Undiminished Quotes & Sayings

Thy gifts to us mortals fulfil all our needs and yet run back to thee undiminished.
The river has its everyday work to do and hastens through fields and hamlets; yet its incessant stream winds towards the washing of thy feet.
The flower sweetens the air with its perfume; yet its last service is to offer itself to thee.
Thy worship does not impoverish the world.
From the words of the poet men take what meanings please them; yet their last meaning points to thee. — Rabindranath Tagore

Do not let the Christians around you wonder when souls are saved, but urge them to believe in the undiminished power of the glad tidings, and teach them to marvel if no saving result follows the delivery of the testimony of Jesus. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Grace becomes not only the means by which God once justified us, it is also the means by which we are continually encouraged and enabled to serve him with undiminished delight. — Bryan Chapell

The real challenge is not simply to survive. Hell, anyone can do that. It's to survive as yourself, undiminished. — Elia Kazan

My abiding faith in the American people is undiminished. That's still what drives me every single day. — Barack Obama

There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in undiminished vigor where all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay. — Saki

I want to make hand-held music, undiminished by the need to make everybody in the world listen at once. The goal is to ride into the sunset, stereo blasting, and all of what's got you worried will disappear in the rear view mirror! — Dave Sitek

My energy is undiminished. Someone said to me the other day, 'Are you retired?' and I said, 'Well, I'm just trying to prove that I'm not.' There's so many things to do. — Kiri Te Kanawa

She understood the specific kind of appreciation that comes to a person witnessing a thing of beauty alone, how the spectacle seems to sit whole inside the soul, undiminished by conversation, by any attempt at translation or persuasion. — Elizabeth Berg

Priestly celibacy has been guarded by the Church for centuries as a brilliant jewel, and retains its value undiminished even in our time when the outlook of men and the state of the world have undergone such profound changes. — Pope Paul VI

Jumping from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm is the big secret to success. — Savas Dimopoulos

Our three major acquisitions of recent years have all worked out exceptionally well - from both the financial and human standpoints. In all three cases, the founders were major sellers and received significant proceeds in cash - and, in all three cases, the same individuals, Jack Ringwalt, Gene Abegg and Vic Raab, have continued to run the businesses with undiminished energy and imagination which have resulted in further improvement of the fine records previously established. — Warren Buffett

It is an excellent sign, that after the cares and labors of the day, you can return to your pious exercises and meditations with undiminished attention. — Hannah More

If mankind was put on earth to create works of art, then other people were put on earth to comment on those works, to say what they think of them. Not to judge objectively or critically assess these works but to articulate their feelings about them with as much precision as possible, without seeking to disguise the vagaries of their nature, their lapses of taste and the contingency of their own experiences, even if those feelings are of confusion, uncertainty or-in this case-undiminished wonder. — Geoff Dyer

How has The Grand Illusion held up over the years? It is not enough to say that it has retained its power. Not only has the stature of the film remained undiminished by the passage of time (except in a few minor details), but the innovation, the audacity, and, for want of a better word, the modernity of the direction have acquired an even greater impact. — Andre Bazin

All I want is to cultivate curiosity. Yes, my old friend remains undiminished even now: the simple yearning to know. If these students cannot tell a xylem from a phloem, it will not unduly handicap their college hopes or impede their careers. But their lives will depend entirely on whether they possess wonder, an eye for beauty. For many people, the unknown is something to fear. Instead I want to give my students the humility to believe that anything they do not understand therefore possesses an elegant magic. — Stephen Kiernan

THERE is scarcely any inquiry more curious, or, from its importance, more worthy of attention, than that which traces the causes which practically check the progress of wealth in different countries, and stop it, or make it proceed very slowly, while the power of production remains comparatively undiminished, or at least would furnish the means of a great and abundant increase of produce and population. — Thomas Malthus

Ina regular and constant employment the greatest result will always be gained by such a rate as allows a workman each day,or each week at the most, to recover all fatigue and recommence with an undiminished store of energy. — William Stanley Jevons

This was my first indication of the quality I feel is most characteristic of Zora's work: racial health; a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature. — Alice Walker

What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question - How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulcher, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt, notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered with undiminished perplexity ... — George MacDonald

But the memory of war weighs undiminished upon the people's minds. That is because deeper than material wounds, moral wounds are smarting, inflicted by the so- called peace treaties. — Hjalmar Schacht

Only the tango has continued to enjoy undiminished favor for more than twenty years in spite of polishing and refinement. To be sure, it is no pure Negro dance and owes its best qualities to the unusual dance talents of the Spaniards. — Curt Sachs

The fame which is based on wealth or beauty is a frail and fleeting thing; but virtue shines for ages with undiminished lustre. — Sallust

Even when our neurosis feels far more basic than our wisdom, even when we're feeling most confused and hopeless, bodhichitta - like the open sky - is always here, undiminished by the clouds that temporarily cover it. — Pema Chodron

Possessed, as are all the fair daughters of Eve, of an hereditary propensity, transmitted to them undiminished through succeeding generations, to be 'soonmoved withtheslightesttouch of blame'; very little precept and practice will confirm them in the habit, and instruct them all the maxims, of self-justification. — Maria Edgeworth

It is unlikely that many of us will be famous, or even remembered. But not less important than the brilliant few that lead a nation or a literature to fresh achievements, are the unknown many whose patient efforts keep the world from running backward; who guard and maintain the ancient values, even if they do not conquer new; whose inconspicuous triumph it is to pass on what they inherited from their fathers, unimpaired and undiminished, to their sons. Enough, for almost all of us, if we can hand on the torch, and not let it down; content to win the affection, if it may be, of a few who know us and to be forgotten when they in their turn have vanished. The destiny of mankind is not governed wholly by its stars. — F.L. Lucas

Her hair was hidden under a white headdress, like some kind of wimple; she wore a long white tunic and trousers, and her skin had the pale golden hue associated in our world with Orientals. The lines of her cheekbone and jaw reminded him of pictures he had seen of the head of Nefertiti, thought her neck was longer, slightly too long for an ordinary human, and as she turned toward him he realized the planes of her face were subtly different, though it would have been hard to explain in what way. A fraction of an inch here, a fraction of an inch there, and the whole visage was somehow distorted, though its beauty remained undiminished. — Amanda Hemingway

There was nothing to tempt me from the choice of desserts, so I opted instead for a coffee, which was bitter and lukewarm. Naturally, I had been about to pour it all over myself but, just in time, had read the warning printed on the paper cup, alerting me to the fact that hot liquids can cause injury. A lucky escape, Eleanor! I said to myself, laughing quietly. I began to suspect that Mr. McDonald was a very foolish man indeed, although, judging from the undiminished queue, a wealthy one. — Gail Honeyman

You spend hours wrestling with yourself, trying to keep your vision intact, your intensity undiminished. Sometimes I have to stick my head under the tap to get my wits back. And for what? You know what publishing is like these days. Paper costs going up all the time. Nothing gets printed unless it can be made into a movie. Everything is media. Crooked politicians sell their unwritten memoirs for thousands. I've got a great idea for a novel. It's about a giant shark who's possessed by a demon while swimming in the Bermuda Triangle. And the demon talks in CB lingo, see? There'll be recipes in the back. — David Sedaris

Whether one believes that the faith he spawned is the world's only true religion or a preposterous fable, Joseph emerges from the fog of time as one of the most remarkable figures ever to have breathed American air. "Whatever his lapses," Harold Bloom argues in The American Religion, "Smith was an authentic religious genius, unique in our national history ... In proportion to his importance and his complexity, he remains the least-studied personage, of an undiminished vitality, in our entire national sage. — Jon Krakauer

It is our task in our time and in our generation, to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours. — John F. Kennedy

I sit down on the bed, cradling her little head against my shoulder, inhaling her sweet baby scent. Someday she'll get older, and the world will start having its way with her. She'll throw temper tantrums, she'll need speech therapy, she'll grow breasts and have pimples, she'll fight with her parents, she'll worry about her weight, she'll put out, she'll have her heart broken, she'll be happy, she'll be lonely, she'll be complicated, she'll be confused, she'll be depressed, she'll fall in love and get married, and she'll have a baby of her own. But right now she is pure and undiminished and beautiful. — Jonathan Tropper

One step, two ... three ... Soon she was in front of Aeron, smiling at her success.
"What was that?" he asked.
"Walking."
"Took you so long, I'm officially fifty years older."
She raised her chin, pride undiminished. "Well, I didn't fall. — Gena Showalter

After years spent trying to deal with the effects of COINTELPRO, my rage at the FBI's almost unimaginable evil remains undiminished because I believe that it succeeded in many of its horrifying goals, given the deaths of Martin King, Malcolm X, and other sixties leaders. Since the FBI uses taxpayer dollars to fund its extreme and ridiculous investigations of anyone who expresses dissenting opinions, even resorting to crime - including theft, encouragement to murder, subornation of perjury, and manipulation of the judicial process - to achieve its ends, I have always advocated its disbanding. — William Kunstler

Mozart's mental grip never loosens; he never abandons himself to any one sense; even at his most ecstatic moments his mind is vigorous, alert, and on the wing. He dives unerringly on to his finest ideas like a bird of prey, and once an idea is seized he soars off again with an undiminished power. — Walter J. Turner

Responding to Wright's critique, Hurston claimed that she had wanted at long last to write a black novel, and "not a treatise on sociology." It is this urge that resonates in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved, and in Walker's depiction of Hurston as our prime symbol of "racial health - a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature." In a tradition in which male authors have ardently denied black literary paternity, this is a major development, one that heralds the refinement of our notion of tradition: Zora and her daughters are a tradition-within-the-tradition, a black woman's voice. — Zora Neale Hurston

It has always seemed to me a disgrace that the embarrassments of early life should continue to smart throughout adulthood with undiminished intensity. Is it not enough that our youthful blunders made us cringe at the time, when we were at our tenderest, but must stay with us beyond cure, burn marks ready to flare up painfully at the merest touch? No: an indiscretion from earliest adolescence will still bring a blush to the cheek of the nonagenarian on his deathbed. — John Banville

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. — Thomas Jefferson

Success is often nothing more than moving from one failure to another with undiminished enthusiasm. — Winston Churchill

The California supreme court, following the English common-law, decided that the owner of land bordering a watercourse was entitled only to the usufruct of the water; that if he used it he must return it to its original course unimpaired in quality and undiminished in volume. — Jerome Hart

As things turned out her choice had been happy, for seldom had two people loved more than they did; they loved with an ardour undiminished by time; as they ripened, so their love ripened with them. — Radclyffe Hall

I still don't feel I know Hitchcock at all. I find that the more one looks, the more elusive he becomes. But my admiration for Hitchcock the filmmaker remains undiminished. He is a giant of the cinema and the darkness in him informs his cinematic language. You can't separate one from the other. — Toby Jones

We live on a minute island of known things. Our undiminished wonder at the mystery which surrounds us is what makes us human. In science fiction we can approach that mystery, not in small, everyday symbols, but in bigger ones of space and time. — Damon Knight

Nothing endures for so long as fear. Everywhere in nature one sees evidence of innate releasing mechanisms literally millions of years old, which have lain dormant through thousands of generations but retained their power undiminished. The field rat's inherited image of the hawk's silhouette is the classic example - even a paper silhouette drawn across a cage sends it rushing frantically for cover. And how else can you explain the universal but completely groundless loathing of the spider, only one species of which has ever been known to sting? Or hatred of snakes and reptiles? Simply because we all carry within us a submerged memory of the time when the giant spiders were lethal, and when the reptiles were the planet's dominant life form. — J.G. Ballard

Rachael could find no solace in other people's tales of woe. Pain was uniquely one's own, and undiminished by a democracy of suffering. — Rhidian Brook

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke ...
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere. — Philip Larkin

Metaphysicians have been learning their lessons for the last four thousand years, and it is high time that they should now begin to teach us something. Can any of the tribe inform us why all the operations of the mind are carried on with undiminished strength and activity in dreams, except the judgment, which alone is suspended and dormant? — Charles Caleb Colton

The world is not as it was when it came from its Maker's hands. It has been modified by many great revolutions, brought about by an inner mechanism of which we very imperfectly comprehend the movements; but of which we gain a glimpse by studying their effects: and their many causes still acting on the surface of our globe with undiminished power, which are changing, and will continue to change it, as long as it shall last. — Adam Sedgwick

Perhaps there is a philosophical as well as a clinical lesson here: that in Korsakov's, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation. — Oliver Sacks

You know I am given to antiquarian and genealogical pursuits. An old family letter is a delight to my eyes. I can prowl in old trunks of letters by the day with undiminished zest. — Rutherford B. Hayes