Dispel Quotes & Sayings

Dispel, v.
It was the way you said, "I have something to tell you." I could feel the magic drain from the room. — David Levithan

Darwin's "strange inversion of reasoning" and Turing's equally revolutionary inversion were aspects of a single discovery: competence without comprehension. Comprehension, far from being a Godlike talent from which all design must flow, is an emergent effect of systems of uncomprehending competence: natural selection on the one hand, and mindless computation on the other. These twin ideas have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but they still provoke dismay and disbelief in some quarters, which I have tried to dispel in this chapter. Creationists are not going to find commented code in the inner workings of organisms, and Cartesians are not going to find an immaterial res cogitans "where all the understanding happens". — Daniel C. Dennett

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure. — Epicurus

The more one learns of this intricate interplay of soil, altitude, weather, and the living tissues of plant and insect (an intricacy that has its astonishing moments, as when sundew and butterwort eat the insects), the more the mystery deepens. Knowledge does not dispel mystery. — Nan Shepherd

Look for it in the wintertime, if you want to find The Light Of The Season - the real light, not the Hallmark one. Look for the location of resistance. Look for the darkness in which you can be a spark. Look for the opportunity to be bright, to light someone else's way, to warm their hands, to shuttle them safely through the dark. Look for the crack you can fill or the shadow you can dispel by bringing a little bit of the light of resistance, carefully and precisely, to just the place where it is needed. Look for the place of being bright - of being bright and present outside your own house, or in the window, on the opposite side to the mezuzah, letting anyone who passes know. We are here. — S. Bear Bergman

But how can psychotherapists purport to dispel the illusions of their clients while protecting and maintaining their own? Furthermore, a therapist's belief in and commitment to the therapeutic process ought not to be based on naive idealism, but rather on realistic appraisal. — Michael Sussman

Deven tilted his head again, set down his glass, and said, "Any fight between us, my Lady, will be short and unpleasant."
"Just like you." Miranda bit back.
Silence.
Then Deven laughed.
Miranda didn't, but she felt the tension in the air dispel and sat back with her wineglass.
"I like her," Deven told David. "She's bright and fearless, just like they say. Give her fifty years and she'll be a force of nature. — Dianne Sylvan

It is like a lighted torch whose flame can be distributed to ever so many other torches which people may bring along; and therewith they will cook food and dispel darkness, while the original torch itself remains burning ever the same. It is even so with the bliss of the Way.
[Sutra of 42 Sections] — Gautama Buddha

Lincoln's ability to retain his emotional balance in such difficult situations was rooted in actute self-awareness and an enormous capacity to dispel anxiety in constructive ways. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

The battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every creature lives on the death of another. A realization of the inevitable guilt of life may so sicken the heart, that like Hamlet, or like Arjuna, one may refuse to go on with it. On the other hand, like most of the rest of us, one may invent a false finally unjustified image of oneself as an exceptional phenomenon in the world
not guilty as others are, but justified in one's inevitable sinning, because one represents the good. Such self-righteousness leads to a misunderstanding, not only of oneself, but of the nature of both Man and the Cosmos. The goal of the myth is to dispel the need for such life-ignorance by affecting a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the universal will, and this is affected through a realization of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time to the imperishable life that lives and dies in all. — Joseph Campbell

Man must get back to himself before he can learn his relation to his fellows. Prometheus chained to the Rock of Ages is doomed to remain the prey of the vultures of darkness. Unbind Prometheus, and you dispel the night and its horrors. — Emma Goldman

Only the church of Jesus have the answers to dispel fear — Sunday Adelaja

So who is God? No one can finally say. That is not within human competence. All we can ever say is how we believe we have experienced God, doing our best to dispel our human delusions. Let me try to do just that. I experience God as the source of life calling me to live fully and thus to respect life in every form as embodying the holy. — John Shelby Spong

Truth is a torch which gleams in the fog but does not dispel it. — Claude Adrien Helvetius

Light's glory is to dispel darkness. Christ has illumined you with wisdom and the fire of his presence. It has been sparked and kindled in you. Let it blaze. — Caryll Houselander

Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world. — Henry David Thoreau

Misunderstanding are always cause by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. The best way to dispel ignorance of the doings of others is by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thoughts intercourse. — Nikola Tesla

The innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life. — Joyce Carol Oates

Just as the light of a candle has the power to dispel darkness in a room, so also the light developed in one man can help dispel darkness in several others. — Sayagyi U Ba Khin

I'm just a
" I looked at Yoshiro. "An unimpressive girl who doesn't want to battle ghosts and kill wraiths. There's only three things I want. To find my family. Dispel Neos. And to
" I stopped suddenly, and didn't know where to look.
"Yes?" Yoshiro said. "The third thing?"
"To be with me," Bennett said. — Lee Nichols

I prayed to dispel my fear, until suddenly, and I do not know how the idea came to me, I began to pray for others. I prayed for everyone who came into my thoughts - - people with whom I had traveled, those who had been in prison with me, my school friends of years ago. I do not know how long I continued my prayer, but this I do know - - my fear was gone! Interceding for others had released me! — Corrie Ten Boom

Realization of the absolute Truth - about God, Self and oneness between the two - leads to wisdom. Understanding and experiencing this oneness is purity, a state of life where one can dispel all doubts and fears — Gian Kumar

I wished that love could be simple, that it was always given and returned in the same measure, equally and at the same time, that all the planets aligned in a perfect way to dispel all doubts, that it was easy to understand and never painful. — Mary E. Pearson

Part of the job for me and others from El Paso who live along the border is to dispel the myths about how supposedly dangerous the border is. — Beto O'Rourke

The truth is women in the workplace don't have to fight nearly as hard for opportunities, or to dispel stereotypes, as they did before. — Suze Orman

The sky may be overcast today with clouds, but a fervent prayer to God is enough to dispel them. — Mahatma Gandhi

Our instinct as human beings is to provide answers, to ease tension. As writers our job is the opposite, to create tension and not dispel it immediately. — Sol Stein

Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote, "Evil is not an appearance," adding that "knowing its causes does not dispel it." Sartre — Sue Klebold

I had long since given up trying to extract from a woman as it were the square root of her unknown quantity, the mystery of which a mere introduction was generally enough to dispel. — Marcel Proust

The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close as to be out of focus, and there is no operating novelist to dispel the blur. — Julian Barnes

Kind words dispel clouds of fear like the moonlight's smile on water. — Khaled Talib

No man, or woman, was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long, rainy days in the country has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed. — Arthur Helps

If a man is terrified, it's up to me to dispel that terror. — Jack Kevorkian

It has been said already, but bears repeating: no blanket statement can sum up an entire group of people. No book, no chapter, no study, no research report can attempt to do that either. Instead, Understanding Y attempts to start a conversation - one that we hope will delve a little deeper and dispel some commonly held assumptions about Generation Y, a conversation that we hope is the first of many. — Charlie Caruso

For as long as space remains,
For as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then may I too remain
To dispel the miseries of the world. — Acharya Shantideva

No reality has the power to dispel a dream. — Lemony Snicket

No matter how challenging the ensuing process may become at times, the inner light and love in the human heart always has the power to dispel darkness and ignorance. — William Keepin

Instead of resisting any emotion, the best way to dispel it is to enter it fully, embrace it and see through your resistance. — Deepak Chopra

We have got to dispel this myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage. — Barack Obama

If there be anything that can render the soul calm, dissipate its scruples and dispel its fears, sweeten its sufferings by the anointing of love, impart strength to all its actions, and spread abroad the joy of the Holy Spirit in its countenance and words, it is this simple and childlike repose in the arms of God. — S.D. Gordon

Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wanderhelplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man's lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities
a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel. — Hannah Arendt

Agency used righteously allows light to dispel the darkness and enables us to live with joy and happiness. — Robert D. Hales

Apathy. I haven't yet reached that stage. I'm still at the complaining one, but I imagine that soon - in a matter of months, days, or hours - a complete lack of interest will set in that will be very hard to dispel. — Paulo Coelho

You can curse the darkness, or you can dispel it. — A.D. Posey

Don't be discouraged by your incapacity to dispel darkness from the world. Light your little candle and step forward. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Let's dispel the idiotic notion that the plays were not written by Shakespeare. Of course they were written by Shakespeare. How can we look at someone with a body of work like Mozart and say that a human being is not capable of a body of work like Shakespeare's with language? We can't. He wrote the plays. — Paul Barnes

There will be a solidity to their faith which is very dangerous to our designs and difficult to dissolve. There is a luminosity to it. Just one Christian of that type can dispel years worth of diabolical delusion. — Geoffrey Wood

Anything that prevents you from taking an action or actions that might reasonably dispel legitimate anxieties. Fear is what paralyzes you. — Keith Olbermann

ANGUISH EMERGES FROM craving for life to be other than it is. In the face of a changing world, such craving seeks consolation in something permanent and reliable, in a self that is in control of things, in a God who is in charge of destiny. The irony of this strategy is that it turns out to be the cause of what it seeks to dispel. In yearning for anguish to be assuaged in such ways, we reinforce what creates anguish in the first place: the craving for life to be other than it is. We find ourselves spinning in a vicious circle. The more acute the anguish, the more we want to be rid of it, but the more we want to be rid of it, the more acute it gets. Such — Stephen Batchelor

The only voice of dissent you have to dispel is your own. — Anker Frankoni

The very names assigned to angels by their Creator, convey to us ideas pre-eminently pleasing, fitted to captivate the heart, and exalt the imagination; ideas which dispel gloom, banish despondency, enliven hope, and awaken sincere and unmingled joy. — Timothy Dwight V

No amount of self-sufficiency could dispel the craving he still felt for that person we no longer talked about; that person who'd taken him apart and left a piece missing that none of us could find. — Sarah Winman

asking small questions to dispel fear and inspire creativity thinking small thoughts to develop new skills and habits - without moving a muscle taking small actions that guarantee success solving small problems, even when you're faced with an overwhelming crisis bestowing small rewards to yourself or others to produce the best results recognizing the small but crucial moments that everyone else ignores — Robert Maurer

Several people seized Strange bodily. One man started shaking him vigorously, as though he thought that he might in this way dispel any magic before it took effect. — Susanna Clarke

Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent. — Ambrose Bierce

Before you can dispel other people's ignorance, you should first dispel your own. — Nikolai Grozni

Rather than ignore those who choose to publish their opinions without actually talking to me, I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest and feel most fortunate to be working with wonderful people in the business I love. — Neil Patrick Harris

I also teach you to love yourself first. It has nothing to do with ego. In fact, love is such a light that the darkness of the ego cannot exist in it at all. If you love others, if your love is focused on others, you will live in darkness. Turn your light toward yourself first, become a light unto yourself first. Let the light dispel your inner darkness, your inner weakness. Let love make you a tremendous power, a spiritual force. — Osho

Yes, social friend, I love thee well,
In learned doctor's spite;
Thy clouds all other clouds dispel
And lap me in delight. — Charles Sprague Sargent

There is within the hearts of people a deep desire for peace on earth, and they would speak for peace if they were not bound by apathy, by ignorance, by fear. It is the job of the peacemakers to inspire them from their apathy, to dispel their ignorance with truth, to allay their fear with faith that God's laws work - and work for good. — Peace Pilgrim

Dispel the cold, bounteously replenishing the hearth with logs. — Horace

If I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it. — Emily Bronte

Dispel not, the happy delusions of children. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Serving throughout the world is a great missionary force going about doing good. Missionaries teach truth. They dispel darkness. They spread joy. They bring precious souls to Christ. — Thomas S. Monson

After the Reagan years, there were only three people of color in the Republican Party. Their slogan was 'Republicans - the Other White Meat.' George [H.] Bush tried to dispel the 'whites only' image of his party, often referring to his Mexican-American grandkids as 'the little brown ones over there,' and nominated Clarence Uncle Thomas to the Supreme Court. — Kate Clinton

To rejoice in another's prosperity is to give content to your lot; to mitigate another's grief is to alleviate or dispel your own. — Tryon Edwards

I saw myself the lambent easy light Gild the brown horror, and dispel the night. — John Dryden

And yet something in his dark, still shape spoke of a sadness I couldn't begin to understand, one I suddenly wished I might do something to dispel. Surprising myself, I reached out and laid a hand on his forearm. I heard a sudden intake of breath, but I made myself give his arm a gentle squeeze before I let go. He really didn't feel very different from a human - at least, a human who was well-muscled. The flesh under my fingertips had been firm and unyielding. — Christine Pope

But I still has enough longing for that concept that I didn't want to dispel it completely. Meaning: I didn't want to tell Lily that I felt we'd all been duped by Plato and the idea of a soul mate. Just in case it turned out that she was mine. — David Levithan

We all have prejudices to dispel: the need to get away from thinking that 'I' am important and special and 'you' are not, and the frightened mindset that tells us that certain 'others' are of no consequence. — Ingrid Newkirk

In reading he found solitude. In reading he could dispel the blare of the world. — Christos Tsiolkas

The 'harmonious world' theory .. will help dispel doubts in the international community about China's continued development and refute the absurd 'China threat theory'. — Ye Xiaowen

Suppressing his grimace, James gave his new boyfriend a thin smile. Tall, dark, and handsome, Fred was exactly his type, but James couldn't say he liked Fred all that much. They had been together for two weeks already, but he still felt uneasy every time Fred touched him. He couldn't help it. No matter what his mind knew, his heart still couldn't get the memo that he wasn't Ryan's, and every touch, every kiss felt like cheating. It had been easier with Paul. With Paul, James had managed to half-convince himself he could love Paul. With Fred, he couldn't. He'd chosen Paul because he had liked him; he'd chosen Fred because he needed a boyfriend. Because he needed to distract Ryan, needed to dispel any suspicion. — Alessandra Hazard

I loved - but those I loved are gone;
Had friends - my early friends are fled:
How cheerless feels the heart alone
When all its former hopes are dead!
Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,
The heart - the heart - is lonely still. — George Gordon Byron

Marsh touched the rim of his hat and smiled at them. The ladies tittered at each other and cast long glances at him from behind their lace gloves as they made their way to the row of ornate passenger dirigibles that sat urging against their moorings in the fading light.

"Do try not to attract too much attention to yourself, Mr. Marsh," Elle said.
"Easier said than done," he responded without taking his eyes off the ladies.
Elle took a deep breath to dispel her annoyance. — Liesel Schwarz

Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him - the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

It's so sad: anything that has to do with God, people want to dispel. — Sylvia Browne

I don't know anything different about death than I ever have, but I feel differently. I inhabit this difference in feeling- or does it live in me?- at the same time as I'm sorrowing. The possibility of consolation, of joy even, does not dispel the sorrow. Sorrow is the cathedral, the immense architecture; in its interior there's room for almost everything; for desire, for flashes of happiness, for making plans for the future ... — Mark Doty

Well, just to dispel all the myths, Walt [Disney] was not anti-Semitic. He was not racist in any way, shape, or form. He was not frozen when his life ended. He's not in some frozen vault right now waiting to make a big comeback. — Pat Williams

I say to this night: "Pass more slowly"; and the dawn will come to dispel the night. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields. The peril of a clash is aggravated by a more or less predominant sense of combativeness, posed by every human being. To resist this inherent fighting tendency the best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse. — Nikola Tesla

Just as full sunlight completely dispels all darkness but even a few rays provide a measure of light, so, if we complete the practice of training the mind, we will totally dispel the darkness of our ignorance, but if we engage in only some parts of the practice, this will still help to reduce our ignorance and self-cherishing . — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

In this new year, may you have a deep understanding of your true value and worth, an absolute faith in your unlimited potential, peace of mind in the midst of uncertainty, the confidence to let go when you need to, acceptance to replace your resistance, gratitude to open your heart, the strength to meet your challenges, great love to replace your fear, forgiveness and compassion for those who offend you, clear sight to see your best and true path, hope to dispel obscurity, the conviction to make your dreams come true, meaningful and rewarding synchronicities, dear friends who truly know and love you, a childlike trust in the benevolence of the universe, the humility to remain teachable, the wisdom to fully embrace your life exactly as it is, the understanding that every soul has its own course to follow, the discernment to recognize your own unique inner voice of truth, and the courage to learn to be still. — Janet Rebhan

For as long as space endures
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world. — Santideva

Get into the habit of singing a tune. It will give you new life and fill you with joy. Get into the habit of dancing. It will displace depression and dispel hardship. — Nachman Of Breslov

I can single handedly dispel any ideas that sexuality is acquired. Trust me, you're born with it. My brother is gay, and we knew when he was two. — Adam Levine

As long as space endures, as long as sentient beings remain, until then, may I too remain and dispel the miseries of the world. — Dalai Lama XIV

There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy. — Jane Austen

There is at least this to be said for mind, that it can dispel mind. — Samuel Beckett

Anne has small superstitions which she uses to dispel anxieties. For instance, if she can make it to the fourth stain on the carpet by the time the elevator door closes, that means Nate has thought positively about her today, and there is a future where they know each other. It becomes a one-sided competition when a negative consequence is imagined: if she cannot touch two different kinds of tile with her feet by the time the toilet flushes, that means she said something crucially "wrong" in an email, and Nate will never contact her again. She doesn't keep track of which side is winning. — Megan Boyle

On The Practice, I get to do what I love to do, and I am making a contribution that will, in the end, help raise social consciousness, dispel some of the myths about being large, and change the way that people view and interact with large people. — Camryn Manheim

Our first task is to dispel this vague, murky feeling of discontent and to look critically at how we are living our lives. This requires honesty, courage, and trust. We must honestly unmask and courageously confront our many self-deceptive games. We must trust that our honesty and courage will lead us not to despair, but to a new heaven and a new earth. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

We must dispel the negative and harmful atmosphere that has been created by avaricious and unprincipled realtors who engage in "blockbusting." If we had in America really serious efforts to break down discrimination in housing, and at the same time a concerted program of government aid to improve housing for Negroes, I think that many white people would be surprised at how many Negroes would choose to live among themselves, exactly as Poles and Jews and other ethnic groups do. — Martin Luther King Jr.

My younger brother's death in Vietnam was both sobering and cause for reflection. In 'Fallen Angels' I wanted to dispel the notion of war as either romantic or simplistically heroic. — Walter Dean Myers

Strange how everyone tried to disguise truth with nonsense. Like the slang for death: kicking the bucket, wiped out, snuffed, wasted, blown away. The light touch to dispel the heavy fear. — Robert Bloch

My problem as a writer, using words, is to dispel the illusions of language while employing one of the languages that generates them. I can succeed only on the principle of a hair of the dog that bit you. — Alan W. Watts

A glance at any human should be enough to dispel any notion that it is the work of an intelligent being. — John Gray

I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me: I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge. Oh, that I had for ever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death. — Mary Shelley

It would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear. — Aung San Suu Kyi