What Seems Quotes

“What seems most significant to me about our movement [Impressionism] is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.”

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

“Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.”

— Sherwood Smith

“By choosing to have a calm response to what seems negative you bring clarity and balance to your message.”

— Bryant McGill

“[ ... ] the first lesson about the nature of memory: what you wish to forget, you may not be able to. What seems to have died, perhaps is just asleep.”

— Noam Shpancer

“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quijote, "you don't know much about adventures.”

— Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

“Thank you, God, for the things you heal, the things you redeem, the things you refuse to leave just as they have been for what seems like forever.”

— Shauna Niequist

“I am confident-and you may call me an idealist and dreamer-I am confident that sooner or later we shall fit these Personal Hours as well into the general formula. Some day these 86,400 seconds will also be on the Table of Hours! I have read and heard many incredible things about the times when people still lived in a free -meaning unorganized and savage- condition. And what seems most incredible to me, is that the state authority of that time -no matter how rudimentary it was- could have allowed people to live without something similar to our Table. Without obligatory walks, without exact regulation of mealtimes, getting up and going to bed whenever they felt like it ... Some”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

“He hugs me tighter than before - tighter than anyone has ever hugged me and it soothes me. I can't deny myself this. I wrap my arms around him again and hug him as hard as I can. We just stand there hugging each other for what seems like forever. I don't want to let go. I can hear his heart beating through his chest and it calms me.”

— Ella Dominguez

“The planet has undergone change so wrenching that the diversity of life has plummeted. Five of these ancient events were catastrophic enough that they're put in their own category: the so-called Big Five. In what seems like a fantastic coincidence, but is probably no coincidence at all, the history of these events is recovered just as people come to realize that they are causing another one.”

— Elizabeth Kolbert

“I stand four-square for reason, and object to what seems to me to be irrationality, whatever the source.
If you are on my side in this, I must warn you that the army of the night has the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and, by its very nature, is immune to reason, so that it is entirely unlikely that you and I can win out.
We will always remain a tiny and probably hopeless minority, but let us never tire of presenting our view, and of fighting the good fight for the right.”

— Isaac Asimov

“When the forces that seek to defy God whisper if in our ears-if God really loved me, I wouldn't feel like this ... If I really am beloved, then I should have everything I want ... if I really belong to God, things in my life wouldn't suck-to remember that God has named us and claimed us as God's own. When what seems to be depression or compulsive eating or narcissism or despair or discouragement or resentment or isolation takes over, try picturing it as a vulnerable and desperate force seeking to defy God's grace and mercy in your life. And then tell it to piss off and say defiantly to it, "I am baptized" or "I am God's," because nothing else gets to tell you who you are.”

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Is there anything you won't do?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I've never done anything like this."
"Well, when you've had sex, was there anything that you didn't like doing?"
For the first time in what seems to be ages, I blush.
"You can tell me, Anastasia. We have to be honest with each other or this isn't going to work."
I squirm uncomfortably again and stare at my knotted fingers.
"Tell me," he commands.
"Well ... I haven't had sex before, so I don't know." My voice is small. I peek up at him, and he's gaping at me, frozen, and pale-really pale.
"Never?" he whispers. T shake my head.
"You're a virgin?" he breathes. I nod, flushing again. He closed his eyes and looks to be counting to ten. When he opens them again, he's angry, glaring at me.
"Why the fuck didn't you tell me?" he growls”

— E.L. James

“I think nonsense raises two human urges. One: to be playful, be curious and curiouser, and 2: to make meaning out what seems to have none. Or flaunt having none. And since everything we do, being human, is up against time, nonsense is panacheful, cocks a snook at all the rules and regulations and reminds us of our freedoms up against the clock.”

— Ali Smith

“I believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I'm interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think it's the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really can't be this way.”

— Roy Lichtenstein

“I've always been fascinated by the grassroots folktale level of a culture, and as a storyteller, I have to follow what seems to be leading me on.”

— Robin McKinley

“Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and avenger of your law? Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law. Thus is a star thrown out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude. Today you are still suffering from the many being one: today your courage and your hopes are still whole. But the time will come when solitude will make you weary, when your pride will double up and your courage gnash its teeth. And you will cry, "I am alone!" The time will come when that which seems high to you will no longer be in sight, and that which seems low will be all-too-near; even what seems sublime to you will frighten you like a ghost And you will cry, "All is false!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“It doesn't seem that long ago to me that the word 'irreverent' seemed affixed to my name. 'Irreverent newcomer.' I went from irreverent to venerable in what seems to me like the blink of an eye.”

— Bob Costas

“Often, what seems like an impossible climb is just a staircase without the steps drawn in.”

— Robert Brault

“The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.”

— Haruki Murakami

“Sometimes at night I conduct interviews with myself.
What do you want?
I don't know.
What do you want?
I don't know.
What seems to be the problem?
Just leave me alone.”

— Jenny Offill

“For me, most writing consists of siphoning out useless pre-story matter, cutting and cutting and cutting, what seems to be endless rewriting, and what is entailed in all that is patience, and waiting, and false starts, and dead ends, and really, in a way, nerve.”

— Deborah Eisenberg

“In supernatural horror stories, however, magical thinking is a completely different matter. Those characters contending with what seems to be the work of magic will deny till the very last moment that anything magical is going on. They will invoke reason and evidence and eek out corroborations for the cause of their problems. But readers of these stories are rarely, if ever, on the side of these characters. They desperately want to believe that there is indeed something magical going on and they are primed to accept it whenever it occurs. Some readers especially enjoy a story with bad magic, as it assures them that magic is confined to fiction and will not leak into their real lives. This is the most perverse form of magical thinking and the one least likely to be recognized as such.”

— Thomas Ligotti

“If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier
for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

“What we were concerned about-what seems to be happening now-is volcanoes,”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

“You feel that if only you could make yourself sit down at a typewriter you could give shape to what seems merely a chain reaction of pointless disasters.”

— Jay McInerney

“I get asked a lot about getting into politics. I say, 'Take a look at politics. You tell me what seems appealing about that.'”

— George Clooney

“Jesus gave a vivid object lesson his last night with the disciples by washing their feet, like a servant. Parents know the self-giving principle by instinct as they pour their energies into their self-absorbed children. Volunteers in soup kitchens and hospices and mission projects learn this lesson by doing.* What seems like sacrifice becomes instead a kind of nourishment because dispensing grace enriches the giver as well as the receiver.”

— Philip Yancey

“With a title like this-There's a Box in the Garage You Can Beat with a Stick-is there really a whole lot left to say? With cunning and quintessential stealth, with artful restraint, with whats fathering and foxy and filled with intelligence and wit, Michael Teig goes about making what seems to be invisible and unspeakable, the most palpable and important matter in the world.”

— Dara Wier

“What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.”

— Henry Miller

“Trying to maintain a pleasant state and avoid an unpleasant state is actually the cause of sorrow. When you stop resisting, you see that what seems frightening is actually the absolute beauty of reality. When you see that everything is a momentary display of reality, then you stop resisting it. Resistance hurts, only every single time. Love is the state of nonresistance.”

— Adyashanti

“It's one of the things that makes it enjoyable to keep playing; you have to approach each set differently and make some balance between what you want to do and what seems right.”

— Ira Kaplan

“Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.”

— Al Alvarez

“It is bound to come a moment when what seems close is still very far away.”

— Paulo Coelho

“You are staggering beneath a weight which your Father would not feel. What seems to you a crushing burden, would be to him but as the small dust of the balance ... Come, then, soul! have done with fretful care, and leave all thy concerns in the hand of a gracious God.
from Morning 1-6”

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.”

— Albert Camus

“Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?”

— E. C. Bentley

“God in heaven has dominion
Over so many events.
He can frustrate what seems inevitable,
And bring to pass the thing that you least expect.”

— Euripides

“The purpose of a spiritual path or religion is to provide a precise and believable way into what seems unbelievable.”

— Geneen Roth

“It is odd to think that there is a word for something which, strictly speaking, does not exist, namely, "rest." We distinguish between living and dead matter; between moving bodies and bodies at rest. This is a primitive point of view. What seems dead, a stone or the proverbial "door-nail," say, is actually forever in motion. We have merely become accustomed to judge by outward appearances; by the deceptive impressions we get through our senses.”

— Max Born

“I do not define my job in any rigid terms but in terms of having the flexibility to what seems to me to be in the best interests of the company at any times.”

— Henry Earl Singleton

“Experience suggests that the first rule of politics is never to say never. The ingenious human capacity for maneuver and compromise may make acceptable tomorrow what seems outrageous or impossible today.”

— William V. Shannon

“People steal into one's consciousness and occupy what seems, in retrospect, to have been their place all along.”

— Paula Fox

“There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?”

— Isaac Asimov

“What seems different in yourself; that's the rare thing you possess. The one thing that gives each of us his worth, and that's just what we try to suppress. And we claim to love life.”

— Andre Gide

“What seems interesting to me is to reproduce in the figurative representation of an object the whole complex system of impressions we receive in the normal course of everyday life, the way this affects our feelings and the shape it takes in our memory; and it is to this that I have always applied myself.”

— Jean Dubuffet

“Education is identical with helping the child realize his potentialities. The opposite of education is manipulation, which is based on the absence of faith in the growth of potentialities and the connection that a child will be right only if the adults put into him what is desirable and suppress what seems to be undesirable.”

— Erich Fromm

“Time may enhance what seems simply dogged or lacking in fantasy now because we are too close to it, because it resembles too closely our own everyday fantasies, the fantastic nature of which we don't perceive. We are better able to enjoy a fantasy as a fantasy when it is not our own.”

— Susan Sontag

“All of us have the capacity to attract to ourselves what seems to be missing in our lives.”

— Wayne Dyer

“We are still a country where hard work and perseverance can earn you a better life ... Yet we are rightfully troubled that many of our people are still caught in what seems to be a pervasive, unending financial struggle ... every American deserves an equal opportunity to achieve success.”

— Marco Rubio