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
“I’m very sorry,” the drone said, without a trace of contrition.
iain banks— Chapter 3 (p. 308)
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).
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.
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
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'.
Poets like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.
Alexander Pope— 1711An Essay on Criticism, l.293-8.
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)
Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.
frederick douglass— Ch. 11 (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845))
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"
L'existence du Soldat est (après la peine de mort) la trace la plus douloureuse de barbarie qui subsiste parmi les hommes.
alfred de vigny— The soldier's lot is the most melancholy relic of barbarism (next to capital punishment) that lingers on among mankind.
— Servitude et grandeur militaires; (ed.) Paul Viallaneix Oeuvres complètes, (1965) p. 358; translation from Humphrey Hare (trans.) The Military Necessity (1953) p. 17. (1835)
Somebody said that it couldn't be done,But he with a chuckle replied"maybe it couldn't," but he would be onewouldn't say so till he'd tried.he buckled right in with the trace of a grinhis face. If he worried he hid it.He started to sing as he tackled the thingThat couldn't be done, and he did it.
— Edgar Albert Guest, "It Couldn't Be Done," stanza 1, Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest (1934), p. 285.
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.
I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith but I received strength, it tears the world apart. I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores and a young wave will cover my trace.
czesław miłosz— "Hymn" (1935), trans. by Czes?aw Mi?osz
And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace Of finer form or lovelier face.
walter scott— Canto I, stanza 18.
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
Somebody said that it couldn't be done, But he with a chuckle replied "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one wouldn't say so till he'd tried. he buckled right in with the trace of a grin his face. If he worried he hid it. He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it.
— Edgar Albert Guest, "It Couldn't Be Done," stanza 1, Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest (1934), p. 285.
The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary stages in the development of many-celled organisms.
robert jastrow— Robert Jastrow, Red Giants and White Dwarfs, p. 249.
Just in proportion as the soul is in fellowship with the Lord Jesus, in communion with His will, shall we trace His leadings, hear His voice, and understand in part.
— P. 247. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
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.
In the greatest poet of the older generation in France, Victor Hugo, a weak species of pantheistic deism asserts itself, in spite of his enthusiastic rationalism; we still trace in him the influence of the preceding century; religion is glorified at the expense of religions; love, which unites, at the expense of dogma, which separates and scatters.
— Georg M. Brandes, Henrik Ibsen (1999) p. 68 ISBN 0405083025.
What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.
ralph waldo emerson— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Illusions, The Conduct of Life (1860).
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"
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.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos (1878), line 382. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 43-45
