Quotes about Obscurity

Why does Alexander the Great never tell us about the exact location of his tomb, Fermat about his Last Theorem, John Wilkes Booth about the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, Hermann Göring about the Reichstag fire? Why don't Sophocles, Democritus, and Aristarchus dictate their lost books?

There she blows!—there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!

There seemed to be no end to the things that could be hiding, waiting it out, right where you thought you could see it all.

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.

Today our world is mad in its obsession with pleasure, sex, and money. Its ear is too dull to hear the truth. Most men's eyes are blind. They do not want to see. They do not want to hear. They hurry to their doom.

It is what the unimportant do that really counts and determines the course of history. The greatest forces in the universe are never spectacular. Summer showers are more effective than hurricanes, but they get no publicity. The world would soon die but for the fidelity, loyalty and consecration of those whose names are unhonored and unsung.

I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.

I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity (in a library), most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered.

Dark with excessive bright.

When (an advocate) is not thoroughly acquainted with the real strength and weakness of his cause, he knows not where to choose the most impressive argument. When the mark is shrouded in obscurity, the only substitute for accuracy in the aim is in the multitude of the shafts.

To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.