Quotes & Sayings About Primal

The primal duties shine aloft, like stars;
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless,
Are scattered at the feet of Man, like flowers. — William Wordsworth

It's time to stop blaming our surroundings and start taking responsibility. While no workplace is perfect, it turns out that our gravest challenges are a lot more primal and personal. Our individual practices ultimately determine what we do and how well we do it. Specifically, it's our routine (or lack thereof), our capacity to work proactively rather than reactively, and our ability to systematically optimize our work habits over time that determine our ability to make ideas happen. — Jocelyn K. Glei

Rain flung his head skyward and loosed a mighty roar of primal triumph.
Death to those who endangered the Fey!
Death to those who injured his friends, his brothers!
He was Rainier-Eras, Feyreisen, and he was winged vengeance. — C.L. Wilson

The hypocrisy of some is that we like to think of ourselves as sophisticated and evolved, but we're still also driven by primal urges like greed and power. — Michael Leunig

Nothing can be imagined, nothing can be visualized in our minds, until we have a word for it. Therefore, when I give myself to the free flow of any words that trip off my tongue without predetermination, I am tapping into the primal creative power at the heart of the cosmos. Or maybe I'm just a bullshit artist. — Dean Koontz

There's just something about dance ... It's like a primal thing in all of us. — Patrick Swayze

Well, I have a lot of appetites and try to revel in almost everything, so inspiration can even come from a well-appointed submarine sandwich, you know? Potentially in the form of The Godmother from Santa Monica's Bay Cities [Italian Deli &] Bakery. But for a primal "Wow, every sense is on fire!" moment, it would have to be live music. — Patrick Fabian

But the shrieking went on and on, primal, almost glad - this protest was righteous. I couldn't make up my mind whether the baby was male or female; the only certainties were near baldness and incandescent rage. The kid didn't like its blanket, or its rattle, or the lap it was sat on, or the world . . . the time had come to demand quality. — Helen Oyeyemi

Fear is one of those really primal emotions which you don't want to have incredibly exciting modulations and complex harmonies and all that kind of stuff. — Steven Price

I don't really understand it even now, It does have an angle which is attached to something quite primal in girls. I guess people want it to define them, like 'I'm a Twilight fan.' That's crazy to me. I think people really just like being part of a crowd. There's something just tremendously exciting about hyping yourself up to that level. — Robert Pattinson

Candid and searing, Deborah Jiang Stein's memoir is a remarkable story about identity, lost and found, and about the author's journey to reclaim - and celebrate - that most primal of relationships, the one between mother and child. I dare you to read this book without crying. — Mira Bartok

Trying to change someone only makes them cling to their existing behavior with brutish, primal force. — Brian D'Ambrosio

The oil industry is a stunning example of how science, technology, and mass production can divert an entire group of companies from their main task ... No oil company gets as excited about the customers in its own backyard as about the oil in the Sahara Desert ... But the truth is, it seems to me, that the industry begins with the needs of the customer for its products. From that primal position its definition moves steadily back stream to areas of progressively lesser importance until it finally comes to rest at the search for oil. — Theodore Levitt

Therefore, if reason grows out of the primal energy that we are, then it means that the primal energy is at least reasonable, whatever else it may be. You can tell the tree by its fruits - for "by their fruits you shall know them" - and so it is that figs do not grow on thistles, or grapes on thorns, and a stupid universe does not create people. People are a manifestation of the potentiality in the energy of the universe, and if we are intelligent, then that which we express is also intelligent. By logical extension, that in which we express it is our central self. The world is not something external; it is what is most fundamentally you. — Alan W. Watts

I remember once visiting an outdoor exhibition of sculpture in Arnhem, the Netherlands. One of the artists had placed this notice at the base of a majestic beech: "Statues are hewn by fools like me: only God could make this tree." The Taoists looked at the inside of the tree. They saw God present, not as the super-sculptor, but as the primal force from which the tree drew its being and its specific form. Becoming aware of this divine origin was for them "great knowledge," to be distinguished from the "small knowledge" of our petty, every-day existence. — John Wijngaards

I really believe hatred is not a primal emotion, in that you can't find it in nature. It's basically some kind of distortion of fear. — Etgar Keret

Well, 'They Live' was a primal scream against Reaganism of the '80s. And the '80s never went away. They're still with us. That's what makes 'They Live' look so fresh - it's a document of greed and insanity. It's about life in the United States then and now. If anything, things have gotten worse. — John Carpenter

I think that's still the most primal fear of all humans: to be eaten. — Victor Salva

The wealth of any ecosystem is its perennials. The primal herbivore-predator-disturbance-rest dance is literally the breath and pulse of the earth. Grasses recycle oxygen far more efficiently than trees. The turnover is faster. Grass reaches out and turns solar energy into carbon. Tillage hyper-aerates the soil, burning out carbon. But because a plant creates bilateral symmetry at the soil horizon, it sloughs off root mass when the top gets chopped off. — Joel Salatin

As a child I was attracted to Tarzan and everything that had to do with jungles. It seemed to me
and this is in retrospect
that there was something primal, something right about it. Tarzan represented a pure being, somehow before the fall. — Jean Liedloff

Alert. Aware. Dreams and memories slip away. Thoughts tumble. Tangled. Confused. Sounds from my mouth are primal. What I want to say, what I need to say stays locked inside. — Kristen Heitzmann

Poetry transcends the nation-state. Poetry transcends government. It brings the traditional concept of power to its knees. I have always believed poetry to be an eternal conversation in which the ancient poets remain contemporary, a conversation inviting us into other languages and cultures even as poetry transcends language and culture, returning us again and again to primal rhythms and sounds. — Sam Hamill

I try to connect to human emotion. I'm always looking for something primal, something really base that is beyond language, that people understand beyond language. — Will Smith

Live music is the most primal form of energy release you can share with other people besides having sex or taking drugs. — Kurt Cobain

While Devas,Asuras, Nagas,Yaskhas and Devatas satisfied mundane, everyday needs, they did not answer more primal issues:Why does the world exist? Do we exist? Who are we? There was a need for God who was greater than the gods. There was need for Ishwara, the supreme lord, Mahadeva, the great god who is God, and Bhagavan, the container of all things. — Devdutt Pattanaik

Love is about control and loss of control. In love, we give ourselves up to each other. We lose control or, rather, we cede control to another, trusting in a way we would never otherwise trust, letting the other person hold the deepest part of our being in their hands, with the capacity to hurt it mortally. This cession of control is a deeply terrifying thing, which is why we crave it and are drawn to it like moths to the flame, and why we have to trust it unconditionally. In love, so many hazardous uncertainties in life are resolved: the constant negotiation with other souls, the fear and distrust that lie behind almost every interaction, the petty loneliness that we learned to live with as soon as we grew apart from our mother's breast. We lose all this in the arms of another. We come home at last to a primal security, made manifest by each other's nakedness ...
And with that loss of control comes mutual power, the power to calm, the power to redeem, and the power to hurt. — Andrew Sullivan

For me, it's a multitude of things. In the modern world, there's a real genuine fear of loss of individuality and I think the undead speak to that. I also think the idea of the dead coming back to life, and this unstoppable foe that just keeps coming and coming, but rather slowly just chases you, is a real primal fear. It's like a fear of claustrophobia, heights or water. — Paul W. S. Anderson

'Six Feet Under' was about repressing our deepest, most primal impulses, and 'True Blood' is about giving full sway to them all the time. In a way they are like yin and yang. — Alan Ball

And in an apartment on the other side of town, everyone wakes up with a start when the hound in the first-floor flat, without any warning, starts howling. Louder and more heartrendingly than anything they have ever heard coming out of the primal depths of any animal. As if it is singing with the sorrow and yearning of an eternity of ten thousand fairy tales. It howls for hours, all through the night, until dawn.
And when the morning light seeps into the hospital room, Elsa wakes up in Granny's arms. But Granny is still in Miamas. — Fredrik Backman

I basically started performing for my mother, going, 'Love me!' What drives you to perform is the need for that primal connection. When I was little, my mother was funny with me, and I started to be charming and funny for her, and I learned that by being entertaining, you make a connection with another person. — Robin Williams

The romantic artist, off alone in his storm-battered castle, fuming whole worlds from his brain, reflects his culture's most persistent myth, of God creating from a primal loneliness. — Garry Wills

You are primal awareness. Life is only primal awareness. Between two thoughts or two perceptions you are. You know moments in your life when a thought completely disappears into silence, but still you are. — Jean Klein

In our culture of constant access and nonstop media, nothing feels more like a curse from God than time in the wilderness. To be obscure, to be off the beaten path, to be in the wilderness feels like abandonment. It seems more like exile than a vacation. To be so far off of everyone's radar that the world might forget about us for a while? That's almost akin to death ... [But] far from being punishment, judgment, or a curse, the wilderness is a gift. It's where we can experience the primal delight of being fully known and delighted in by God. — Jonathan Martin

You know, I love stop-motion. I've done almost all the styles of animation: I was a 2D animator. I've done cutout animation. I did a CG short a few years ago, 'Moongirl,' for young kids. Stop-motion is what I keep coming back to, because it has a primal nature. It can never be perfect. — Henry Selick

I find myself to be truly primal and passionate. Everything I do comes from a primal place. — Alicia Keys

It's a real primal thing, watching someone get hurt. It's funny and accessible. — Johnny Knoxville

Conscientious parents, aware of their educational duties, have a primal and original right to determine that the children which God has given them should be educated in the spirit of true faith. — Pope Pius XI

It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth. — Paul Klee

Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn - recently, an acquaintance used the word "confabulate" in a sentence, and I just wanted to scream. But — J.D. Vance

There is a definite difference between live shows and the recordings. The recordings are for all time, hopefully, so you do want to bring across layers of subtlety. But the live show is this primal experience that everybody's having at the same time, that the recording can at best try to imitate or duplicate. — Will Sheff

I profoundly believe that the power of food has a primal place in our homes, that binds us to the best bits of life. — Jamie Oliver

I am the way into the city of woe,
I am the way into eternal pain,
I am the way to go among the lost.
Justice caused my high architect to move,
Divine omnipotence created me,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
Before me there were no created things
But those that last forever - as do I.
Abandon all hope you who enter here. — Dante Alighieri

For six months I did what women do: I waited. This is what women are taught to be good at. It's said that a woman's life is merely preparation for the primal nine-month wait. Whatever the reason, they do it well. Sometimes they drink or bite their fingernails down to the wrist. They count stars and initials and wait: for something to happen, for something to pass, to change, to begin, to end. — Alice Hoffman

It was not exasperation.... It was anger for the relentless force of evolution that insisted on endowing man with increased powers without removing the vestigial vices that prevented him from using them. — Alfred Bester

When I watch my kids, and I see the primal level at which the sibling relationships are formed, then I completely understand what these unresolved adult sibling problems are based on. You know, 'Mom liked you better' and, 'You got your own room and I didn't.' — Annette Bening

Enjoying nonsense is one of life's primal pleasures. — Marty Rubin

The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love's primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain. — Maggie Nelson

Laughter filled the line, the sound big and warm and primal. "We are family now, Bowen Knight! — Nalini Singh

Life is a phenomenon sui generis, a primal fact in its own right, like energy. Cut flesh or wood how you like, hack at them in a baffled fury - you cannot find life itself, you can only see what it built out of the lifeless dust. — Donald C. Peattie

[...] the primal, animal sense of 'the other,' which may have evolved for the detection of threat, can take on a lofty, even transcendent function in human beings, as a biological basis for religious passion and conviction, where the 'other,' the 'presence,' becomes the person of God. — Oliver Sacks

As advanced as mankind likes to think it is, we all have that age-old, primal, undeniable dread of darkness. Of being unable to see danger coming. We don't like to think that we're afraid of the dark anymore, but if that's true, then why do we work so hard to make sure our cities are constantly lit? We cloak ourselves in so much light that we can barely see the stars at night. — Anonymous

Medusa's lips split with that challenging smile, and for a second he recognized her somehow, he knew her on some primal level, the same way he'd recognized he behind the face of Brunhilde, the helmet of Achilles, or in hat ship maneuvering in space ,and then she flickered away. The simulation darkened around him. Tom pulled out his neural wire, Medusa's dangerous smile lingering in his brain. — S.J. Kincaid

There's an energy to these autumn nights that touches something primal inside of me. Something from long ago. From my childhood in Western Iowa. I think of high school football games and the stadium lights blazing down on the players. I smell ripening apples, and the sour reek of beer from keg parties in the cornfields. I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling red in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead of me.

It's the beautiful thing about youth.

There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. — Blake Crouch

I love motor learning because it's very basic and primal. A lot of what I like to learn correlates with the opposite of what gets you laid. I can ride a unicycle and I can juggle. These are unimpressive things to know. — Demetri Martin

Nonetheless, we experience a sense of freedom when we feel that we have the ability to make choices and satisfy our primal instincts. — Ori Hofmekler

We are so clothed in rationalization and dissemblance that we can recognize but dimly the deep primal impulses that motivate us. — James Ramsey Ullman

I remember, around age ten, beholding the scene in The Shining in which the hot young woman whom Jack Nicholson is lewdly embracing in the haunted hotel bathroom ages rapidly in his arms, screeching from nubile chick to putrefying corpse within seconds. I understood that the scene was supposed to represent some kind of primal horror. This was The Shining, after all. But the image of that decaying, cackling crone, her arms outstretched in desire toward the man who is backing away, has stayed with me for three decades, as a type of friend. She's part baths-ghost, part mad-Naomi. She didn't get the memo about being beyond wanting or being wanted. Or perhaps she just means to scare the shit out of him, which she does. — Maggie Nelson

As I listened I felt a dull numbness, like the effect of chloroform, rather than the primal, anarchic agony you usually feel when you encounter someone you have loved now turned to dust, in some object like a little bowl, and you are required to believe that it is still the same person who once smiled at you. — Magda Szabo

Dear me! how long is art!
And short is our life!
I often know amid the scholar's strife
A sinking feeling in my mind and heart.
How difficult the means are to be found
By which the primal sources may be breached;
And long before the halfway point is reached,
They bury a poor devil in the ground. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

She is holding both hands over her stomach and smiling. It is a primal smile, a primordial smile, a smile of animal contentment - a smile like the smile of a dog with a ball, or a purring cat. It is a smile utterly impossible not to smile back at, and McFadden does. — Scott Gardiner

Technology has a lot to do with how the world is developing at the moment because there are very raw and pure and primal emotions that people are communicating to each other over the Internet. — Robyn

And in fact the artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss. And if instead of "heat" one could say "sex";- sex in the great, pure sense of the word, free of any sin attached to it by the Church, - then his art would be very great and infinitely important. His poetic power is great and as strong as a primal instinct; it has its own relentless rhythms in itself and explodes from him like a volcano. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I have a theory that there's almost this primal viewpoint on women in the business, that once you're beyond childbearing age, you are perceived as nonthreatening, nonsexual, noncastable. Sure, I already knew it before I got into it. I just didn't know I'd end up making my living from low-budget, independent films. — Marcia Gay Harden

Eating Primal Blueprint style for the rest of your life is much cheaper than long-term prescription drug regimens or extensive doctor visits or hospital stays for cardiac bypass surgery or cancer treatments. — Mark Sisson

Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma. — Sven Birkerts

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget. — William Osler

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic, and galactic
structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature! And you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? — Paddy Chayefsky

not hard-wired to individuate other people in numbers above two hundred, the size of the primal tribe, — Margaret Atwood

When you want something enough, it brings out primal emotions. You get into this place of 'must happen, must happen.' — Chris Pine

The written word has its limits and its challenges, for the primal sound in the whole world is that made by the human voice, and the likeness of this human voice must be rendered in dots and strokes ... Yet I never forget that the voice, too, is important ... Don't mumble or hesitate. Speak ... in a loud voice, clearly, and without fear. — Jonathan D. Spence

Nicky Egan has the finesse of Bonnie Raitt merged with the primal force of Janis Joplin. It is a rare combination. Her passion is a joy to behold - and her talent is undeniable. She belongs in any conversation about great contemporary female soul singers. If you're up for a revelatory evening, then put her high on your list. — Steve Morse

What I'm saying isna romantic. It's raw, primal, and entirely crude." He lowered his voice to a growl. "You, Madeline Elise Gracechurch have been driving me slowly mad with lust. For years. — Tessa Dare

Music is not a fucking soda. It is not a fucking insurance rate. It is not a fucking T-shirt. It is the only real religion that is worth devoting your soul to. It is the last remnant of the primal scream, the funeral dirge, and the wedding march. It is the light that keeps me out of the shadows, and it is the reason my immortal soul is not in dire straits. — Corey Taylor

She stood watching a ritual she had seen many times before, yet which now seemed odd and extremely archaic; as if everything - the hill, the ox, the Mage, the cauldron, the king, the people looking on - everything belonged to a time so far away, so obscurely ancient that it could no longer be comprehended, only felt in the pulse of blood that flowed through her veins. — Stephen R. Lawhead

Almost any dog thinks almost any human is the Great Spirit, the Primal Creator, and the Universal Force Behind the Sun and Tides. What human can resist? — Barbara Holland

The idea that boxing lends itself to cinema so well is because it's usually a morality play - good against evil, insecurity and triumph, fear strikes out, so the audience can really get drawn into the drama of it. Also, it was sensual and very primal. I think subliminaly we do two things - life is a fight, life is a struggle and we understand that from our early, early, early ancestors, and life is a race. — Sylvester Stallone

But I remember the strange dragon's eyes, the look on his face as he stared it me, the way my blood had warmed at the sight of him. I remembered the heat of his gaze, the instant awakening of something fierce and primal inside me when our eyes met.
The rogue dragon was trouble. Plain and simple.
And I was intrigued. — Julie Kagawa

Sex was this primal connection like no magick she had ever known, even separated by a millimeter of latex. She knew that some combined the two and, while she could see how this would improve the magick, it would dilute the sex. — Thomm Quackenbush

In this way all violent bonds and orders are cancelled as if the freedom of the primal world had been restored with one blow. Man, too, is made open and true by this freedom. Wine, as Plutarch says so nicely, frees the soul of subservience, fear, and insincerity; it teaches men how to be truthful and candid with one another. It reveals that which was hidden. Wine and truth have long been associated in proverbs. It is a good thing, so it is said, to search for the truth in earnest conversation while one drinks wine, and agreements arrived at over a wine glass were at one time considered to be the most sacred and inviolable agreements. — Walter F. Otto

I think I would really lay down and die. Music comes from a very primal, twisted place. When a person sings, their body, their mouth, their eyes, their words, their voice says all these unspeakable things that you really can't explain but that mean something anyway. People are completely transformed when they sing; people look like that when they sing or when they make love. But it's a weird thing - at the end of the night I feel strange, because I feel I've told everybody all my secrets. — Jeff Buckley

Our lives are pretty calm. Merging on the freeway in the closest you get to risking your life. So what's missing now is that primal emotion of being scared to death, and I think that's why people crave thrills like roller coasters or scary movies. They give you the chance to feel this very primal emotion in a very controlled environment. — Oren Peli

Religion is a cultural relic inherited from ancient civilizations that doctrinal influence persists globally in modern times. Religious people rely upon their notional belief in the primal innocence of human beings in order to support the abstract supposition of inherently benevolent God guiding human souls. — Kilroy J. Oldster

There are three primal urges in human beings: food, sex, and rewriting some else's play. — Romulus Linney

Love-based parenting elevates the importance of the relationship to the highest position. No homework assignment, no chore, and no social etiquette is ever more important than the parent-child relationship. Maintaining connectedness and attunement, thereby sustaining the balance of love of self and love of child, is the primal outcome of every interaction the parent has with the child. When this is achieved, the other less significant items will take care of themselves. The ultimate challenge in reaching this goal is that children both want and need autonomy (independence), yet they are biologically engineered to be in relationships and to belong (dependence). This clash between the two is compounded by American culture where there is a powerful emphasis on the individual rather than — Heather T. Forbes

Directing attention toward where it needs to go is a primal task of leadership. — Daniel Goleman

Being a woman in the pop world, sexuality is half poison and half liberation. What's the line? I don't have a line. I am the most sexually free woman on the planet, and I genuinely am empowered from a very honest place by my sexuality. What's more primal than sex? I mean, it's so honest. If I didn't think I had the talent to back that up, I wouldn't have done it. — Lady Gaga

The whole game is undone, this nightmare of evolution, and you are exactly where you were prior to the beginning of the whole show. With a sudden shock of the utterly obvious, you recognize your own Original Face, the face you had prior to the Big Bang, the face of utter Emptiness that smiles as all creation and sings as the entire Kosmos - and it is all undone in that primal glance, and all that is left is the smile, and the reflection of the moon on a quiet pond, late on a crystal clear night. — Ken Wilber

there was the pure, primal pain of grief, and other times there was anger, the frantic desire to claw and hit and kill, and — Liane Moriarty

There is the incense of wisdom, whispering, to speak of grace in the dark/there is the scent of primal animals, grappling with the glory of the dark. — R. Paul Sardanas

Power surged through him: unfettered power, unimaginable power. It coursed through him and gave life to his maddened cry, feeding it, making it unnecesssary even to breathe. Deeper and deeper his screm became, until it was the primal voice of the very land itself. It was raw, searing. It was the energy of making and undoing, and he had unleashed it. — Derek Donais

We've been playing games since humanity had civilization - there is something primal about our desire and our ability to play games. It's so deep-seated that it can bypass latter-day cultural norms and biases. — Jane McGonigal

My eyes flickered back and forth. Sweat beaded on my forehead and I felt the fluid suffuse my palms, a bastion of warm comfort in a moment of primal terror. — Wonderwall123

I wanted to press the bruise once more to see how much pain was still pooled below the surface. I don't mean I wanted it in the sense of desire. Rather, I intended to do it through the force of primal habit. — Charlotte Shane

If a guy is skilled at anything, that's attractive. There's something very primal about that and, sure, it can be as simple as figuring out the tip quickly. It's really cool when a guy tips 20 percent quickly and effortlessly so that when the check comes, he opens it and signs his name and done. — Danica McKellar

It is time for us to take off our masks, to step out from behind our personas - whatever they might be: educators, activists, biologists, geologists, writers, farmers, ranchers, and bureaucrats - and admit we are lovers, engaged in an erotics of place. Loving the land. Honoring its mysteries. Acknowledging, embracing the spirit of place - there is nothing more legitimate and there is nothing more true. That is why we are here. That is why we do what we do. There is nothing intellectual about it. We love the land. It is a primal affair. — Terry Tempest Williams

Once you've been with each other in a primal, shagging state, it's hard to talk about the weather. — Irvine Welsh

In the beginning there were two primal spirits,Twins spontaneously active,These are the Good and the Evil, in thought, and in word, and in deed. — Zoroaster

These are maybe the most exciting stars, those just above where sky meets land and ocean, because we so seldom see them, blocked as they usually are by atmosphere ... and, as I grow more and more accustomed to the dark, I realize that what I thought were still clouds straight overhead aren't clearing and aren't going to clear, because these are clouds of stars, the Milky Way come to join me. There's the primal recognition, my soul saying, yes, I remember. — Paul Bogard

The thought I may never see her again streaks through me. The time's all wrong. We only have twenty minutes before we head out. But right now, I don't give a damn. I grab her and push her against the door. No time to do anything except in the most primal of ways. I kiss her hard... — Magda Alexander

I think so much of the horror film is about our primal instincts, and our primal instincts are not just towards violence. It's also towards sex. I feel like horror movies, as much as they're about violence, they're also about sex. It's about our instincts, so in that regard, it's crucial that you honor both of those things. — Drew Goddard