Elevating Yourself Quotes & Sayings

Look at native cultures - they've lasted for tens of thousands of years, not doing everything right. We wouldn't want to emulate them in many ways, but their basic philosophies - being a part of nature, a part of a tribe or group without elevating, not what you call dominator philosophies - they lasted for tens of thousands of years. It took us to come and put them asunder. — Tom Shadyac

Museum architectural search committees have invariably included the Kimbell in their international scouting tours of exemplary art galleries (a practice pioneered by Velma Kimbell, the founder's widow, in 1964). Those groups no doubt respond to the Kimbell with suitable reverence, but given the buildings they later commissioned, many post-Bilbao museum patrons obviously wanted something quite different. The disparity between Kahn's museums and recent examples of that genre parallels the discrepancy he saw between postwar Modernism and ancient Classicism: "Our stuff looks tinny compared to it." At a time when commercial values are systematically corrupting the museum - one of civilized society's most elevating experiences - the example of Kahn, among the most courageous and successful architectural reformers of all time, seems more relevant and cautionary than ever. — Martin Filler

What I find most injurious to mankind in modern advertising is the constant appeal to material standards and values, the elevating of material things into an end in themselves, a virtue. — Ann Bridge

This emphasis on the difference between intentions and ultimate results constituted an implicit critique of the Christian and civic republican traditions, and continues to make moralists queasy. Both traditions had stressed the importance of good and benevolent intentions. By unlinking consequences from intentions, Smith called into question the necessity and possibility of elevating the economic behavior of individuals through preaching and propaganda.
Yet just as he transmuted the Christian virtue of charity into the secular virtue of benevolence, on another level Smith preserved the classic republican concern for the common good. Those who could be motivated to devote themselves to promoting the public interest were in need of superior reason and understanding, by which we are capable of discerning the remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage or detriment which is likely to result from them. — Jerry Z. Muller

Envy is a horrible thing. It is unlike all other kinds of suffering in that there is no disguising it, no elevating it into tragedy. It is more than merely painful, it is disgusting. — George Orwell

In themselves, most of these thoughts are not actually harmful; a few of them may even be rather elevating. The trouble is that we have very little control over them. If you ask the thoughts, they would say, This poor fellow thinks he is thinking us, but we are thinking him. — Eknath Easwaran

Labor, in itself, is neither elevating or otherwise. It is the laborer's privilege to ennoble his work by the aim with which he undertakes it, and by the enthusiasm and faithfulness he puts into it. — Lucy Larcom

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazzthat's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat. — Keith Richards

Melancholy, amorous and barbaric, these tales exalted adulterous love as the only true kind, while in the real life of the same society adultery was a crime, not to mention a sin. If found out, it dishonored the lady and shamed the husband, a fellow knight. It was understood that he had the right to kill both unfaithful wife and lover. Nothing fits in this canon. The gay, the elevating, the ennobling pursuit is founded upon sin and invites the dishonor it is supposed to avert. Courtly love was a greater tangle of irreconcilables even than usury. It remained artificial, a literary convention, a fantasy (like modern pornography) more for purposes of — Barbara W. Tuchman

War is elevating, because the individual disappears before the great conception of the state ... What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish heroism among men! — Heinrich Von Treitschke

I wanted to give people a glimpse of my lifestyle and into the lifestyle of me and all my friends and all the people that I know. It's basically just coming up and going up. It's about growing up, elevating, chilling and vibing. And smoking. I wanted to make a piece of art that you could put on while you are hot boxing your car and riding around with your friends. — Young De

The traditional Chinese kingdoms operated under centuries of constraints on commerce. The building of walls on their borders had been a way of limiting such trade and literally keeping the wealth of the nation intact and inside the walls. For such administrators, giving up trade goods was the same as paying tribute to their neighbors, and they sought to avoid it as much as they could. The Mongols directly attacked the Chinese cultural prejudice that ranked merchants as merely a step above robbers by officially elevating their status ahead of all religions and professions, second only to government officials. In a further degradation of Confucian scholars, the Mongols reduced them from the highest level of traditional Chinese society to the ninth level, just below prostitutes but above beggars. — Jack Weatherford

The essence of the charge made against the modern high-status ideal is that it is guilty of effecting a gigantic distortion of priorities, of elevating to the highest level of achievement a process of material accumulation that should instead be only one of many factors determining the direction of our lives under a more truthful, more broadly defined conception of ourselves. — Alain De Botton

Even my wife and two of my children are in "Leaves of Grass". Because I love the source material so much, it was really easy to write and an utter delight to get to direct because I had people like Edward [Norton] elevating the material and surprising me in their interpretations of all of this stuff that's so close to me. — Edward Norton

Theurgy is ritual magic - but magic that enacts the will of God, not of the magician. It brings divine energies down to earth, elevating and spiritualizing the world of matter, including the very being and substance of the participants. Each time the believer takes part with attention and devotion, he or she becomes more attuned to God. — Richard Smoley

The manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science, elevating the voices of scientists that dispute the consensus, and motivating actions by the consensus scientists and their supporters that have diminished the public's trust in the IPCC. — Judith Curry

Look at who people are elevating and deifying in the public eye, and ask yourself what those people have done to receive such lauding and what it is they haven't. When you look at that you say, okay, are these people being revered for something of merit, or are they completely hallow? Or even worse, are they being revered for something that is actually destructive? — Davey Havok

Complete nudity in itself is not erotic. It becomes so only when preceeded by or contrasted to a state of dress. In this limited context then, all clothes become somewhat immoral, if we define immorality as inciting sexual interest. Habitual nakedness may indeed be capable of elevating man to a higher mental plane — Lucy Irvine

In 'Tree of Life,' the cinematography records a small story, a celebration of the courage of everyday life. But it does it so up close and so effortlessly that it has the effect of elevating the intimacy of the story to a grand scale. — Caleb Deschanel

Marijuana enhances our mind in a way that enables us to take a different perspective from 'high up', to see and evaluate our own lives and the lives of others in a privileged way. Maybe this euphoric and elevating feeling of the ability to step outside
the box and to look at life's patterns from this high perspective is the inspiration behind the slang term "high" itself. — Sebastian Marincolo

Everyone should be able to give a wink trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in elevating waves of shore !! — Abdul'Rauf Hashmi

A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. — Edgar Allan Poe

[T]here are days when emptiness is spacious, and non-existence elevating. — Florida Scott-Maxwell

There is no better way of elevating the novel than by making it into a construct which contains ideas. — Heinrich Mann

Remember laughing? Laughter enhances the blood flow to the body's extremities and improves cardiovascular function. Laughter releases endorphins and other natural mood elevating and pain-killing chemicals, improves the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to internal organs.
Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases! — Patch Adams

It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason - from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of secual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values.
The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

There is a flickering spark in us all which, if struck at just the right age ... can light the rest of our lives, elevating our ideals, deepening our tolerance, and sharpening our appetite for knowledge about the rest of the world. Educational and cultural exchanges ... provide a perfect opportunity for this precious spark to grow, making us more sensitive and wiser international citizens through our careers. — Ronald Reagan

Everybody got a taste of success and everybody wants to keep elevating that to the next level. — Kevin Harvick

If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone. — George Will

I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence? — James Thomson

By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking. — William Safire

I never change.
MRS. CHEVELEY: (elevating her eyebrows) Then life has taught you nothing?
LADY CHILTERN: It has taught me that a person who has once been guilty of a dishonest and dishonorable action may be guilty of it a second time, and should be shunned.
MRS. CHEVELEY: Whould that rule apply to everyone?
LADY CHILTERN: Yes, to everyone, without exception.
MRS. CHEVELEY: Then I am sorry for you, Gertrude, very sorry for you. — Oscar Wilde