Presence Quotes - page 55
Being a big black man in America, I literally do not know how to conduct myself in a physical space. I don't know how to meet people without it seeming intimidating. I don't know if I should wear glasses, if I should try to look extra gay, if I should stand up, sit down, wave my ID, not reach for an ID. I don't know. I am literally immobilized in the presence of a lot of police power. That is a reality that could cross any form of social class, because it's racist. And it's very Caribbean of me to think my class can exclude me from racism. It's very Caribbean of me to think that if I just dress nicer, if I just wear a suit... It has nothing to do with that, it's racism...
Marlon James
Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures and from this suffering winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come from the fact that we do not understand ourselves.
Teresa of Ávila
This way, Godse (born 1910) exacted ‘punishment' for Gandhi's alleged pro-Muslim policies. These were particularly his acceptance in June 1947 of the plan to partition India into a secular state, retaining the name India and a Muslim state called Pakistan; and more immediately his fast, earlier in January 1948, on behalf of the safety of the Delhi Muslims threatened by angry Hindu refugees pouring in from Pakistan, and in support of Pakistan's demand that India pay them ₹550 million as their share from the treasury of British India. Under protest, the Indian Government had given in to the latter demand because of Gandhi's pressure, and in spite of the presence of Pakistani invasion troops on Indian territory in Kashmir. Surely this was the first time in history that a country deliberately financed its battlefield opponent, and not everyone was pleased with this display of Gandhian values.
Koenraad Elst
This I recognize as unique and outstanding among my faults-the habit...of preferring to say above all things what I know to be displeasing to the ears of my hearers. ...I keep it up wilfully, in no way ignorant of how many enemies it makes for me. ...Yet I avoid this practice in the presence of my benefactors and of my superiors. It is enough not to fawn upon these, or at least not to flatter them.
Gerolamo Cardano
The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle...yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.
William S. Burroughs
Gilbert does not seem to have known that there were any other bodies than iron or the lodestone that possessed magnetic properties; for he called particular attention to the fact that all other substances that possessed magnetism to some degree owe their power to the presence of iron in some condition or other.
William Gilbert (astronomer)
I first auditioned Kate Winslet when she was 17. I thought she was 25. Such was her self-possession, presence and concentration...later, I cast her as Ophelia in a film of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I did not ask her to audition...She listened with superhuman acuity, and expressed character with effortless depth... (now) those same qualities are radiant, having now evolved into a truly awesome acting technique. Only now, hers is the art that entirely hides the artist...It's magnificent to watch.
Kate Winslet
In English the phrase that a person has "a presence" is hard to define. There are people whose being here and now is felt, even though they do not display themselves in action and speech. They have a "presence." ... Of a person whose outwardness communicates something of his indwelling power or greatness, whose soul is radiant and conveys itself without words, we say he has presence.
Standing face to face with the world, we often sense a presence which surpasses our ability to comprehend. The world is too much with us. It is crammed with marvel. There is a glory, an aura, that lies about all beings, a spiritual setting of reality.
To the religious man it is as if things stood with their backs to him, their faces turned to God, as if the glory of things consisted in their being an object of divine care.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
...There's momentum about making our presence known. We're here. We're Latino playwrights and theatre professionals. Eventually there's going to be a tipping point and more of our stories will become part of the American canon. I write what I know and for now I focus on Latinos because going through school, I longed to read about my experience...
Milta Ortiz
Things there are in the world which have never loved Men, which have been in the world far longer than humankind, so that once when Men were newer on the earth and the woods were greater, there had been places a Man might walk where he might feel the age of the world on his shoulders. Forests grew in which the stillness was so great he could hear stirrings of a life no part of his own. There were brooks from which the magic had not gone, mountains which sang with voices, and sometimes a wind touched the back of his neck and lifted the hairs with the shiver of a presence at which a Man must never turn and stare.
But the noise of Men grew more and more insistent. Their trespasses became more bold. Death had come with them, and the knowledge of good and evil, and this was a power they had, both to be virtuous and to be blind.
C. J. Cherryh
It is no secret that fear and hatred of homosexuals permeate our society. But the contempt for lesbians is distinct. It is directly rooted in the abhorrence of the self defined woman, the self-determining woman, the woman who is not controlled by male need, imperative, or manipulation. Contempt for lesbians is most often a political repudiation of women who organize in their own behalf to achieve public presence, significant power, visible integrity.
Andrea Dworkin
I went to live in Israel in January of 1978, initially just to visit for about ten days. I ended up staying for three years, working at the world headquarters of the Baha'i religion on Mount Carmel in Haifa. It was a wonderful and interesting experience being at some very sacred places. In all my travels throughout that area, I could feel the presence of the spiritual teachers that have come to this small area. And at the same time, I sensed that every rock is soaked in the blood of conflict.
Steven M. Greer
I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers. It needs not that I should ask the clairvoyant whether "a spirit-world projects into ours." As to the specific evidence, I would not tarnish my mind by hasty reception. The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open. Yet it were sin, if indolence or coldness excluded what had a claim to enter; and I doubt whether, in the eyes of pure intelligence, an ill-grounded hasty rejection be not a greater sign of weakness than an ill-grounded and hasty faith.
Margaret Fuller
He had discovered that a cubic inch of marble consisted of about half its weight of pure lime, and as much air as would fill a vessel holding six wine gallons. ...What could be more singular than to find so subtle a substance as air existing in the form of a hard stone, and its presence accompanied by such a change in the properties of that stone? ... It is surely a dull mind that will not be animated by such a prospect.
Joseph Black
I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness-and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books, for me, are medicine.
Anne Lamott
Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence - for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realization of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero to the Self in all.
Joseph Campbell
Being the Avatar, I have come to awaken mankind, and would like the entire world to come to me. Real saints are dearest and nearest to my heart. Perfect Ones and lovers of God adorn the world, and will ever do so. The physical presence of the Perfect Masters throughout eternity is not necessarily confined to any particular or special part of the globe. My salutations to all - the past, present and future Perfect Masters, real saints - known and unknown - lovers of God, and to all other beings, in all of whom I reside, whether consciously felt by them or not.
Meher Baba
Often Powell's audiences felt that he was speaking liturgically, when he touched on the subject of England. And they were right. In elucidating the idea of sovereignty, Powell invokes "the Crown in council, the Crown in Parliament and the Crown in judgement", blessing the existing institutions with names that repeat their magic without explaining it. When, in his famous St George's Day speech, he allows himself the use of purple prose...it is in order to emphasise the mystery of England. The "real presence" in the heart of politics of that inexplicable thing called the Crown, the very thing over which Shakespeare puzzled in his history plays.
Enoch Powell
