Nous Quotes & Sayings

Let me whisper my belief, entre nous, that of those eminent philosophers who cry out against parsons the loudest, there are not many who have got their knowledge of the church by going thither often. — William Makepeace Thackeray

I think the semantics of mini-series for a network is that it has an end. — Cary Fukunaga

The mirror follows us, but it's not a friend. (Le miroir nous suit, - Mais n'est un ami.) — Charles De Leusse

Why does anyone do anything? Belief. A belief that they are doing right and just in their actions. — Libba Bray

Apre' s le rare bonheur de trouver une compagne qui nous soit bien assortie, l'e tat le moins malheureux de la vie est sans doute de vivre seul. After the rare happiness of finding a companion with whom we are well matched, the least unpleasant state of life is without doubt to live alone. — Jacques-Henri Bernardin De Saint-Pierre

How does the soul enter the body from the aloofness of the intellectual world? The answer is, through appetite. But appetite, though sometimes ignoble, may be comparatively noble. At best, the soul "has the desire of elaborating order on the model of what it has seen in the IntellectualPrinciple (nous)." That is to say, soul contemplates the inward realm of essence, and wishes to produce something, as like it as possible, — Bertrand Russell

It is always easy to mock 'distress,' but we are its contemporaries; we are at the endpoint of what Nous, ratio, & Logos, still today the framework for what we are, cannot have failed to show: that murder is the first thing to count on, and elimination the surest means of identification. Today, everywhere, against this black but 'enlightened' background, remaining reality is disappearing in the mire of a 'globalized' world. Nothing, not even the most obvious phenomena, not even the purest, most wrenching love, can escape this era's shadow: a cancer of the subject, whether in the ego or in the masses... — Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

All you need is patience and a bit of nous. — M.L. Stedman

The Simonian system can be extracted from the writings of Hippolytus. The cosmos begins with the one root, which is unfathomable Silence, pre-existent, limitless power, existing in singleness. It bestirs itself and assumes a determinate aspect by turning into Thinking (Nous, i.e. Mind), from which comes forth the Thought (Epinoia). As soon as thought is born out of the thinking silence, suddenly one has become two. — Edward F Edinger

It was nice to kill time. But the time buries us before... (On a beau tuer le temps, - Il nous enterre avant) — Charles De Leusse

Old books, old wine, old Nankin blue;-
All things, in short, to which belong
The charm, the grace that Time
makes strong,
All these I prize, but (entre nous)
Old friends are best! — Henry Austin Dobson

+
He wasn't much for erasing anyway. Sometimes your mistakes showed you the really interesting connections between your brain, your hand, and your heart, the ones you might otherwise never know were there. They were important even if you had no idea what they meant.
Like now, for instance. Coming back here might be the biggest mistake he'd ever made. But it might also be the most important thing he'd ever done. — Poppy Z. Brite

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears. — George Eliot

We participate, without feeling it's significance, to a battle of the free life against the profitable agony.
This battle is not lead the way military do. It never expects neither victory nor defeat, it does not rely on tactics, it mobilizes nor brute force nor the ruse. It is not based on any project, nor any action plan.
It is a battle on between a decay of all things, a weariness of the people that convinced them to die, and the permanent revival of a life that will never give up, permanently claims rights, and progresses through its quiet determination to ignore the obstacles. — Raoul Vaneigem

Flaubert's famous sentence, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary, she is me"), in reality means, " Madame Bovary, c'est nous" ("Madame Bovary, she is us"), in our modern incapacity to live a "good-enough" life. — Sophie Barthes

We have a thousand possible, but only one is the target. (Nous avons mille possibles, - Mais un seul est la cible) — Charles De Leusse

As long as the sole ruler and disposer of the universe, the nous, remained excluded from artistic activity, things were mixed together in a primeval chaos: this was what Euripides must have thought; and so, as the first "sober" one among them, he had to condemn the "drunken" poets. Sophocles said of Aeschylus that he did what was right, though he did it unconsciously. This was surely not how Euripides saw it. He might have said that Aeschylus, because he created unconsciously, did what was wrong. The divine Plato, too, almost always speaks only ironically of the creative faculty of the poet, insofar as it is not conscious insight, and places it on a par with the gift of the soothsayer and dream-interpreter: the poet is incapable of composing until he has become unconscious and bereft of understanding. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Some comedians you work with, they only turn on when the camera turn on, and they're like sad-faced clowns when the camera's off. And then, they come alive when the camera come on. And you be like, "Oh, damn. You're not a depressed ball of depression, but you are actually funny." — Ice Cube

In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew? — Alexander Pope

Chacun de nous a un jour, plus ou moins triste, plus ou moins lointain, o u' il doit enfin accepter d'e tre un homme. There will come a day for each of us, more or less sad, more or less distant, whenwe must accept the condition of being human. — Jean Anouilh

I can show bands how to produce themselves. In the same way, many bands think you can't make it without some fat cat in London or New York to manage you. That's just crap. All you need is someone a bit older than you with a bit of business nous whom you trust. — Johnny Marr

He did not know the truth of me, yet he had perceived something true about me that no one else had ever noticed. And in spite of that - or perhaps because of it - he believed me good, believed me worth taking seriously, and his belief, for one vertigi-nous moment, made me want to be better than I was. — Rachel Hartman

O tyrant love, when held by you,
We may to prudence bid adieu.
[Fr., Amour! Amour! quand tu nous tiens
On peut bien dire, Adieu, prudence.] — Jean De La Fontaine

Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d'articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd'huy?
How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us? — Michel De Montaigne

Physiognomy is not a guide that has been given us by which to judge of the character of men: it may only serve us for conjecture.
[Fr., La physionomie n'est pas une regle qui nous soit donnee pour juger des hommes; elle nous peut servir de conjecture.] — Jean De La Bruyere

Change doesn't happen overnight-it's molded by people who don't give up — Mary E. Pearson

[On England's elimination from the 2002 World Cup after losing 2-1 to Brazil] Never was Steven Gerrard more noticeably missed, for his ability to pass, rather than kick the ball over 40 yards and for his steely mentality. Not for the first time, Eriksson's substitutions were baffling. The situation cried for Joe Cole, the one England player with a trick to beat a man, but it was the convalescent Kieron Dyer who was sent on, in place of Sinclair. Owen, never fully fit, was withdrawn after 80 minutes, at which stage Eriksson sent on Darius Vassell and Teddy Sheringham in a move which smacked of desperation, rather than tactical nous. From Sven-Goran Eriksson: The Final Reckoning — Joe Lovejoy

The siren that is this city speaks to us insistently even after we've moved away. She belongs to us, truly, and to each in a different way. Paris nous appartient. — Veronique Vienne

We must not stint
Our necessary actions in the fear
To cope malicious censurers, which ever,
As rav'nous fishes, do a vessel follow
That is new-trimmed, but benefit no further
Than vainly longing. — William Shakespeare