quotes about Absence
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Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence.
-- Alberto Manguel -
As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delight of presence best known by the torments of absence.
-- Alcibiades -
Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of fear accounts for this phenomenon. Indeed, the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child.
-- Alexander Sutherland NeillSource : Alexander Sutherland Neill (1969). “Summerhill: a radical appoach to education”
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The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
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Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief
-- Alison BechdelSource : Alison Bechdel (2007). “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic”, p.223, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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We should not seek to confirm God's will by the absence of adversity.
-- Alistair Begg -
And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.
-- Ally Condie -
Peace is not just the absence of violence,peace is when the flowers bloom.
-- Amrita PritamSource : Petra Karin Kelly, Glenn D. Paige (1992). “Nonviolence Speaks to Power”, Matsunaga Inst for Peace
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In the absence of observers, our universe is dead
-- Andrei Linde -
Darkness is only light's absence.
-- Andrew ClementsSource : Andrew Clements (2008). “Things That Are”, p.32, Penguin
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But courage wasn't an absence of fear; it was fighting despite the knot in your stomach.
-- Ann Aguirre -
Fond as we are of our loved ones, there comes at times during their absence an unexplained peace.
-- Anna Howard Shaw -
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"What is love?"; "The total absence of fear," said the Master; "What is it we fear?"; "Love," said the Master.
-- Anthony de Mello -
It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.
-- Antonin Artaud -
The greatest gift for an individual or a nation... was abhaya, fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but absence of fear from the mind.
-- Aung San Suu Kyi -
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But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn't freedom. It's not control that's lacking when one feels 'free', but the objectionable control of force.
-- B. F. Skinner -
Money does not bring happiness' - only the wherewithal, perhaps, to endure its absence.
-- Barbara Ehrenreich -
Persecution always acts as a jell for members of cults; it proves to them, in the absence of history, liturgy, tradition, and doctrine, that they are God's chosen.
-- Barbara Grizzuti HarrisonSource : Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1992). “The Astonishing World: Essays”, Houghton Mifflin
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Being brave isn't the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear but finding a way through it.
-- Bear Grylls -
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I believe absence is a great element of charm.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
The existence of tricks does not imply the absence of magic.
-- Bernard CornwellSource : Bernard Cornwell (1999). “Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur”, p.84, Macmillan
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Courage isn't the absence of fear, it's just deciding that fear isn't calling the shots anymore
-- Bob Goff -
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If Bill Finger created Batman, where is Bill Finger's byline on my strip? It is conspicuous by its absence.
-- Bob Kane -
I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
-- Brendan BehanSource : The Hostage act 1 (1958)
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The Now is indivisible. Completeness, the now, is an absence of the conscious mind to strive to divide that which is indivisible. For once the completeness of things is taken apart it is no longer complete.
-- Bruce Lee -
In my experience, God rarely makes our fear disappear. Instead, He asks us to be strong and take courage. What is courage? As Ordinary discovered, courage is not the absence of fear; rather, it's choosing to act in spite of the fear. You could say that without fear, you can't have genuine courage.
-- Bruce Wilkinson -
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Modernism may be seen as an attempt to reconstruct the world in the absence of God.
-- Bryan Appleyard -
Absence is the enemy of love and the friend of friendship.
-- C.J. Langenhoven -
For in hope's absence, a miracle arrived
-- Cameron DokeySource : Cameron Dokey (2009). “Beauty Sleep”, p.15, Simon and Schuster
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The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
-- Carl Sagan -
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Love can isolate us from everything around us. But in its absence, we can be filled with the fear that something comparable exists.
-- Carlos FuentesSource : Carlos Fuentes (2012). “Happy Families”, p.73, A&C Black
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I hoped my absence made them happy or at least made them forget that they weren't happy and never will be.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
Atheism, the absence of belief in gods, is a comparatively late phenomenon in history.
-- Chapman Cohen -
The several difficulties here discussed, namely our not finding in the successive formations infinitely numerous transitional links between the many species which now exist or have existed; the sudden manner in which whole groups of species appear in our European formations; the almost entire absence, as at present known, of fossiliferous formations beneath the Silurian strata, are all undoubtedly of the gravest nature.
-- Charles Darwin -
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Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.
-- Charles Lamb -
The best proof of man's dissatisfaction with the home is found in his universal absence from it.
-- Charlotte Perkins Gilman -
My life will be sour grapes and ashes without you.
-- Daisy AshfordSource : 'The Young Visiters' (1919) ch. 8
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Peace isn't the mere absence of violence; peace must come from inner peace. And inner peace comes from taking others’ interests into account.
-- Dalai Lama -
Peace is not the absence of conflict it is authority over chaos.
-- Danny Silk -
Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend.
-- Dennis Covington -
In the absence of that, I am happy to play solo, but I don't think there is any comparison.
-- Derek Bailey -
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It is only love that has already fallen sick that is killed by absence.
-- Diane de Poitiers -
What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
-- Donald E. Williams, Jr. -
. . . personal soundness is not an absence of problems but a way of reacting to them.
-- Donald M. MacKinnon -
The absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence
-- Donald Rumsfeld -
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When a person disappears, everything becomes impregnated with that person's presence. Every single object as well as every space becomes a reminder of absence, as if absence were more important than presence.
-- Doris Salcedo -
How can you know what is missing if you’ve never met it? You must know of something’s existence before you can notice its absence.
-- E. L. KonigsburgSource : E.L. Konigsburg (2010). “The View from Saturday”, p.137, Simon and Schuster
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Success doesn't mean the absence of failures; it means the attainment of ultimate objectives.
-- Ed Bliss -
Like as the culver on the bared bough Sits mourning for the absence of her mate
-- Edmund Spenser -
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The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay -
Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!
-- Edsger DijkstraSource : "Notes On Structured Programming" by Edsger Dijkstra, April 1970.
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Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
-- Edsger Dijkstra -
I didn't choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.
-- Elena Ferrante -
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If something you want is slow to come to you, it can be for only one reason: You are spending more time focused upon its absence than you are about its presence. If
-- Esther Hicks -
Mythological subjects always new. Modern subjects difficult because of the absence of the nude and the wretchedness of modern costume.
-- Eugene Delacroix -
Competition is merely the absence of oppression.
-- Frederic Bastiat -
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We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
What we call evil is the absence of Light, of love, in all cases.
-- Gary Zukav -
Sometimes you can only feel something by its absence. By the empty spaces it leaves behind.
-- Gayle FormanSource : FaceBook post by Gayle Forman from Oct 07, 2015
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In the calculus of feelings, you never really know how one person's absence will affect you more than another's.
-- Gayle Forman -
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With the absence of pressure, it's hard to do great things.
-- Geno Auriemma -
The chief requisite for the making of a good chicken pie is chicken; no amount of culinary legerdemain can make up for the lack of chicken. In the same way, the chief requisite for the history of science is intimate scientific knowledge; no amount of philosophic legerdemain can make up for its absence.
-- George Sarton -
We soon cease to feel the grief at the deaths of our friends, yet we continue to the end of our lives to miss them. They are still with us in their absence.
-- Gerald Brenan -
The percept is the landscape before man, in the absence of man.
-- Gilles Deleuze -
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Not longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man.
-- Hans Urs von Balthasar -
Freedom which has genuine meaning is more than a timeless abstraction, more than an absence of restraints.
-- Helen Lynd -
Peace must be more than the absence of war.
-- Helmut KohlSource : "With the stroke of a pen, peace comes to Bosnia". www.cnn.com. December 14, 1995.
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At bottom, everything depends upon the presence or absence of one single element in the soul - HOPE
-- Henri Frederic Amiel -
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.
-- Henry Adams -
The greatest danger that threatens us is neither heterodox thought nor orthodox thought, but the absence of thought.
-- Henry Steele CommagerSource : "Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent". Book by Henry Steele Commager, 1954.
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The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.
-- Henry Steele Commager -
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Among Jews, there is an absence of drunkenness, always a fruitful source of domestic strife and misconduct.
-- Hermann AdlerSource : "The Pentateuch and Haftorahs" by Joseph H. Hertz, p. 933, (One-volume edition), 1937.
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Short absence quickens love; long absence kills it.
-- Honore Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau -
Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part. Faith saves, because it owns the complete salvation of another, and not because it contributes anything to that salvation.
-- Horatius BonarSource : Horatius Bonar, Rev Terry Kulakowski, Editor “THE EVERLASTING RIGHTEOUSNESS”, Lulu.com
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A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence; I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.
-- Idries Shah -
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Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the recognition that some things are more important than fear - and what's more important to me is faith.
-- Irshad Manji -
In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence.
-- Isaac NewtonSource : "Human Nature : An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective", Vol. 1, Issues 7-12, p. 47, 1978.
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We know that an object that is not consciously noticed at the time of a first visit can, by its absence during subsequent visits, provoke an indefinable impression: as a result of this sighting backward in time, the absence of the object becomes a presence one can feel.
-- Ivan ChtcheglovSource : Guy Debord, Ivan Chtcheglov, Asger Jorn, Raoul Vaneigem, Mustapha Khayati (2014). “Situationism: A Compendium”, p.9, Bread and Circuses Publishing
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Faith is not the absence of doubt; it is continuing to follow Jesus in the midst of doubt.
-- J. D. Greear -
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For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence.
-- Jacques Lacan -
Iraq is not going to starve to death because of the absence of assistance from Arab countries.
-- Jalal Talabani -
It is the absence of hope, which equals the despair that is the punishment.
-- James FoxSource : James Fox (1996). “Killer on Campus”
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Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it.
-- James Howell -
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Absence, the highest form of presence.
-- James JoyceSource : James Joyce (1965). “The dead”
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Absence makes the heart grow fonder… or forgetful.
-- James M. Barrie -
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that
-- James Neil Hollingworth -
Will capitalist economies operate at full employment in the absence of routine intervention? Certainly not,
-- Janet YellenSource : "Why Janet Yellen Should Be Fed Chair (In 4 Quotes)" By Mark Gongloff, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 16, 2013.
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God is absence. God is the solitude of man.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre -
Your absence weighs more than someone else’s presence
-- Jeffrey McDaniel -
Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it's decoration.
-- Jeffrey ZeldmanSource : "Infographics and marketing: the good, the bad and the ugly" by Freddie Ossberg, www.theguardian.com. February 18, 2013.
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Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
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Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Security is not found in the absence of danger, but in the presence of Jesus.
-- John EldredgeSource : John Eldredge, Stasi Eldredge (2011). “Captivating Revised and Updated: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul”, p.118, Thomas Nelson Inc
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Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths.
-- John Peter Zenger -