Betake Quotes & Sayings

Tempests, and bright lightnings, are to be sung; their nature is to be told, and from what cause they pursue their course; lest, having foolishly divided the heaven into parts, you should be anxious as to the quarter from which the flying flame may come, or to what region it may betake itself; and tremble to think how it penetrates through walled enclosures, and how, having exercised its power, it extricates itself from them. Of which phenomena the multitude can by no means see the causes, and think that they are accomplished by supernatural power. — Lucretius

It's time for the Americans to say they're going to live up to their obligations and return the dollars that have been illegally taken from Canadians. — Gordon Campbell

We cannot all write like Lincoln or Shakespeare, but even the least gifted of us has the incredible instrument, our voice, to communicate the range of human emotions. Why would we deprive ourselves of that? — Sherry Turkle

She knew she was going to have trouble believing in herself, in the room of her house, and when she glanced over at this new book on her nightstand, stacked atop the one she finished last night, she reached for it automatically, as if reading were the singular and obvious first task of the day, the only viable way to negotiate the transit from sleep to obligation. — Michael Cunningham

It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It must not be thought, however, that in pagan Ireland Fairyland was altogether conceived as a Hades or place of the dead. We have already seen that in some of its types and aspects it was inherently nothing of the sort; as when, for example, it came to be confused with the Land of the Gods. In all likelihood these separate paradises and deadlands of a nature so various were the result of the stratified beliefs of successive races dwelling in the same region. A conquering race would scarcely credit that its heroes would, after death, betake themselves to the deadland of the beaten and enslaved aborigines. The gods of vanquished races might be conceived as presiding over spheres of the dead for which their victors would have nothing but contempt, and which, because of that very contempt, might come to be conceived as hells or places of a debased and grovelling kind, pestiferous regions which only the spirits of despised "natives" or the undesirable might inhabit. — Lewis Spence

And though they may have many scruples that they are wasting time, and that it may be better for them to betake themselves to some other good work, seeing that in prayer and meditation they are become helpless; yet let them be patient with themselves, and remain quiet, for that which they are uneasy about is their own satisfaction and liberty of spirit. If they were now to exert their inferior faculties, they would simply hinder and ruin the good which, in that repose, God is working in the soul; for if a man while sitting for his portrait cannot be still, but moves about, the painter will never depict his face, and even the work already done will be spoiled. — San Juan De La Cruz

I'm sorry," I muttered. "My subconscious is apparently obsessed with you. — Shelly Crane

Therefore, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be a refuge to yourselves. Hold fast to Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, who shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, they shall reach the topmost height. — Gautama Buddha

You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this - if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to new. — Charlotte Bronte

Be a light unto yourself; betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourselves. — Buddha Shakyamuni

My heart is the sad fact of time moving irreversibly forward. My heart is a demiurge, freely allegiant, an anchor in the void. — Barry Smolin

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear. — Alain De Botton

And for yourself, whatever there has been either of sin or duty, remember the one and forget the other, and betake yourself wholly to the mercy of God and the merit of Christ. — Donald Cargill

The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while. — Henry David Thoreau

Because essentially Schoenberg was an extremely gifted man. And in spite of many of his theories and so on, when he really began to write music, he still was guided very much by his internal hearing, by what we call your internal ear. — Leo Ornstein

If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of widespread causes, though very different in each individual, will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a study of which we may estimate the character and propensities of an imaginary being called the Mean Man. — James Clerk Maxwell

You must not have played chess in a while. The king is the weakest piece in the game." He gave Justin a level look. "The queen's the strongest. — Richelle Mead

Graveyards were usually, in his team's experience, a bad idea. This one was full of greenish lights that danced between the graves, and there were a couple of swaying figures, one an emaciated husk with glowing eyes who had taken to ... yes, there he was again this morning, like every morning.
Quill tiredly raised his hand to return the wave. — Paul Cornell

By these pleasures it is permitted to relax the mind with play, in turmoils of the mind, or when our labors are light, or in great tension, or as a method of passing the time. A reliable witness is Cicero, when he says (De Oratore, 2): 'men who are accustomed to hard daily toil, when by reason of the weather they are kept from their work, betake themselves to playing with a ball, or with knucklebones or with dice, or they may also contrive for themselves some new game at their leisure.' — Gerolamo Cardano

Policy makers and politicians want more STEM; educators want more STEAM. Both, in ways that are eerily similar, are engaging in social engineering to support an ideology. At the macro-level, in both worlds, it's all about teaching a point of view, rather than teaching students to learn. We seem hell bent on an arbitrarily linear approach to engineering a "useful" or job-securing education, from which we continue to get mixed results. — Henry Doss

Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself. — E. E. Cummings

Something real, cool, and solid, lies before you something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. — Charlotte Bronte

The manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow
haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to
I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline
they aren't remade. — Wallace Stegner

Nature never makes any blunders, when she makes a fool she means it. — Archibald Alexander

Or, if needing years to wake thee
From thy slumbrous solitudes,
Come, sleep-walking, and betake thee
To the friendly, sleeping woods.

Sweeter dreams are in the forest,
Round thee storms would never rave;
And when need of rest is sorest,
Glide thou then into thy cave. — George MacDonald

Looking desultorily about, his attention had been drawn by a dull glimmering on one of the tables; and he had extricated the queer orblike stone from its shadowy, crowded position between an ugly little Aztec idol, the fossil egg of a dinornis, and an obscene fetish of black wood from the Niger. — H.P. Lovecraft

I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks. — Henry David Thoreau

Be lamps unto yourselves. Be refuges unto yourselves. Take yourself no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead, Shall be a lamp unto themselves, Shall betake themselves as no external refuge, But holding fast to the truth as their lamp, Holding fast to the truth as their refuge, Shall not look for refuge to anyone else besides themselves, It is they who shall reach to the very topmost height; But they must be anxious to learn. — Gautama Buddha

I am a living soap opera. — Virginia Graham