Quotes about Obscurity

Pale wox I, and in vapours hid my face. Art thou, too, near such doom? vague

There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.

The tragedy of her death was not that it made one, now and then and very intensely, unhappy. It was that it made her unreal; and us solemn, and self-conscious. We were made to act parts that we did not feel; to fumble for words that we did not know. It obscured, it dulled.

This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it.

Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace. And so he sank into a quiet mood, under the oak tree, the hardness of whose roots, exposed above the ground seemed to him rather comfortable than otherwise.

Excellence in obscurity is better than mediocrity in the spotlight.

In truth, Jesus did not, in his own time, attract much notice.

They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.

Their arms aloft pulling at their clothes were luminous and each obscure soul was enveloped in audible shapes of light as if it had always been so. The mare at the far end of the stable snorted and shied at this luminosity in beings so endarkened and the little horse turned and hid his face in the web of his dam's flank.

Your only real safety would be in disappearing.

Put the lights out, we shall see better.

Romanists argue that such is the obscurity of the Scriptures, that not only the people, but the Church itself needs the aid of tradition in order to their being properly understood. But if the Bible, a comparatively plain book, in one probable volume, needs to be thus explained, what is to explain the hundreds of folios in which these traditions are recorded? Surely a guide to the interpretation of the latter must be far more needed than for the Scriptures.