Overmastering Quotes & Sayings

To some perhaps it may appear a little strained to place this last-mentioned form of attachment on a level of importance with the others, and such persons may be inclined to deny to the homogenic [ ... ] or homosexual love that intense, that penetrating, and at times overmastering character which would entitle it to rank as a great human passion. But in truth this view, when entertained, arises from a want of acquaintance with the actual facts. — Edward Carpenter

No matter what face he wears, Satan has one overmastering ambition, one burning desire-to dethrone the Almighty and to place himself upon the highest throne of the universe. — Adrian Rogers

All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses - fix your bayonets boys - gentlemen, synchronize your watches - in ten seconds time the barrage starts, ... a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years. — Peter Ustinov

As the crowning act in the great drama of deception, Satan himself will personate Christ...Now the great deceiver will mak it appear that Christ has come...resembling the description of the Son of God givenby John in the Revelation. Revelation 1:13-15 He claims to have changed the Sabbath to Sunday, and commands all to hallow the day which he has blessed...This is the strong, almost overmastering delusion. The Great Controversy--p.624

In Satan's personation of Christ and his public stand against Christ and the law of God, we see the fulfillment of Daniel 8:25,"He will destroy many and take his stand against the Prince of princes. — Maurice Hoppe

Look carefully through all the claims pressing upon you in your complicated life, and decide once and for all what it is that is the one really important and overmastering duty in it, and should be the one dominating aim. Then remember that if you succeed in that, the others, so multifarious, are really no more than the fringe of the garment, and that you need not spend so much anxiety over them, provided that the one most important is faithfully attended to. — Anna Brackett

He began
to think, here, of local intellectuals such as the pulavar and of his friends
in the Readers' Circle, as keys to this side of the struggle. That is, he began
to argue that if one viewed such intellectuals as 'folk repositories' of local
knowledge, then it was obvious that they had a dual potential. Dual because,
on the one hand, such intellectuals could be (and mostly were) co-opted
by the hegemonic 'web' as teachers, graduate students, journalists, and so
forth, in which case they merely, 'organically,' reproduced the overmastering
'web'; yet, on the other hand, they could become (to their peril and inherent
risk) the central sources of inspiration and knowledge for the production
of a counter-hegemonic revolution. He began to imagine this duality as a
singular, existential choice open to such intellectuals, to all intellectuals, and
to himself. — Mark P. Whitaker

We shall know what things are of overmastering importance when they have overmastered us. — Dorothy L. Sayers

was too young to know if my heart misbehaved itself in any way, — Christy Brown

He was one of those idealistic beings common in Russia, who are suddenly struck by some overmastering idea which seems, as it were, to crush them at once, and sometimes for ever. They are never equal to coping with it, but put passionate faith in it, and their whole life passes afterwards, as it were, in the last agonies under the weight of the stone that has fallen upon them and half crushed them. In — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The marriage tie becomes possessed of a history and takes to itself traditions. This history and these traditions form a great fund, to which changing conditions and growing imagination constantly add. And the traditions, more especially, bear heavily upon the individual, overmastering his natural expression of the love instinct and forcing him to an artificial expression of that love instinct. He loves, not as his savage forbears loved, but as his group loves. — Jack London

whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution. — Anonymous

This, then, is the doctrine of the resurrection. We do not believe
at least I do not
that law has been rudely violated in one extraordinary and unparalleled episode. We believe that a universal law of life, overmastering death, and always superior to it, has had once a visible witness. — Charles Spurgeon

Julia used to say, 'Poor Sebastian. It's something chemical in him.' That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. 'There's something chemical between them' was used to explain the overmastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept of determinism in a new form. I do not believe there was anything chemical in my friend. — Evelyn Waugh

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. — Ambrose Bierce

I wish I could understand the window in your soul. Mine has none such, but I believe in others'. It is as though mine says to me, You alone are damned. To you the daylight, to you the reality of what appears; for you the dead of Carthage will be dead forever, the pain everywhere the overmastering reality, the skull beneath the fairest skin always visible beneath the blue-veined temples, in the laughing teeth. To you, the lone and level sands covering human endeavor, the ephemerality of laughter. ... Only for others, the reality of human life, the game worthwhile as it is being played. Only for others, any kind of hope. Only for others, the window in the closed room.--or closed galaxy, it makes no difference. — James Tiptree Jr.

The bawling of babies, always in a way
Inappropriate - why should the love and innocent
Greet existence with wails? - is proof that not all
Is well. Dreams and deliveries never quite mesh. — Eugene H. Peterson

Writing is a habit, an addiction, as powerful and overmastering an urge as putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm. Call it the impulse to make something out of nothing, call it an obsessive-compulsive disorder, call it logorrhea. Have you been in a bookstore lately? Have you seen what these authors are doing, the mountainous piles of the flakes of themselves they're leaving behind, like the neatly labeled jars of shit, piss, and toenail clippings one of John Barth's characters bequeathed to his wife, the ultimate expression of his deepest self? — T.C. Boyle

We see, surrounding the narrow raft illuminated by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated on the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty of human existence. — Bertrand Russell

Small things have a way of overmastering the great. This small press can destroy a kingdom. — Sonya Levien

We are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith at the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power. — H. H. Asquith

The successful men of today are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose. — Orison Swett Marden

If you lie to your husband - even about something so banal as how much you drink - each lie is a brick in a wall going up between you, and when he tells you he loves you, it's deflected away. — Mary Karr

I raised my cup. "To Blake Mitchell - no, never mind. To me. — Heather Demetrios