Abhors Quotes & Sayings

Slaveowners in America were torturing the Africans they enslaved for reading, but the British had discovered the hard way of truth of the maxim - Nature abhors a vacuum. Fill their minds with your stories and they will adore you; leave their minds free to roam and they will hatch plans to destroy you" (181). — Elizabeth Nunez

He lives hard, works hard, has but few comforts and fewer necessities. He has but little, if any, taste for reading. He enjoys a coarse practical joke or smutty story; loves danger but abhors labor of the common kind; never tires riding, never wants to walk, no matter how short the distance he desires to go. He would rather fight with pistols than pray; loves tobacco, liquor and women better than any other trinity. His life borders nearly upon that of an Indian. If he reads anything, it is in most cases a blood and thunder story of sensational style. He enjoys his pipe, and relishes a practical joke on comrades, or a corrupt tale, wherein abounds much vulgarity and animal propensity. — Joseph Mccoy

Aomame tried her best to keep her mind clear of any thoughts, but it was impossible not to think of anything. Nature abhors a vacuum. — Haruki Murakami

No man, said the Nolan, can be a lover of the true or the good unless he abhors the multitude; and the artist, though he may employ the crowd, is very careful to isolate himself. — James Joyce

He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun,He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God,He who leads the good to wickedness,He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures desolate,He who lets fly his weapon against the innocent,An enemy of my faith, a destroyer of Thy principles is he, O Lord! — Zoroaster

I am bored with gabbers and their gab; my soul abhors them ... Is there any place where there is no traffic in empty talk? Is there on this earth one who does not worship himself talking? — Khalil Gibran

Nature abhors a vacuum. At the very least, though, she felt that now there was nothing for her to hate. — Haruki Murakami

Seen through the eyes of faith, religion's future is secure. As long as there are human beings, there will be religion for the sufficient reason that the self is a theomorphic creature - one whose morphe (form) is theos - God encased within it. Having been created in the imago Dei, the image God, all human beings have a God-shaped vacuum built into their hearts. Since nature abhors a vacuum, people keep trying to fill the one inside them. — Huston Smith

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. — Thomas Jefferson

Withstanding the cold develops vigor for the relaxing days of spring and summer. Besides, in this matter as in many others, it is evident that nature abhors a quitter. — Arthur C. Crandall

What humanity abhors, custom reconciles and recommends to us. — John Locke

She will try to find the nice way to exercise intelligence. But intelligence is not ladylike. Intelligence is full of excesses. Rigorous intelligene abhors sentimentality, and women must be sentimental to value the dreadful silliness of the men around them. Morbid intelligence abhors the cheery sunlight of positive thinking and eternal sweetness; and women must be sunlight and cheery and sweet, or the woman could not bribe her way with smiles through a day. Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. Any vital intelligence has passionate questions, aggressive answers; but women cannot be explorers; there can be no Lewis or Clark of the female mind. — Andrea Dworkin

My soul abhors a falsehood — Horace Walpole

But God decided to create a world where free will was more important than no one ever getting hurt. There must be something stunningly beautiful and remarkable about free will that only God can truly grasp, because God hates, literally abhors, evil, yet He created a world where evil could happen if people chose it. — Dee Henderson

Nature does abhor a vacuum, but she equally abhors pressure. — Alan Bradley

In the one real, time-drenched universe, everything has a particular history precisely because it is finite, and not part of an infinite array. Moreover, the cosmological use of the infinite serves to mask the failure of a physical theory taken beyond the boundaries of its proper domain of application. The most notable instance is the inference in contemporary cosmology of an infinite initial singularity from the field equations of general relativity. Finally, the admission of the mathematical infinite into natural science effaces the difference, which we emphasize, between nature and mathematics. Nature works in time, with which mathematics has trouble. Mathematics offers, among other things, the infinite, which nature abhors. — Lee Smolin

The gift moves towards the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns towards him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Social nature abhors a vacuum. — Lewis Hyde

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, humans resist change. Change will occur; vacuums will be filled. — Nikki Giovanni

Zen abhors repetition or imitation of any kind, for it kills. For the same reason Zen never explains, but only affirms. Life is fact and no explanation is necessary or pertinent. To explain is to apologize, and why should we apologize for living? To live - is that not enough? Let us then live, let us affirm! Herein lies Zen in all its purity and in all its nudity as well. — D.T. Suzuki

Genius abhors consensus because when consensus is reached, thinking stops. Stop nodding your head. — Albert Einstein

As in nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Without a strong voice for more moderate leadership, the Tea Party is filling that vacuum. — Mark McKinnon

I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly, they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express those actions of their inward forms. And having passed that general visitation of God, who saw that all that he had made was good, that is, conformable to his will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order and beauty; there is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein, notwithstanding there is a kind of beauty. — Thomas Browne

Trying to get something for nothing?' - even mother nature abhors it. — Ufuoma Apoki

Books should confuse. Literature abhors the typical. Literature flows to the particular, the mundane, the greasiness of paper, the taste of warm beer, the smell of onion or quince. Auden has a line: "Ports have names they call the sea." Just so will literature describe life familiarly, regionally, in terms life is accustomed to use
high or low matters not. Literature cannot by this impulse betray the grandeur of its subject
there is only one subject: What it feels like to be alive. Nothing is irrelevant. Nothing is typical. — Richard Rodriguez

Nature abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the Marie Celeste, and the chuck keys for electric drills. — Terry Pratchett

Nature abhors the vacuum tube. — John R. Pierce

Nature abhors a virgin - a frozen asset. — Clare Boothe Luce

Every student of physics knows the axiom 'nature abhors a vacuum.' A little known corollary is that 'rowing coaches detest sending their crews in early.' Coaches will always find something to fill the end-of-practice vacuum. — Brad Alan Lewis

The core of America is not racist. It is not hostile to women. It is increasingly offended by gay bashing. Yet it abhors government waste. It believes strongly in fiscal responsibility such as balanced budgets. It is pro-economic growth. It is concerned about the environment. It is intolerant of people on welfare who disdain the notion of work. But it wants poor kids to have school lunches and it wants to spend money to have good schools. In sum, most Americans are sensible, good-hearted, and prudent. The issue, then, is whether there is a political party that can welcome them home. — Paul Tsongas

For if nature abhors a vacuum, and greed is part of human nature, then greed too abhors a vacuum. — Moises Naim

How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it, "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.26 — Eric Foner

Reality is a thing of infinite diversity, and defies the most ingenious deductions and definitions of abstract thought, nay, abhors the clear and precise classifications in which we so delight. Reality tends to infinite subdivision of things, and truth is a matter of infinite shadings and differentiations. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The one thing the media abhors almost without exception is anyone who takes a firm stand on any issue out of religious principle, unless their stand happens to coincide with their expressed views. — Francis Schaeffer

Jail sentences have many functions, but one is surely to send a message about what our society abhors and what it values. This week, the equation was twofold: female infidelity twice as bad as male abuse, the life of a woman half as valuable as that of a man. The killing of the woman taken in adultery has a long history and survives today in many cultures. One of those is our own. — Anna Quindlen

Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. — Albrecht Durer

Culture has never the translucidity of custom; it abhors all simplification. In its essence it is opposed to custom, for custom is always the deterioration of culture. — Frantz Fanon

We're a country that abhors the government. From Reagan on, many people think the government is the enemy in the United States. — Peter Kuznick

So it is that, just as nature abhors a vacuum, philosophy abhors an answer, for once the truth is truly attained, the game is truly up. — Dan Garfat-Pratt

Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. — Andrea Dworkin

The intelligent and good man holds in his affections the good and true of every land
the boundaries of countries are not the limitations of his sympathies. Caring nothing for race, or color, he loves those who speak other languages and worship other gods. Between him and those who suffer, there is no impassable gulf. He salutes the world, and extends the hand of friendship to the human race. He does not bow before a provincial and patriotic god
one who protects his tribe or nation, and abhors the rest of mankind. — Robert Green Ingersoll

And then to my surprise in one of them I discovered the original manuscript of On Friendship. Puzzled, I unrolled it, thinking I must have brought it with me by mistake. But when I saw that Cicero had copied out at the top of the roll in his shaking hand a quotation from the text, on the importance of having friends, I realised it was a parting gift: If a man ascended into heaven and gazed upon the whole workings of the universe and the beauty of the stars, the marvellous sight would give him no joy if he had to keep it to himself. And yet, if only there had been someone to describe the spectacle to, it would have filled him with delight. Nature abhors solitude. — Robert Harris

All love abhors habit. — Christian Wiman

I recognized it immediately the first time it happened - the cackle of the crone. It is the sound of a woman who is caught inside the mystery of the universe, in the irony of the angst, in the place ego abhors. Bliss. — Toni Bentley

It is easy enough to write and talk about God while remaining comfortable within the contemporary intellectual climate. Even people who would call themselves unbelievers often use the word gesturally, as a ready-made synonym for mystery. But if nature abhors a vacuum, Christ abhors a vagueness. If God is love, Christ is love for this one person, this one place, this one time-bound and time-ravaged self. — Christian Wiman

As for Humphrey, he was never renowned for tidiness. "My nature abhors the vacuum," he said. — Tom Rachman

If a man should ascend alone into heaven and behold clearly the structure of the universe and the beauty of the stars, there would be no pleasure for him in the awe-inspiring sight, which would have filled him with delight if he had had someone to whom he could describe what he had seen. Nature abhors solitude. — Marco Tulliio Cicerone

I feel like nature abhors prolonged suffering. It does not allow it. It knocks you off if you got something chronic. But we somehow perpetuate that. Like we live day after day, year after year, our whole life under prolonged suffering. And that I would call cruelty. — Daniel Suelo

Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled. — Henry David Thoreau

The Big Book's chapter We Agnostics draws a line in the sand: God either is or He isn't. What was our choice to be (Alcoholics Anonymous, 53)? Nature abhors a vacuum and a state of nothing can't exist in either the material or spiritual world. This kind of binary thinking made sense in the autocratic world of 1939. But in a democratic, pluralist society, all-or-nothing thinking is a cognitive distortion - a philosophical assumption that everything is right or wrong, good or evil, superior or inferior. In this millennium, people can hold opposing views and be equals in the same community. Our Traditions, lovingly and tolerantly, make room for more than one truth. That's a good thing, because the only problem with the truth is that there are so many versions of it. — Joe C.

Think of yourself as a container for wealth. If your container is small and your money is big, what's going to happen? You will lose it. Your container will overflow and the excess money will spill out all over the place. You simply cannot have more money than the container. Therefore you must grow to be a big container so you cannot only hold more wealth but also attract more wealth. The universe abhors a vacuum and if you have a very large money container, it will rush in to fill the space. — T. Harv Eker

The devil abhors light and truth because these remove the ground of his working. — Watchman Nee

Nonviolence abhors fear and therefore, secrecy. — Mahatma Gandhi

The earth is not our home. We came from nothing, and to that condition our nostalgia
should turn. Why would anyone care about this dim bulb in the blackness of space? The earth produced us, or at least subsidized our evolution. Is it really entitled to receive a pardon, let alone the sacrifice of human lives, for this original sin - a capital crime in reverse (very much in the same way that reproduction makes one an accessory before the fact to an individual's death)? Someone once said that nature abhors a vacuum. This is precisely why nature should be abhorred. Instead, the nonhuman environment is simultaneously extolled and ravaged by a company of poor players who can no longer act naturally. It is one thing for the flora and fauna to feed and fight and breed in an unthinking continuance of their existence. It is quite another for us to do so in defiance of our own minds, which over and again pose the same question: "What are we still doing in this horrible place? — Thomas Ligotti

God abhors a naked singularity. — Stephen Hawking

Any assemblage comprising human beings, any family, any party, any tribe, any nation, will bind itself together not by what it shares but ultimately by what it fears, which is often so much greater. Perhaps it abhors the outsider as camouflage for its own alarms; dreading what it would do to itself were the binding to fall asunder. — Joseph O'Connor

As someone who's very competitive, I'm someone who abhors losing more than I enjoy winning. In that regard, it hasn't been a great two months, but I think our players' attitude remains pretty resolute. — Skip Prosser

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. — George Will

Charity, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Next to putting it in a bank, men like to squander their superfluous wealth on those to whom it is sure to be doing the least possible good. — William Hazlitt

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; ... even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern ... — Thomas Jefferson

When you need something to be true, you will look for patterns; you connect the dots like the stars of a constellation. Your brain abhors disorder. You see faces in clouds and demons in bonfires. Those who claim the powers of divination hijack these natural human tendencies. They know they can depend on you to use subjective validation in the moment and confirmation bias afterward. — David McRaney

I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author. Thus I believe that there is no part of matter which is not - I do not say divisible - but actually divisible; and consequently the least particle ought to be considered as a world full of an infinity of different creatures. — Georg Cantor

The most serious drawback to the telling-nothing approach is that it made that much more of a mystery of what had happened, and the nature of gossip abhors a vacuum of the unexplained. — Robin McKinley

But just as nature abhors a vacuum
so does the human heart. — Jojo Moyes

He's never fired a gun in his life," Palamedes said. "He abhors weapons."
As Palamedes spoke,the group could see Shakespeare put the tonbogiri to his shoulder,then jerk three times.
Two of the attacking vimanas spun out of control,both of them crashing into two more. The flour flaming craft spiraled into the sea.
"But then he's always been full of surprises," Palamedes added. — Michael Scott

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties. — Henry David Thoreau

The brain abhors discrepancies. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed? — Solomon Short

The best we can to the best of our ability based on what we know. That's why the truth is so important. Evil abhors those with the ability. — Terry Goodkind

Nature abhors a long silence. — Lewis Thomas

We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact. — Hjalmar Soderberg

That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorror, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal - unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

His hopeless challenge dauntless cried
Fingolfin there: 'Come, open wide,
dark king, you ghatsly brazen doors!
Come forth, whom earth and heaven abhors!
Come forth, O monstruous craven lord,
and fight with thine own hand and sword,
thou wielder of hosts of banded thralls,
thou tyrant leaguered with strong walls,
thou foe of Gods and elvish race!
I wait thee here. Come! Show thy face! — J.R.R. Tolkien

The Point, not unlike the Communist Chinese, the ACLU abhors individual religious freedom, and it supports only those civil liberties that fit its narrow political agenda. — Mark Hyman, M.D.

The pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive the wicked: the flames do now rage and glow. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much in the same way as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked ... He will trample them beneath His feet with inexpressible fierceness; He will crush their blood out, and will make it fly, so that it will sprinkle His garment and stain all His raiment. — Jonathan Edwards

What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence. — Joseph Brodsky

One of the most evil dispositions possible is that which satirizes and turns everything to ridicule. God abhors this vice, and has sometimes punished it in a marked manner — Saint Francis De Sales

Nature abhors a vacuum, even in the heads of statesmen. — Clare Boothe Luce

God abhors a naked singularity because that's when things stop making sense. Predictability breaks down. That's why the universe takes all its dirty little secrets and hides them in the centre of a black hole. — Gavin G. Smith

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful enormous serpent is in ours. — Jonathan Edwards

Good Heaven, whose darling attribute we find is boundless grace, and mercy to mankind, abhors the cruel. — John Dryden

Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions. — Heinrich Heine

Don't allow yourself to get into the habit of dressing carelessly when there is 'only' your husband to see you. Depend upon it he has no use for faded tea-gowns and badly dressed hair, and he abhors the sight of curling pins as much as other men do. He is a man after all, and if his wife does not take the trouble to charm him, there are plenty of other women who will. — Blanche Ebbutt

History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance. — Bernard DeVoto

I've heard that nature abhors a vacuum - though if that's true, then I can't figure why about ninety-nine zillion percent of creation is vacuum. — Jim Butcher

By the law of Christ, every man is bound to love his neighbour as himself; but every servant is a neighbour of every civil lord; therefore every civil lord must love any of his servants as himself; but by natural instinct, every lord abhors slavery; therefore, by the law of charity, he is bound not to impose slavery on any brother in Christ. — John Wycliffe

For success in training children the first condition is to become as a child oneself, but this means no assumed childishness, no condescending baby-talk that the child immediately sees through and deeply abhors. What it does mean is to be as entirely and simply taken up with the child as the child himself is absorbed by his life. — Ellen Key

I'm absolutely confident that the God that I worship abhors violence. — Richard Mourdock

Nature abhors the old. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The divinization of Man, when one abhors the order of the world as essentially evil, is a risky and self-contradictory venture. — Czeslaw Milosz

Nature abhors a vacuum. — Aristotle.

Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum. — Baruch Spinoza

Since nature abhors a vacuum, the void must be in you. — Marty Rubin

There is nothing more inimical to writing than the spirit of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism abhors the play of signs, the endlessness of writing. Fundamentalism means nothing more or less than going back to an origin and staying there. It stands for one founding book and, thereafter, no more books. — J.M. Coetzee

If it is true that nature abhors a vacuum, then criminality regards it as a business opportunity. — John Connolly

He, who can create, abhors destruction. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Nothing is a greater stranger to my breast, or a sin that my soul more abhors, than that black and detestable one, ingratitude. — George Washington

Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can do this either by teaching or engaging in public affairs itself, correcting through its practice. And the purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone, they become no more than beasts. — Iain Pears

This loving person is a person who abhors waste-waste of time, waste of human potential. How much time we waste. As if we were going to live forever. — Leo Buscaglia

History resists an ending as surely as nature abhors a vacuum; the narrative of our days is a run-on sentence, every full stop a comma in embryo. But more: like thought, like water, history is fluid, unpredictable, dangerous. It leaps and surges and doubles back, cuts unpredictable channels, surfaces suddenly in places no one would expect. — Mark Slouka