Trace Quotes
More Trace Quotes
If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
penn jillette— p. 129 (God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011))
“I’m very sorry,” the drone said, without a trace of contrition.
iain banks— Chapter 3 (p. 308)
It was somewhere between the interview with the Indian entrepreneur who wanted to do my taxes from Bangalore and the one who wanted to write my software from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to read my x-rays from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to trace my lost luggage from Bangalore...I was realizing that, while I had been sleeping, while I had been off covering the 9/11 wars, I had missed something really fundamental in this globalization story. I had lost the thread, and I found it in Bangalore.
— Thomas Friedman, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century".
Weave the warp, and weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room, and verge enough The characters of hell to trace.
thomas gray— 1757 The Bard. A Pindaric Ode, l.49-52.
When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side, What stalked through the Post Office? What intellect, What calculation, number, measurement, replied? We Irish, born into that ancient sect But thrown upon this filthy modern tide And by its formless spawning fury wrecked, Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace The lineaments of a plummet-measured face.
William Butler Yeats— "The Statues", stanza 4 (1938). Collected in Last Poems (1939).
Myriads of individuals, each one unique, live out their lives in rapt intercourse with one another, contribute their heart's pulses to the universal music, and presently vanish, giving place to others. All this age-long sequence of private living, which is the actual tissue of humanity's flesh, I cannot describe. I can only trace, as it were, the disembodied form of its growth.
Olaf Stapledon— Chapter XIV: Neptune
Yet in my lineaments they trace Some features of my father's face.
lord byron— Parisina, Stanza 13, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
C. S. Lewis— Letter VIII (The Screwtape Letters (1942))
Most students of nature sooner or later pass through a process of writing off a large percentage of their supposed capital of knowledge as a merely illusory asset. As we trace more accurately certain familiar sequences of phenomena we begin to realize how closely these sequences, or laws , as we call them, are hemmed round by still other laws of which we can form no notion. With myself this writing off of illusory assets has gone rather far and the cobweb of supposed knowledge has been pinched (as some one has phrased) into a particularly small pill.
william crookes— Address as President to the Society for Psychical Research (29 January 1897), published in Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. XII (March 1897), p. 338
Sweet babe, in thy face soft desires I can trace. Secret joys and secret smiles, little pretty infant wiles.
william blake— William Blake, A Cradle Song.
Unlike ballet, the demi plié of Bharata Natyam is not an intermediary position from which the body moves. The Indian technique demands a muscular consolidation of this position by allowing the weight of the lower body to ‘earth’ it. The arms in natya-aramba in a semi circular shape peculiar to Bharata Natyam create three-dimensional effect to the circle and trace its curve.
— In "The Routledge Dance Studies Reader" p.185
A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.
Whistler— 1890 The GentleArt of Making Enemies.
Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they can scarcely trace how, rather than root them out.
— 1792 AVindication of the Rights ofWoman, pt.1, ch.1.
As a matter of fact, there is no trace of ill-health in Me. I am always healthy. Not only today, till 96 years I will be like this.
sathya sai baba— 05 Oct. 2003, Prasanthi Nilayam in Sathya Sai Speaks, volume 36 chapter 14, discourse title "Give up Dehabhimana develop Atmabhiman"
Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology — we are quite unable to imagine the contrary...
erwin schrödinger— "The Oneness of Mind", as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds. Then can we turn to life and fill the whole horizon of our souls with it, turn with added zest toall the serious tasks which it imposes and to the pure delights which here and there it affords.
felix adler— Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
We can now determine, easily and relatively cheaply, the detailed chemical architecture of genes ; and we can trace the products of these genes ( enzymes and proteins ) as they influence the course of embryology . In so doing we have made the astounding discovery that all complex animal phyla - arthropods and vertebrates in particular - have retained, despite their half-billion years of evolutionary independence, an extensive set of common genetic blueprints for building bodies.
stephen jay gould— "Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 330
Weave the warp, and weave the woof, The winding sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room and verge enough, The Characters of hell to trace.
thomas gray— II, 1, Line 1.
I am the family face; Flesh perishes, I live on, Projecting trait and trace Through time to times anon, And leaping from place to place Over oblivion.
thomas hardy— Heredity, lines 1-6, from Moments of Vision (1917).
It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness.
mary wollstonecraft— Ch. 4 (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792))
The noble Moor of Spain is anything but a pure Arab of the desert, he is half a Berber (from the Aryan family) and his veins are so full of Gothic blood that even at the present day noble inhabitants of Morocco can trace their descent back to Teutonic ancestors.
houston stewart chamberlain— Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the 19th Century (1899), Adamant Media Corporation, 2005, p.398
These are the methods by which the Illuminés, without any apparent organization, without settled leaders, agree together from the banks of the Rhine to those of the Neva, from the Baltic to the Dardanelles, and advance continually towards the same goal, without leaving any trace that might compromise the interests of the association or even bring suspicion on any of its members; the most active police would fail before such a combination.
— Francois Charles de Berckheim, in a secret police report to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1814), as quoted in The Return of the Puritans (1983) by Pat Brooks, p. 76
Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disasters in his morning face.
Oliver Goldsmith— Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770), line 199.
And Thou, vast Ocean! on whose awful face Time's iron feet can print no ruin trace.
robert montgomery— Robert Montgomery, The Omnipresence of the Deity, Part I, Stanza 20.
We must, as in all cases of tradition, trace backwards, and presume, from the usage which is remembered, that the precedent usage was the same.
— Earl of Mansfield, Proceedings against the Dean of St. Asaph (1783), 21 How. St. Tr. 1036.
When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life, Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
— Walt Whitman in "When I Read the Book" (1867; 1871) in Leaves of Grass
We must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad , loyal or corrupt , from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions , either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them.
— Sarah Bernhardt in: Elizabeth Silverthorne Sarah Bernhardt, Infobase Publishing, 2003, p.104
If only I could throw away the urge to trace my patterns in your heart, I could really see you.
— David Brandon (Zen in the Art of Helping)
Slow let us trace the matchless vale of Thames; Fair winding up to where the Muses haunt In Twit'nham bowers, and for their Pope implore.
james thomson— James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 1,425, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 785.
