Intimation Quotes & Sayings

For 'wellness', naturally is no cause of complaint
people relish it, they enjoy it, they are at the furthest pole from complaint. People complain of feeling ill
not well. Unless, as George Eliot does, they have some intimation of 'wrongness' or danger, either through knowledge or association, or the very excess of excess. Thus, though a patient will scarcely complain of being 'very well', they may become suspicious if they feel 'too well'. — Oliver Sacks

I don't know how to cure the source-itis except to tell you that I can discover a good many possible sources myself for Wise Blood but I am often embarrassed to find that I read the sources after I had written the book. I have been exposed to Wordsworth's "Intimation" ode but that is all I can say about it. I have one of those food-chopper brains that nothing comes out of the way it went in. The Oedipus business comes nearer home. Of course Haze Motes is not an Oedipus figure but there are the obvious resemblances. At the time I was writing the last of the book, I was living in Connecticut with the Robert Fitzgeralds. Robert Fitzgerald translated the Theban cycle with Dudley Fitts, and their translation of the Oedipus Rex had just come out and I was much taken with it. Do you know that translation? I am not an authority on such things but I think it must be the best, and it is certainly very beautiful. Anyway, all I can say is, I did a lot of thinking about Oedipus. — Flannery O'Connor

The suggested idea or group of ideas," said M. Charcot, very justly, " find themselves in their isolation sheltered against the control of that great collection of personal ideas, a long time accumulated and organised, which constitute consciousness properly so called, the Ego." ' " With certain subjects it is possible to call forth, by means of suggestion or intimation, a coherent group of associated ideas which install themsehes in the mind in tlie fashion of a parasite, remain isolated from all the rest, and may be explained outwardly by corresponding motor phenomena." " We ask permission to preserve this striking metaphor: Suggestions, with their automatic and independent development, are real parasites in thought. — Anonymous

The terror and consternation of the Presidential couple may be imagined by anyone who has ever loved a child, and suffered that dread intimation common to all parents, that Fate may not hold that life in as high a regard, and may dispose of it at will. In "Selected Civil War Letters of Edwine Willow," edited by Constance Mays. With — George Saunders

Get thee to the novel! - the novel, that word-woven submarine, piloted by intimation and intuition, that will dive you to the deeps of the heart's maelstrom. — Cynthia Ozick

Relationships weren't ocean liners with stabilizers. They were flimsy affairs. No, they were more dangerous than canoes. They were kayaks, two-seaters that overturned with every careless comment, each intimation of indifference. You spend half the time upside down, under water. It takes a lot of skill to get right-side up before the relationship drowns. — Wayne Clark

My incomparable beloved,
Seven months you have been gone, and I fear you will never return. I await your brief, infrequent letters like a boy, desperate for any small indication that you remember I exist, hoping for evidence that you tire of that foreign land where you now live. I read your missives a hundred times for the slightest intimation that you will be coming home. The part of my mind that does nothing but wait grows daily, and soon nothing will be left to attend to life's duties. One word, my love, just one; that is all I seek. One word to let me know that you will not stay away forever, and that I will at least have your presence and friendship in my life, even if I can never have your passion and your love.
Julian Hampton to Penelope, Countess of Glasbury — Madeline Hunter

A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; [that is,] those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus. — Sam Smith

Just look, Letty." Miss Blacklock looked. Her eyebrows went up. She threw a quick scrutinizing glance round the table. Then she read the advertisement out loud. "A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6:30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation. — Agatha Christie

The silence. End of all poetry, all romances. Earlier, frightened, you began to have some intimation of it: so many pages had been turned, the book was so heavy in one hand, so light in the other, thinning toward the end. Still, you consoled yourself. You were not quite at the end of the story, at that terrible flyleaf, blank like a shuttered window: there were still a few pages under your thumb, still to be sought and treasured. — Sofia Samatar

But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone - he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and as far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. — F Scott Fitzgerald

A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach. "Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug! — Charles Dickens

There is to the poetical sense a ravishing prophecy and winsome intimation in flowers that now and then, from the influence of mood of circumstance, reasserts itself like the reminiscence of childhood, or the spell of love. — Henry Theodore Tuckerman

In the nature of things, a person engaged in the flimsy business of expressing himself on paper is dependent on the large general privilege of being heard. Any intimation that this privilege may be revoked throws a writer into panic. — E.B. White

As my voice died away I became conscious of the voice of another woman two tables away. I couldn't hear what she was saying to her set-faced male companion, but the tone was the same as my own, the exact same plangent composite of need and recrimination. I stared at them. Their faces said it all: his awful detachment, her hideous yearning. And as I looked around the cafe at couple after couple, eaching confronting one another over the marble table tops, I had the beginnings of an intimation.
Perhaps all this awful mismatching, this emotional grating, these Mexican stand-offs of trust and commitment, were somehow in the air. It wasn't down to individuals: me and him, Grace and John, those two over there ... It was a contagion that was getting to all of us; a germ of insecurity that had lodged in all our breasts and was now fissioning frantically, creating a domino effect as relationship after relationship collapsed in a rubble of mistrust and acrimony. — Will Self

One great objection to the Old Testament is the cruelty said to have been commanded by God. All these cruelties ceased with death. The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the tomb. He never threatened to punish the dead; and there is not one word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse of Malachi, containing the slightest intimation that God will take his revenge in another world. It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the doctrine of eternal pain. — Robert G. Ingersoll

What happened was that, all unconscious of what this ennui meant, I wearied of the motion, wearied of the jobless seas of alcohol, wearied of the blunt, bluff, hearty, and totally meaningless friendships wearied of wandering through the forests of desperate women, wearied of the work which fed me only in the most brutally literal sense. Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be the only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home, But again, I think I knew, at the very bottom of my heart, exactly what I was doing when I took the boat for France. — James Baldwin

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That's something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine. — Terry Pratchett

A servile spirit you have nothing to do with: you are not a slave, but a child; and now, inasmuch as you are a beloved child, you are bound to obey your Father's faintest wish, the least intimation of His will. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

In the end it comes down to two rival versions of the English middle afternoon. Post-Barrett, Pink Floyd kept on in a middle-afternoonish vein, but they fell in love with the idea of portentous storm clouds in the offing somewhere over Grantchester ... Barrett's afternoonishness was far more supple and engaging. It superimposed the hippie cult of eternal solstice on the pre-teatime daydreams of one's childhood, occasioned by a slick of sunlight on a chest of drawers ... His afternoonishness is lit by an importunate adult intelligence that can't quite get back to the place it longs to be ... Barrett created the same precocious longing in adolescents.
I remember 'See Emily Play' drifting across a school corridor in 1967 ... and I remember the powerful wish to stay suspended indefinitely in that music ... I also remember the quasi-adult intimation that this wasn't possible.
[from the London Review of Books for January 2, 2003] — Jeremy Harding

She wanted to live. She was vehemently impatient - she did not clearly know for what - to do, to be, to experience. And experience was slow in coming. All the world about her seemed to be - how can one put it? - in wrappers, like a house when people leave it in the summer. The blinds were all drawn, the sunlight kept out, one could not tell what colors these gray swathings hid. She wanted to know. And there was no intimation whatever that the blinds would ever go up or the windows or doors be opened, or the chandeliers, that seemed to promise such a blaze of fire, unveiled and furnished and lit. Dim souls flitted about her, not only speaking but it would seem even thinking in undertones ... During — H.G.Wells

At the beginning of the troubles of Saint Domingo, I felt that I was destined to great things. When I received this divine intimation, I was four and fifty years of age; I could neither read nor write. — Toussaint Louverture

It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one's own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now. — James Baldwin

I trust in due time to lay the perfidy, meanness, and wickedness of [Henry] Clay naked before the American people. I have lately got an intimation of some of his secret movements, which, if I can reach with positive and responsible proof, I will wield to his political, and perhaps his actual, destruction. — Andrew Jackson

So I could say we had our first real conversation in the sea, and the feeling I had then, the conviction that I wouldn't make it back to shore, the intimation of death by drowning under a matte blue sky, a sky that looked like a lung in a tub of blue paint, persisted throughout all of our subsequent conversations. — Roberto Bolano

To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery
even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness
is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be. — Andre Breton

I saw myself in the mirror, and from my expression I had a shocking intimation of the rift between my body and my soul. Whereas my face was drained by defeat and shock, inside my head was another universe: I now understood as an elemental fact of life that while I was here, inside my body was a soul, a meaning, that all things were made of desire, touch, and love, that what I was suffering was composed of the same elements. — Orhan Pamuk

There is nothing of which men are more liberal than their good advice, be their stock of it ever so small; because it seems to carry in it an intimation of their own influence, importance or worth. — Edward Young

The intimation never wholly deserts us that there is, in the unformed activities of childhood and youth, the possibilities of a better life for the community as well as for individuals here and there. This dim sense is the ground of our abiding idealization of childhood. — John Dewey

Sin begins in thought, which is the intimation of conscience. So, if the conscience holds sin, then its thoughts shall be evil. — Mahmoud Mohammed Taha

The last god has his own most unique uniqueness and stands outside of the calculative determination expressed in the labels "mono-theism," "pan-theism," and "a-theism." There has been "monotheism," and every other sort of "theism," only since the emergence of Judeo-Christian "apologetics," whose thinking presupposes "metaphysics." With the death of this God, all theisms wither away. The multiplicity of gods is not subject to enumeration but, instead, to the inner richness of the grounds and abysses in the site of the moment for the lighting up and concealment of the intimation of the last god. — Martin Heidegger

Eventually, we all must go to sleep. This is our first intimation that the body always wins. No matter how hapywe are, no matter ow much we want our night to stretch out infinitely, sleep is inevitable. You might be able to dodge it for one giddy cycle, but the body's need will always return. — David Levithan

The idea of men's receiving an intimation of their connection with the world around them through an immediate feeling which is from the outset directed to that purpose sounds so strange and fits in so badly with the fabric of our psychology that one is justified in attempting to discover a psycho-analytic - that is, a genetic - explanation of such a feeling. — Sigmund Freud

For hundreds of years the use of the word 'man' has troubled critical scholars, careful translators, and lawyers. Difficulties occur whenever and wherever it is important for truth-seeking purposes to know what is being talked about and the context gives no intimation whether 'man' means just a human being irrespective of sex or means a masculine being and none other. — Mary Ritter Beard

One can always satisfy oneself, I suppose; it's other people one can't satisfy. One thinks one's way of life is sound and then comes an external vision to say: you are a fake, you are nothing, you're animal and must die, and no one will know you were ever here. It's an intimation of the whole absurdity of what you are and do. It's the worst kind of despair. — Malcolm Bradbury

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. — James Baldwin

The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition. (Written in 1949, 22 years before the World Trade Center was completed.) — E.B. White

The terror and the consternation of the Presidential couple may be imagined by anyone who has ever lived a child, and suffered that dread intimation common to all parents, that Fate may not hold that life in as high a regard, and may dispose of it at will.
- In "Selected Civil War Letters of Edwine Willow", edited by Constance Mays — George Saunders

Not how it is meant. Law is defined by its effect rather than its intention, and its chief affect his accusation, the intimation of less-than. — William McDavid

The first intimation I had that things were about to hot up was a pained and disapproving cough from the neighbourhood of the carpet. — P.G. Wodehouse

The first intimation I had that the Yankees were for sale was through an item to that effect in the newspapers. The idea instantly occurred to me that here was a prospect to become interested in a major-league club at home. — Jacob Ruppert

He woke to quiet voices. This had been happening more and more lately, this nodding off unexpectedly, and it left him with an unsettled intimation of rehearsal. You fall asleep for short periods and then for longer periods and then forever. — Emily St. John Mandel

Grace works ahead of us to draw us toward faith, to begin its work in us. Even the first fragile intuition of conviction of sin, the first intimation of our need of God, is the work of preparing, prevening grace, which draws us gradually toward wishing to please God. Grace is working quietly at the point of our desiring, bringing us in time to despair over our own unrighteousness, challenging our perverse dispositions, so that our distorted wills cease gradually to resist the gift of God. — Thomas C. Oden

When he held a candle across the threshold, the black swallowed the fire completely. When he tried to step across it, he felt nothing beneath his foot. Sometimes he heard rain, a bird-cry, wind soughing through tall trees; mostly he was aware only of an intimation of vastness, silence, as though he stood at the edge of a world.
He saw nothing. So he let the charcoal imagine what might lie on the other side of the door. — Patricia A. McKillip

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday - that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run
ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? — Abraham Lincoln

He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say. — Walter Benjamin

Time explodes, so again, eternity is not something everlasting. You can have it right here, now, in your experience of your earthly relationships. I've lost a lot of friends, ... that moment when I was with them has an everlasting quality about it that is now still with me. What it gave me then is still with me, and there's a kind of intimation of immortality in that. — Joseph Campbell

He would go to his uncle's office where he would answer the telephone or run errands, all with some similitude of responsibility even if not actually of necessity; at least it was an intimation of his willingness to carry some of his own weight. He had begun it when he was a child, when he could scarcely remember, out of that blind and absolute attachment to his mother's only brother which he had never tried to reason about, and he had done it ever since; — William Faulkner

In the same way, we have to inform the multitude that restoration comes at a price. Suppose we give them an intimation of the cost through a series of questions. Are you ready, we must ask them, to grant that the law of reward is inflexible and that one cannot, by cunning or through complaints, obtain more than he puts in? Are you prepared to see that comfort may be a seduction and that the fetish of material prosperity will have to be pushed aside in favor of some sterner ideal? Do you see the necessity of accepting duties before you begin to talk of freedoms? — Richard Weaver

Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. — Hermann Hesse

If the Holy Ghost judged the state of the Jewish Church to be weak and imperfect - because it rested on high priests that died one after another, although their succession was expressly ordained of God himself - shall we suppose that the Lord Christ, who came to consummate the church, and to bring it unto the most perfect estate whereof in this world it is capable, should build it on a succession of dying men, concerning which succession there is not the least intimation that it is appointed of God? And as unto the matter of fact, we know both what interruptions it hath received, and what monsters it hath produced - both sufficiently manifesting that it is not of God. — John Owen

The beast which Giovanni had awakened in me would never go to sleep again; but one day I would not be with Giovanni any more. And would I then, like all the others, find myself turning and following all kinds of boys down God knows what dark avenues, into what dark places? With this fearful intimation there opened in me hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots. — James Baldwin

without facts, rumor, innuendo, intimation, and supposition have a way of conflating into myth. — Eric Van Lustbader

What I have written is but a fleeting intimation of the outside of what one man sees and may tell about the path he walks. No one shares the secret of a life; no one enters into the heart of the mystery. — Howard Thurman

With the unreasonable petulance of mankind I rang the bell and gave a curt intimation that I was ready. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development. — Alfred North Whitehead

One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things. Run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The history of mankind is confined within a limited period, and from every quarter brings an intimation that human affairs have had a beginning. — Adam Ferguson

You see, King, we have a legend - I used to believe that it was all fairy-tale rubbish and empty smoke. It is a legend about how such things as war and death and despair were common in our country at one time. These terrible words, which we have long since stopped using in our language, can be read in collections of our old tales, and they sound awful to us and even a little ridiculous. Today I've learned that these tales are all true ... But now tell me, don't you have in your soul a sort of intimation that you're not doing the right thing? Don't you have a yearning for bright, serene gods, for sensible and cheerful leaders and mentors? Don't you ever dream in your sleep about another, more beautiful life where nobody is envious of others, where reason and order prevails, where people treat other people only with cheerfulness and considerations? — Hermann Hesse