Trace Quotes
More Trace Quotes
Life is short, even for those who live a long time, and 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. We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.
sarah bernhardt— Ch. 33 (My Double Life (1907))
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
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).
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.
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".
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
The village master taught his little school; A man severe he was and stern to view; I knew him well, and every truant knew; Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee, At all his jokes, for manya joke had he.
Oliver Goldsmith— The Deserted Village, lines 196-202 (1770)
When I behold, upon the night's starred face Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness so sink.
john keats— 1818 'When I Have FearsThat I May Cease to Be'.
There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken of or written of, though it would be wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.
a. s. byatt— Postscript, Page 508
A stone lies in a river; a piece of wood is jammed against it; dead leaves, drifting logs, and branches caked with mud collect; weeds settle there, and soon birds have made a nest and are feeding their young among the blossoming water plants. Then the river rises and the earth is washed away. The birds depart, the flowers wither, the branches are dislodged and drift downward; no trace is left of the floating island but a stone submerged by the water; — such is our personality.
cyril connolly— The Unquiet Grave, Part I: Ecce Gubernator (p. 20)
When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.
shunryu suzuki— Quoted in ''Enter the Heart of the Fire : A collection of Mystical Poems (1981) by Mary E. Giles and Kathryn Hohlwein
Superstition sawSomething it had never seen before:Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear,Beauty so sudden for that time of year.
jean toomer— from "November Cotton Flower"
In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men. But the capitalist really depends on some religion of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguish himself from human kind; he must be obviously above it or he would be obviously below it.
gilbert keith chesterton— p. 34 (The Great Minimum)
Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible , and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistance which undermines the plane of organization of the World and the States?
gilles deleuze— from Dialogues with Claire Parnet, p. 147 [emphasis in original].
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))
Art is the child of Nature; yes, Her darling child, in whom we trace The features of the mother's face, Her aspect and her attitude, All her majestic loveliness Chastened and softened and subdued Into a more attractive grace, And with a human sense imbued. He is the greatest artist, then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who follows Nature.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Kéramos, st. 29
A flushed face, white hair and a twinkle in his eye; and this twinkling got him out of scrapes that would have sunk a worthier man without trace.
james bolivar manson— Kenneth Clark, quoted in Frances Spalding, The Tate: A History (1998), pp. 62–70. Tate Gallery Publishing, London. ISBN 1854372319.
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
Despite the immense diversity of creation, we all accept that there exists in nature a profound underlying unity. The search for this unity provides the motivation for the lives of many different men some who, like Einstein , search for it in general natural laws and others who, like Teilhard de Chardin, would trace cosmic evolution to a divine origin.
— René Dubos, Science and Man's Nature (1965).
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
...quite in keeping with Trotsky’s passion for ideas, his generous indignation at injustice, was his sense of personal rectitude, his idealistic approach to life. All who knew him intimately even when he was one of the rulers of Russia speak of it. Max Eastman and also Souvarine, who, a fierce opponent of Trotsky’s politics, has said of him that there was nothing “mesquin” in his character, not a trace of rascality. It is a noticeable characteristic of many great writers and philosophers, but a fatal weakness in a politician.
— C. L. R. James, "Trotsky’s Place In History", The New International, September 1940.
Poets like painters, thus unskill'd to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover every part, And hide with ornaments their want of art.
Alexander Pope— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), line 293.
A mind that has the slightest trace of attachment to the world cannot be called pure. When all the impurities of the mind are removed, you may call that mind Pure Mind or Pure ?tman.
— Ramakrishna, as quoted in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 68
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— Thomas Gray, Bard, Canto II.
I care not, Fortune , what you me deny; You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace , You cannot shut the windows of the sky , Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve.
james thomson— James Thomson, Castle of Indolence (1748), Canto II, Stanza 3
Such blessings Nature pours, O'erstock'd mankind enjoy but half her stores. In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace And waste their music on the savage race.
Edward Young— Edward Young, Love of Fame (1725-28), Satire V, line 232
Diamond deposits are not easily found. Diamonds occur in some of the rarest rock types on the surface of the earth , and when found, they are disseminated in trace amounts even in the richest deposits.
— Edward Erlich, W. Dan Hausel, in "Diamond Deposits: Origin, Exploration, and History of Discovery"
