Abstractedly Quotes & Sayings

Objections to Christianity ... are phrased in words, but that does not mean that they are really a matter of language and analysis and argument. Words are tokens of the will. If something stronger than language were available then we would use it. But by the same token, words in defense of Christianity miss the mark as well: they are a translation into the dispassionate language of argument of something that resides far deeper in the caverns of volition, of commitment. Perhaps this is why Saint Francis, so the story goes, instructed his followers to "preach the Gospel always, using words if necessary." It is not simply and straightforwardly wrong to make arguments in the defense of the Christian faith, but it is a relatively superficial activity: it fails to address the core issues. — Alan Jacobs

Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without inquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a mad-man, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance. — Edmund Burke

I was for two years a pupil at the Model School in Fort street which was then conducted upon the Irish national system, and if any special religious instruction was given in connection with that system, I do not recollect it. — Edmund Barton

Populous cities are destroyed by earthquakes, and desolated by pestilence. Ambition is every where devoting its millions to incalculable calamity. Superstition, in a thousand shapes, is employed in brutalizing and degrading the human species, and fitting it to endure without a murmur the oppression of its innumerable tyrants. All this is abstractedly neither good nor evil because good and evil are words employed to designate that peculiar state of our own perceptions, resulting from the encounter of any object calculated to produce pleasure or pain. Exclude the idea of relation, and the words good and evil are deprived of import. — Christopher Hitchens

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle. — Charles Caleb Colton

This is what Zen means by being detached - not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water. — Alan Watts

Yeah, I don't think you can live anywhere else
it's such a great city [New York]. L.A. is kind of a necessary evil, but man, I love going back to New York. — Will Arnett

If you only think about yourself - how much money can I make, what can I buy, how nice is my house, what kind of fancy car do I have? - over the long term, I think, you get bored. I think your life becomes diminished. The way to live a full life is to think: What can I do for others! — Barack Obama

To men in their sleep there is nothing granted in this world. — Thomas Carlyle

Love, I thought to myself abstractedly. Not 'This is love' or 'Is this love?' Not a sentence, not a certainty, not a thought with moving parts or direction. Just love, all of it, as it is. Whether it's enough or not. Wthether it's real or we're making it up. However shoddy it gets, or bent out of shape. It's still extraordinary. However foolish, however vain. However badly it ends. Love. — Julian Gough

In lieu of fixating upon details of our life which can lead to sadness or madness, we achieve an enhanced perspective regarding the perplexity haunting our being by thinking abstractedly, a process that allows us to discern the essential principles of life. — Kilroy J. Oldster

He once read about a research study that proved Palestinian Arabs shared a greater gene pool with Ashkenazi Jews than they did with Arabs of different countries. Many Arabs, such as the famed Mejali clan, were actually Jews who had been forced to convert to Islam in 1010. A few in isolated villages such as Yattah and Sakhnin still lit Shabbos candles and held on to other Jewish rituals, often at great risk. — Ruchama King Feuerman

It doesn't do my self-esteem much good though, does it?'

'Your self-esteem has had a lifetime of steady attention,' said Philippa abstractedly. — Dorothy Dunnett

[Benjamin Peirce's] lectures were not easy to follow. They were never carefully prepared. The work with which he rapidly covered the blackboard was very illegible, marred with frequent erasures, and not infrequent mistakes (he worked too fast for accuracy). He was always ready to digress from the straight path and explore some sidetrack that had suddenly attracted his attention, but which was likely to have led nowhere when the college bell announced the close of the hour and we filed out, leaving him abstractedly staring at his work, still with chalk and eraser in his hands, entirely oblivious of his departing class. — William Elwood Byerly

Some girls need men to take them places. Others just click their heels, spread their own wings, and fly. — Coco J. Ginger

She glanced over abstractedly, still keeping company with her most recent thought. — Leah Hager Cohen

From his vantage, three steps back and to the right, Tallow could see Rosato's eye a good five inches outside Rosato's head and still attached to his eye socket by a mess of red worms. In that single second, Tallow abstractedly realized that in his last moment of life, James Rosato could see his killer from two different angles. — Warren Ellis

Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the President's eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright railings and the sunlit trees. — G.K. Chesterton