Obliquity Quotes & Sayings

It may be from some moral obliquity in myself, or from some strange disease; but for me, and I should think too for every human being in whose breast a human heart is beating, to know that one single creature is in that dreadful place would make a hell of heaven itself. And they have hearts in heaven, for they love there. — James Anthony Froude

Inevitably, you react to your own work - you like it, you don't like it, you think it's interesting or boring - and it is difficult to accept that those reactions may be unreliable. In my experience, they are. I mistrust either wild enthusiasm or deep depression. I have had the best success with material that I was sort of neutral about ... — Michael Crichton

You'll learn how to design and code better, reduce time-to-market, produce always up-to-date documentation, obtain high code coverage through quality tests, and write clean code that works. Every journey has a start and this one is no exception. Our destination is a Java developer with the test-driven development (TDD) black-belt. — Viktor Farcic

How cold and foreign this city seemed, that even death could pass unnoticed. — Kristen Simmons

Admiration involves a glorious obliquity of vision. — Max Beerbohm

But, perhaps, if there was less Law, there might be more Justice, than in some other Courts; for, if the civil Law be a Law of universal Reason, judging of the Rectitude, or Obliquity of Mens Actions, every Man of common Sense is endued with a Portion of it, at least sufficient to make him distinguish Right from Wrong, or what the Civilians call, Malum in se. — Charles Johnson

What if a man save my life with a draught that was prepared to poison me? The providence of the issue does not at all discharge the obliquity of the intent. And the same reason holds good even in religion itself. It is not the incense, or the offering that is acceptable to God, but the purity and devotion of the worshipper. — Seneca The Younger

The Moon stabilizes Earth's obliquity. Well, almost. The tilt actually varies between 22 and 24.5 degrees - and the variation is enough to induce such environmental inconveniences as the occasional ice age. Without the Moon, it might be much worse. — Seth Shostak

The weight of the world is on our shoulders, its vision is through
our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what
Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict
on the world the injury of some obliquity. This is life ... — Virginia Woolf

Lady Warminster represented to a high degree that characteristic of her own generation that everything may be said, though nothing indecorous discussed openly. Layer upon layer of wrapping, box after box revealing in the Chinese manner yet another box, must conceal all doubtful secrets; only the discipline of infinite obliquity made it lawful to examine the seamy side of life. If these mysteries were observed everything might be contemplated: however unsavoury: however unspeakable. — Anthony Powell

The essential task ahead requires formulating an adequate doctrine, upholding principles that have been thoroughly studied, and, beginning from these, giving birth to an Order. This elite, differentiating itself on a plane that is defined in terms of spiritual virility, decisiveness, and impersonality, and where every naturalistic bond loses its power and value, will be the bearer of a new principle of a higher authority and sovereignty; it will be able to denounce subversion and demagogy in whatever form they appear and reverse the downward spiral of the top-level cadres and the irresistible rise to power of the masses. From this elite, as if from a seed, a political organism and an integrated nation will emerge, enjoying the same dignity as the nations created by the great European political tradition. Anything short of this amounts only to a quagmire, dilettantism, irrealism, and obliquity. — Julius Evola

In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

From stoplights to skyscrapers, turn anywhere in civilization and you will see imagination at work. It's in our inventions, advances and remedies and how a single parent masterminds each day. Imagination is boundless, surrounds us and resides in us all. — Geoffrey S. Fletcher

Moon's gravitational pull means that earth doesn't wobble too much. Scientists call it obliquity. The moon holds us fast. — Jeanette Winterson

Moral obliquity and consequently lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that lack of good sense is due to no other cause than moral obliquity. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I regret not getting brutally forthright with human beings a hell of a lot sooner than I did. Civility and obliquity are wasted on people who will not make the effort to be harsher or stricter on their own gooey egos than they are on other people. — Kenny Smith

How odd to think of one's life not as chapters in a book but as complete volumes, separate and distinct.
— Jim Fergus

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father. — Roger Von Oech