Abeyance Quotes & Sayings

The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible. — John Lancaster Spalding

Suppose he found that persistent unsparing voice at his elbow one day, claiming that Danton lacked probity; he had an answer, pat, not a logical one, but one sufficiently chilling to put logic in abeyance. To question Danton's patriotism was to cast in doubt the whole Revolution. A tree is known by its fruits, and Danton made August 10. First he made the republic of the Cordeliers, then he made the Republic of France. If Danton is not a patriot, then we have been criminally negligent in the nation's affairs. If Danton is not a patriot, we are not patriots either. If Danton is not a patriot, then the whole thing - from May '89 - must be done again. — Hilary Mantel

A towering intellect, grand in its achievements, and glorious in its possibilities, may, with the moral and spiritual faculties held in abeyance, be one of the most dangerous and mischievous forces in the world. — Frances Harper

When we are sick our virtues and our vices are in abeyance. — Luc De Clapiers

My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance. — Jack Vance

Each part
of speech a spark
awaiting redemption, each
a virtue, a power
in abeyance ... — Denise Levertov

When I think of the years when I had no faith, what I am struck by, first of all, is how little this lack disrupted my conscious life. I lived not without God, nor wish his absence, but in a mild abeyance of belief, drifting through the days on a tide of tiny vanities - a publication, a flirtation, a strong case made for some weak nihilism - nights all adagios and alcohol as my mind tore luxuriously into itself. I can see now how deeply God's absence affected my unconscious life, how under me always there was this long fall that pride and fear and self-live at once protected me from and subjected me to. Was the fall into belief or into unbelief? Both. For if grace woke me to God's presence in the world and in my heart, it also woke me to his absence. I never truly felt the pain of unbelief until I began to believe. — Christian Wiman

It is through the perversion of the religious element in woman, playing upon her hopes and fears of the future, holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance to that which is to come, that she and the children she has trained have been so completely subjugated by priestcraft and superstition. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

You see the same plain landscape day after day, and then one day, perhaps it's the play of light or the time of year, you find it beautiful and other landscapes at fault. So it must be with fashion. Ordinary judgement falls into abeyance and something else, some bewitchment, takes over. How else to explain the appeal of garments that in a few years look so ridiculous? — Elizabeth Hay

Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it. — Ernest Hemingway,

Humanity is as horrified and repulsed by real nature as it is by real death. Thus, we strike back against this formidable opponent with our sharpest weapon: our imagination. From this noble tool - born of necessity and elevated to beauty - culture was born, and the war against nature begun. — Anthony Marais

In writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance. — Thomas Sydenham

No one knows what it is that he can do until he tries. — Publilius Syrus

Failure is success in abeyance; but only for those who persevere. — Ashok Kallarakkal

The short interregnum of civil society built on the ruins of the Bastille came to its end with the establishment of the Jews as the new Priestly caste. The alternative Church of our society, the Jews, survived in abeyance for hundreds of years. As long as the Christian Church attended to the discourse, the Jews plainly had no chance to compete; but when its power was broken by liberty-seekers, the alternative arrangement came forward. — Israel Shamir

And I'm not too great at that sort of comforting thing, especially when my hands are cold and the bed is warm. I carried him softly through the broken street, with one salty eye and a heavy, deathly heart. With him I tried a little harder. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse Owens as he ran through an imaginary tape. I saw him hip-deep in some icy water chasing a book, and I saw a boy lying in bed, imagining how a kiss would taste from his glorious next door neighbour. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry. — Markus Zusak

His defences were all in his wits and cunning, his very instincts of cunning, and when these were abeyance he seemed doubly naked and like a child, of unfinished, tender flesh, and somehow struggling helplessly — D.H. Lawrence

Poetry speaks most effectively and inclusively (whether in free or formal verse) when it recognizes its connection - without apology - to its musical and ritualistic origins. — Dana Gioia

If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate, we hardly listen at all to what is being said ... One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of silence, in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quite; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Quantum mechanics - the physics of our world - requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance. — Brian Greene

I think acting is a gift. — Jonathan Jackson

For now I had five children by him: the only work perhaps that fools are good for. — Daniel Defoe

The right things to do are those that keep our violence in abeyance; the wrong things are those that bring it to the fore. — Robert J. Sawyer

Such grace is never held in abeyance, never earned or deserved. It is not given to some and not to others. Grace is ever present; it is only our openness to it that comes and goes. In one sense, The Way of Liberation is a means of opening up to grace. — Adyashanti

them were spectres uncertain of each other's reality. They , held each other for what seemed like many more hours than the one they had been allocated; not because time dragged, but because for now time was unimportant; it was in abeyance, and it seemed as if it could be held that way by the act of will alone. — Alastair Reynolds

They were guilty of too much belief in a story they were told. Most people are able to hold most stories they're told in abeyance, to keep a little distance between the story and their inmost heart. — Orson Scott Card

The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love, and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive-it has nothing to do with time. It happens on its own when a human being questions, wonders, inquires, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure, and pain. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open. — Toni Packer

Suttree stood among the screaming leaves and called the lightning down. It cracked and boomed about and he pointed out the darkened heart within him and cried for light. If there be any art in the weathers of this earth. Or char these bones to coal. If you can, if you can. A blackened rag in the rain. — Cormac McCarthy

Whenever I hear and see a politician or a military leader, a bank of American flags at his back, trying to convince us of the rightness of a policy or a deed that will cause harm to others; when I am almost convinced myself that setting humanitarian concern in abeyance can be justified in the interest of a greater good, I pause and ask myself what my brain-smoked friends would have to say. — James Lee Burke

A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn't afterward. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Things that need to be dealt with right away. This might include correspondence from his office or business associates, bills, legal documents, and the like. He subsequently performed a fine sort of things to be dealt with today versus in the next few days. Things that are important but can wait. We called this the abeyance pile. This might include investment reports that needed to be reviewed, articles he might want to read, reminders for periodic service on an automobile, invitations to parties or functions that were some time off in the future, and so on. Things that are not important and can wait, but should still be kept. This was mostly product catalogues, holiday cards, and magazines. Things to be thrown out. — Daniel J. Levitin

The day drew on, was swallowed in dusk. No bird called, no insect. Life in abeyance, the world itself grinding to a halt, who knew what would follow. Light through the glass grew dim but he read on as if the passage of day into night was of no moment. The world was winding down, and young Bloodworth wound down with it. — William Gay

The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony
periods when the antithesis is in abeyance. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Some servent with no sense of the symbolic had kept the hinges well-oiled during the years of his absence,as if their marital life had merely been cast into temporary abeyance. — Courtney Milan

He felt a psychosomatic rush of emptiness before he spoke. "Since we are getting to the real point, I am not stupid John. And it would be foolish to think me ignorant. Isn't this about the Science Nation interview? Isn't this because I mistakenly used the word "soul?" Isn't this about you and the others thinking somewhere along the lines, I had gained an imaginary soul? We all know when you gain a soul, you lose a mind. Don't we john?"
John hesitated briefly staring at Roma. "I believe so yes. Souls are luxuries for speculative minds. Real scientists can't afford such luxuries. They have the world to save."
Roma narrowed his eyes. "Or destroy. — Dew Platt

Break a person's heart and you become a kind of amnesiac killer. All the empathy you possess is momentarily held in abeyance while you address yourself wholeheartedly to your own emotional survival. You're just doing what you have no choice but to do. You're just living.
Then it's over, and standing amid the wreckage of your life you remember. — John Burnham Schwartz

The doctrine that war is always a greater evil seems to imply a materialist ethic, a belief that death and pain are the greatest evils. But I do not think they are ... All men die, and most men miserably. That two soldiers on opposite sides, each believing his own country to be in the right, each at the moment when his selfishness is most in abeyance and his will to sacrifice in the ascendant, should kill [each] other in plain battle seems to me by no means one of the most terrible things in this terrible world. — C.S. Lewis

He's planted dirty bombs all over the place, but he won't tell anyone where they are. He has all of us held hostage by fear. If he dies and can't reset the timers every few hours at random intervals that he alone knows the schedule to, they'll go off, and we all go bye-bye in a nasty way. No one knows how he has them wired or timed or anything. He has lost his mind. Completely. Totally. Fully. I can't even talk to him anymore. He just stares at me with these beady, creepy eyes through that garish mask that gives me the jumping heebies." Caillen — Sherrilyn Kenyon