Descending Quotes - page 2

Obviously this is the world descending into worse and worse standards of targeting civilians both in state violence in Iraq, Gaza and so on and the terrorist retaliation. (Clare Short)
As to her worshippers she came descending from her glowing skies So Aphrodite I have seen with shining eyes look through your eyes: One gleam of the ancestral face which lighted up the dawn for me: One fiery visitation of the love the gods desire in thee!
George William Russell
Christianity is no mere scheme of doctrine or of ethical practice, but is instead a kind of miracle, a power out of nature and above, descending into it; a historically supernatural movement on the world, that is visibly entered into it, and organized to be an institution in the person of Jesus Christ.
Horace Bushnell
Do they believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to inculcate and augment patriotism? Or that it is to diminish sorrow in the home? Or that it has some other end, cultural, economic, or military? ... it was their verdict by a solemn referendum that the principal objective in teaching English was to make good spellers, and that after that came the breeding of good capitalizers. ... I have maintained for years, sometimes perhaps with undue heat: that pedagogy in the United States is fast descending to the estate of a childish necromancy, and that the worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English. It is positively dreadful to think that the young of the American species are exposed day in and day out to the contamination of such dark minds. What can be expected of education that is carried on in the very sewers of the intellect? How can morons teach anything that is worth knowing?
H. L. Mencken
Such is my outlook. I look forward to a time when man shall progress upon something worthier and higher than his stomach, when there will be a finer incentive to impel men to action than the incentive of to-day, which is the incentive of the stomach. I retain my belief in the nobility and excellence of the human. I believe that spiritual sweetness and unselfishness will conquer the gross gluttony of to-day. And last of all, my faith is in the working-class. As some Frenchman has said, "The stairway of time is ever echoing with the wooden shoe going up, the polished boot descending."
Jack London
the idea of movement.... just transferred from the Nude [ Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 - Duchamp painted this in 1912] into a bicycle wheel [ Bicycle wheel, his early ready-made from 1916-17].
Marcel Duchamp
Around us fear, descending Darkness of fear above.
James Joyce
Flying waters descending straight three thousand feet, Till I think the Milky Way has tumbled from the ninth height of Heaven.
Li Bai
Once embarked on a course of sensationalism, the composer is forced into a descending spiral spin from which only the most experienced pilot can flatten out in time.
Constant Lambert
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. (Martin Luther King Jr.)
On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.
Aldo Leopold
Suso has even left a diagrammatic picture of the relations subsisting between Godhead, triune God and creatures. In this very curious and interesting drawing a chain of manifestation connects the mysterious symbol of the Divine Ground with the three Persons of the Trinity, and the Trinity in turn is connected in a descending scale with angels and human beings. These last, as the drawing vividly shows, may make one of two choices. They can either live the life of the outer man, the life of the separative selfhood; in which case they are lost (for, in the words of the Theologia Germanica, "nothing burns in hell but the self”). Or else they can identify themselves with the inner man, in which case it becomes possible for them, as Suso shows, to ascend again, through unitive knowledge, to the Trinity and even, beyond the Trinity, to the ultimate Unity of the Divine Ground.
Aldous Huxley
Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof. Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him. He was seeing-them.
Philip K. Dick
I have always found the baptism of Jesus, with a dove descending and voice from Heaven, one of the great moments in the Jesus story. This is where Jesus hears the deep call from God.
Jay Parini
Again the pressure pushes me in the chair, shuts my eyes. I notice the dark red tongues of the flame outside the windows. I'm trying to memorize, fix all the feelings, the peculiarities of this descending, to tell those, who will be conquering space after me.
Valentina Tereshkova
The core of the movie business remains intact and it's not descending in scope. Studios want movies that are bigger than ever.
Joel Silver
Most shows find themselves descending into sentimentality or earnestness at some point but, with 'Community,' the joke is always on.
Miranda Raison
I want to ski down Mount Cho Oyu in the Himalayas when I am 85, descending from a height of 8,201 meters.
Yuichiro Miura
Owing to the difficulty of obtaining horses, Mr. Henry returns from this place. In descending the Mississippi I will request him to pay his respects to you.
Zebulon Pike
After clearing 9 metres of the descending passage, in about the middle of the afternoon, we came upon a second sealed doorway, which was almost the exact replica of the first. (Howard Carter)
Perhaps heaven may not be so far away as we fancy; and if our eyes were not holden, we should see angels ascending and descending, and blessed spirits thronging all about us.
Arthur Kenney
Spirit, that ruleth man's life to its ending, Chance, Fortune, Fate, answer my summoning now; The storm o'er the face of the night is descending,- Fair moon, the dark clouds hide thy silvery brow. Let these bring thy answer, and tell me if sadness For ever man's penance and portion must be; Doth the morning come forth from a birthplace of gladness? Is there peace, is there rest, in thine empire or thee?
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.
Ambrose Bierce
REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.
Ambrose Bierce