselves, and, as it were, to put themselves in God’s place, and, in fact, there is nothing that is so apt to obscure God’s face as a religion.

One can spend too much of one’s life locked in stuffy rooms seeking out obscure truths, searching, researching, until one is too old to enjoy life.

I’ve always just tried to be who I am and be honest in terms of what I play. If that reaches a larger group of people, great. If it doesn’t – if it remains obscure – that’s okay as well.

Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

The human being of all times prays because he cannot fail to wonder about the meaning of his life, which remains obscure and discomforting of it is not put in relations to the mystery of God and if his plan for the world.

Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek it if it be obscure, should be deprived of it.

Twenty years from now if there is some obscure trivial pursuits question, I am confident I will be the answer.

He had fought back with every weapon in his arsenal, being alternatively obtuse, evasive and pedantic, for it was wonderful how you could obscure an emotional issue by appearing to seek precision.

Personally, I think ‘Dead Americans’ is the best title I have, but you can’t win with everyone. Titles have to be short, catchy, not too obscure, not offensive, and still capture the genre, and so on and so forth. Takeshi Kitano has it about right when he says he’d just like to title his films by number.

I wanted to play football or be a boxer, but my dad didn’t want that because of all the impact. But in 1992 I was watching short track, and it was obscure, but they looked like superheroes in their tight outfits, and I thought it was amazing. I wanted to do that. I made the national team at 14.

I used to wonder how a man of birth and spirit could endure to be wholly insignificant and obscure in a foreign country, when he might live with lustre in his own.

The easiest books are generally the best; for, whatever author is obscure and difficult in his own language, certainly does not think clearly.

We don’t want it to be obscure music. We’re not trying to be indie. We want to be popular.

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.

I’m interested in memory because it’s a filter through which we see our lives, and because it’s foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I’m more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

Much has been written about Trump’s style of speech, which linguists have said is often unintelligible yet deeply compelling. Orwell’s famous 1946 essay, ‘Politics and the English Language,’ centers on the use of abstract words, often by politicians, to obscure reality.

I’m in the process of trying to organize my DVDs into some kind of order and it’s taking me weeks. I have everything from obscure ‘Antonioni’ to ‘Terminator Salvation.’

No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.

I try not to obfuscate or to be to obscure or to be too cerebral. I like to work on a visceral, emotional level.

Man’s greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes – obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.

‘God’ is the name given to the most ‘important’ human idea. In English, as in other languages, the original sense of the word is obscure. But the character of the name is the same in all languages: it is a question. ‘God’ is the question ‘Is there something more important than, something besides, man?’

I talked to a guy who has old cars, and there are parts that don’t exist any more. So he makes radio dial knobs for obscure cars.

Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.

When an alluring woman comes in at the door,” warningly traced the austere Kien-fi on the margin of his well-known essay, “discretion may be found up the chimney”. It is incredible that beneath this ever-timely reminder an obscure disciple should have added the words: “The wiser the sage, the more profound the folly.

When the situation is obscure, attack

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

Many words will be written on the wind and the sand, or end up in some obscure digital vault. But the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then we can send the great chronicle of humanity out into the endless universe.

I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

One dark night the skeletons that they had carefully hidden in an obscure closet appeared, grabbed them around the throat, and strangled them.

I had to re-write “Philosophy” a lot. It was more obscure than what’s in the book now, even! Some things I had to go back to and excise my former self, who was even more dense. I think you should teach whatever you want, Brian! That’s the point of books like White Girls, to help free our thoughts!

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not… Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it… Because the dream is within you. No one can take your dream away.

My strength has not equaled my mad ambition. I have remained obscure; I have done worse — I have touched success, and allowed it to escape me.

For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner … on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. … That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.

Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.

I don’t necessarily want to be defined as an action star. I love movies, and my movie culture, luckily because of my parents and my family, is quite obscure and independent.

The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

It is not enough that a man has clearness of vision, and reliance on sincerity, he must also have the art of expression, or he will remain obscure.

Life can be lived as a temporary arrangement. Life is a temporary arrangement! But the longer you go without changing, the more obscure the likelihood you ever will. After enough time passes, the idea of another way of life grows even more misty.

Tis an admirable thing to see how some people will labour to find out terms that may obscure a plain sense, like a gentleman I knew, who would never say ‘the weather grew cold,’ but that ‘winter begins to salute us.’ I have no patience for such coxcombs.

I mean, most of it is probably more obscure and just more noisy than either of those two bands, but Thurston has stuff all the time that he’s involved with that is fairly obscure and experimental.

Life never ceases. Life is an overflowing source, and death is only an obscure effect of illusions.

The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.

Ecstacy stripped away the user’s inhibitions to self-expression. On E, lies are inefficient, and the peculiarities or weaknesses they are meant to obscure no longer seem like offenses against nature.

Politics is not what it pretends to be, the expression of a collective will. Politics breathes well only where this will is multiple, hesitant, confused, and obscure even to itself.

…intimacy being reduced to its content of mere sensation, will only be the misleading, obscure, and desperate alleviation of the existential disgust and anguish of him who has stumbled into a blind alley.

Humorists are not humorous twenty-four hours a day. In fact, when you get to know them well, they are often not humorous at all. They tend to be hypersensitive, taut, neurotic creatures driven by God know what obscure compulsion to earn their living the hard way.

That’s one of the ways language evolved, by some very obscure form becoming common usage. And I must say that I’m very intrigued by use of language and slang, and criminal underground terms.

When I struggle to be terse, I end by being obscure.

But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure; the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites; and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.

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.

Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.

In labouring to be brief, I become obscure.

We ourselves are co-called non-linear dynamical systems… I don’t feel quite so pathetic when I interrupt a project to check on some obscure web site or newsgroup or derive an iota of cheer by getting rid of pocketful of change.

Maybe it’s just, I’ve always been to the less traveled places, in any topic, whether it’s history, I always like to just choose the most obscure topic. And I don’t know why I have that impulse. I can’t really explain it but I’ve been doing that since I was a little kid.

It is terribly important to appreciate that some things remain obscure to the bitter end.

Riskier mortgage lending practices, imposed by government, were what set the stage for many mortgage payments to stop and thus for the financial disasters that followed. Political rhetoric, echoed in the media, seeks to obscure that painfully plain fact.

Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. This was the sound conclusion of the Academic sceptics, who were the least surly of philosophers.

To ask for an explanation is to explain the obscure by the more obscure.

The force of a death should be enormous but how can you know what kind of man you’ve killed or who was the braver and stronger if you have to peer through layers of glass that deliver the image but obscure the meaning of the act? War has a conscience or it’s ordinary murder.

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

Witchery is merely a word for what we are all capable of – heightened nightsight, an empathy shared with the beasts, a utilization of the more obscure abilities of our minds. Nothing that science can’t explain away. Wizardry is spells and enchantments. Fairy tales.

Between the demand to be clear,and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect.

Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure.

Part of flirting is that you tend to give each other a little extra slack to be obscure – to say things that are suggestive and nuanced, rather than clear and comprehensible, things you wouldn’t put up with in an essay or something written by a stranger – and that can be so exciting.

The truth was obscure, Too profound and too pure, To live it you had to explode

Sometimes I’ll go into an interview not knowing what it’s about or who it’s for. Sometimes I’m a little bit more prepared. I’ve been in certain interviews where they ask me questions that I know nothing about. Like obscure albums and they want to know my favorite song and I don’t even know what to say.

Sometimes you don’t really understand the characters you do. I don’t need to. Most of the behavior is obscure and I don’t mind that. On the contrary, it’s a fuel for me, to find out who the character is. As the spectator is finding out, I find out about the character myself.

Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.

Happiness comes from living in the moment, this moment, now, right here. If you are in obscure states of mind, you won’t see what this moment is. You won’t realize its beauty.

If you want to study one of these strange organisms, you had better have a good justification. It’s not good to say I want to study gene organisation in some obscure insect that no one’s ever heard about.

I have like 10 different processes I go to. My favorite one is to just go to an obscure neighborhood I haven’t been to in decades and just wander around.

It will be good fun finding out what sport baby’s good at; perhaps it will be something obscure. My parents were fantastic at taking me to training sessions and letting me try lots of different sports, so I want to do the same.

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

Readers travel so fast they don’t stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.

Abligurition: an actual, if very obscure, English word, which means the spending of too much money on food.

The thing about music is it’s not an obscure pursuit, it’s a very natural thing for human beings to do. Once you put in the effort, the learning curve is very fast.

We thought ‘Father Ted’ was destined to be obscure late-night Channel 4 fodder and then it works and you don’t really know why.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

As for uniqueness, this is virtually nonexistent! And it’s a shame that people think they’re unique because they have a face ring, retro clothing, colorful hair, drive a certain kind of automobile or listen to some obscure musician.

Things will absolutely go wrong. In a healthy team, as soon as things go wrong, that information should be surfaced. Trying to hide or obscure bad news creates an environment of distrust or lack of transparency.

On the other hand, the artist has much to do in the realm of color construction, which is so little explored and so obscure, and hardly dates back any farther than to the beginning of Impressionism.

There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper.

I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.

Some people are so famous that the legends about them and the cultural aftermath of their life altogether obscure the real human being.

An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.

I always have directors who are somewhat frustrated because they’ll reference a beautifully obscure film from the ’50s or ’60s or ’70s, and I’ve not seen it.

‘Penthouse’ didn’t seem to concentrate as much on the girls’ faces, and I really wanted to see the girls’ faces. It seems like through the 1980’s, they almost went out of their way to obscure the girls’ faces.

A concealed truth, that’s all a lie is. Either by omission or commission we never do more than obscure. The truth stays in the undergrowth, waiting to be discovered.

Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, who founded Lenny Books together, also happen to have exquisite reading tastes – from obscure small press poetry chapbook to dishy memoirs to literary novels – and so it’s a real honor that they’ve chosen to announce their imprint with my stories.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars.

Maybe if you and ten of your friends could pool your savings and borrow some money and actually buy some obscure station in Sonoma, and then take some chances and have some fun.

The charge frequently leveled against poetry – that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot – indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.

The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private languages and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition.

That it has pleased God to make Holy Scripture obscure in certain places lest, if it were perfectly clear to all, it might be vulgarized and subjected to disrespect or be so misunderstood by people of limited intelligence as to lead them into error.

Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, … I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.

Let us not imagine that we obscure the glory of the Son by the great praise we lavish on the Mother; for the more she is honored, the greater is the glory of her Son. There can be no doubt that whatever we say in praise of the Mother gives equal praise to the Son.

As an artist, you’re always somewhat obscure. We’re not talking Hollywood.

We refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation

Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.

An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author’s contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

Penthouse’ didn’t seem to concentrate as much on the girls’ faces, and I really wanted to see the girls’ faces. It seems like through the 1980’s, they almost went out of their way to obscure the girls’ faces.

Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.

I understand there are some men who are only half here. Let’s not say men. Let’s say people. People who are more or less obscure at times.

A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence and refinement so they think they will impress others with their command of obscure words.

Hardship makes the world obscure.

When the history of the 20th century is written, there are going to be some pretty obscure people who are entitled to sainthood. And they’re not going to be well-known.

For after the subject is removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure than when we see it…Imagination, therefore, is nothing more than decaying sense.

Happy the life, that in a peaceful stream,
Obscure, unnoticed through the vale has flow’d;
The heart that ne’er was charm’d by fortune’s gleam
Is ever sweet contentment’s blest abode.

[They let] friendship with the leaders in China obscure our devotion to freedom and democracy when those kids set up in Tiananmen Square, and I think it was wrong.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known.

We now eat at the end of a very long and opaque food chain. Food comes to us ready-made in packages that obscure as much information as they reveal.

As soon as a friendship passed a certain point – some obscure and secret boundary – a woman quite automatically became overwhelmed by a raging compulsion to complicate things.

There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them, and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion.

My music can be a little obscure. It does worry me that the music might be too complicated for people to take in – that they have to work too hard at it.

Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

Contempt for men pervades the most obscure strata of our society.

Harmony is an obscure and difficult musical science, but most difficult to those who are not acquainted with the Greek language; because it is necessary to use many Greek words to which there are none corresponding in Latin.

Sometimes people get fairly obscure just for the creative license of it, and that can backfire. Iconic stories are iconic for a reason, and there are so many incredible, iconic history stories that have not been told that we don’t need to go too deep in the well yet.

I tend to gravitate to the darkest or most obscure part of any venue in an effort to have my own space to experience the music on my own, free from unwanted conversations and other distractions.

Charles Dickens is a lot of fun to read but it’s not obscure, and that’s just fine.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

The task of the teacher of the Bible is to open up what’s closed, to make plain what is obscure, to unravel what is knotted and to unfold what is tightly packed.

To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.

It is up to my spirit to find the truth. But how? Grave uncertainty, each time the spirit feels beyond its own comprehension; whenit, the explorer, is altogether to obscure land that it must search and where all its baggage is of no use. To search? That is not all: to create.

If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don’t get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.

It’s a pity if someone… has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart’s ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it.

More people are troubled by what is plain in Scripture than by what is obscure.

For any producer I’ve ever worked with, their toughest job is to convince me to not to obscure my vocals. A lot of people don’t like the sound of their own voice on, like, cassette tape or something. It’s like that for me, and other songwriters I know. Like, “Oh God, that’s what I sound like?”

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity.

Between knowledge of what really exists and ignorance of what does not exist lies the domain of opinion. It is more obscure than knowledge, but clearer than ignorance.

I’m not a career politician, so the ways of Washington may be a little obscure to me.

If you want music that speaks to you, that LISTENS to you, you have to go out of your way, which I enjoy actually. I’m constantly on a private-eye kick to find the totally obscure.

I am not afraid of death, but would not want to die in some obscure or pointless way.

I find that life is easier when it is just a blur With no details to confuse who or what or where I was So when the ending comes the full regret will be obscure

[John] Calvin treats experience as essentially visionary and revelatory from moment to moment, addressed to the individual perceiver, the individual soul. Where this is assumed preconceptions can only distract and obscure, though, of course, as human beings we can never wholly free ourselves of them.

Harmony is an obscure and difficult musical science, but most difficult to those who are not acquainted with the Greek language; because it is necessary to use many Greek words to which there are none corresponding in Latin.

That’s my feeling – that real God and religion are two different things and that religion is trying to obscure what God really is.

In laboring to be concise, I become obscure.
[Lat., Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.]

If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.

Simplicity, for reasons that are a little bit obscure, is almost not pursued, at least in the academic world.

Crabbed and obscure definitions are of no use beyond a narrow circle of students, of whom probably every one has a pet one of his own.

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that’s not equity, it’s just creating a society where you can’t ask anything of people.

Obscure, like muddy waters.

I play popular songs. This is not some obscure, unusual music. This is popular music.

Good design, at least part of the time, includes the criterion of being direct in relation to the problem at hand – not obscure, trendy, or stylish. A new language, visual or verbal, must be couched in a language that is already understood.

What is ‘cool,’ anyway? Maybe it’s Warne Marsh, almost totally obscure and penniless, coming in late to a fourth-rate Hollywood nightclub, playing like an angel with a couple of sidemen, but never speaking to or even acknowledging another human being.

I still buy CDs and DVDs, but generally for more obscure material.

A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.

Once you were just insentient cells, no more aware of anything than your liver is now. Today you are brimming with consciousness. How did you make the grade? What catapulted you into consciousness? There must be some kind of natural process behind this astonishing leap, but this process is obscure.

I don’t think I’d have any friends if I didn’t obscure at least 99% of my thoughts.

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

Crises have a way of thrusting into the limelight hitherto obscure persons, and giving them, for a long or short period, a leading role.

The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor-apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly-man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street.

Insanity and psychosis can no longer be respected as meaningful [terms] – but are used by limited individuals in positions of social power to describe ways of behaving and thinking that are alien, threatening, and obscure to them.

Billions have been spent for one purpose and one purpose only: to obscure and distract from the fact that Mitt Romney is backing the identical agenda George W. Bush did.

The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible.

Of my old tendency to overdo the dedication and deface the title page with florid compliments and obscure quotes which the recipient cannot read, I will say only that I learnt my lesson when I had to shell out with my own money for a hardback I’d vandalised and now limit myself to ‘Good wishes.’

An answer, once found, is dull; and the only remaining interest lies in a further effort to render equally dull what is still obscure enough to be intriguing.

I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.

The joy of life is made up of obscure and seemingly mundane victories that give us our own small satisfactions.

We discount the physical, when, in fact, much of life is physical. People’s personalities are partly formed by, or in response to, how they take up space; the physical mask has some relation, howsoever obscure, to the mental work happening underneath.

I’m never going to be inspired by some obscure film, which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy that sort of thing. I just want to share my work with everyone.

Who the first inhabitants of Britain were, whether natives or immigrants, remains obscure; one must remember we are dealing with barbarians.

Everybody uses pop culture as a shorthand. You might make an obscure reference to Monty Python or Iron Eagle that only some people will get, but if they do it conveys a world of meaning.

A dream set would include songs by other artists like Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, and other favorites. More obscure Heart songs like ‘Wait For an Answer’ and ‘Nada One’ would be fun, plus fan favorites like ‘Love Mistake’ and ‘Language of Love.’ Endless possibilities.

Our minds are mysterious; our conscious brain is like a ship on a sea that is obscure to us.

Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd supposes that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.

But where do they find these lines in nature? I can only see luminous or obscure masses, planes that advance or planes that recede, reliefs or background. My eye never catches lines or details.

We allow words to obscure the interpretation of the deeper meaning.

Mathematics is one of the most basic — and most ancient — types of knowledge. Yet the details of its historical development remain obscure to all but a few specialists.

Personal responsibility matters. There are no excuses for those who spend money on things they cannot afford. But it’s a whole lot harder to act responsibly when consumer credit contracts are designed to be incomprehensible, when prices are obscure and risks are hidden.