A Quote by Lewis Mumford

When vitality runs high, death takes men by surprise. But if they close their eyes to this possibility, what they gain in peace they lose in sensibility and significance.

Lewis Mumford

Quote Topics

Close Death Eyes Gain High Lose Men Peace Possibility Runs Sensibility Significance Surprise Takes Vitality

Quote Author

Lewis Mumford
American - Sociologist
October 19, 1895 - January 26, 1990

Of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. . . . Vitality never "takes." You have it or you haven't it, like health or brown eyes or a baritone voice.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Well, stealing bases adds some runs but very few, and you lose most of the runs that you gain by having runners caught stealing.

Bill James

We can try to gain some of the sensibility of some of the indigenous populations of the world or our predecessors 800 years ago. We can laugh at them as being naive and unsophisticated, but unless we can gain that sensibility that there has to be rights of nature as Bolivians and others put it, then we're going to be destroyed.

Noam Chomsky

The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon [the] possibility of freedom - and thus its significance - in a world dominated by apparatuses; to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give significance to their lives in the face of the chance necessity of death. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us.

Vilem Flusser

Forgiveness offers the possibility of two types of peace: peace of mind - the potential healing of old emotional wounds, and peace with others - the possibility of new, more gratifying relationships in the future.

Kenneth Pargament

Am I awake or dreaming? It doesn’t matter anymore. When I close my eyes I dream of death and war. When I open my eyes I see death and war.

Michael Anthony

Calculating people are contemptable. The reason for this is that calculation deals with loss and gain, and the loss and gain mind never stops. Death is considered loss and life is considered gain. Thus, death is something that such a person does not care for, and he is contemptable. Furthermore, scholars and their like are men who with wit and speech hide their own true cowardice and greed. People often misjudge this.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Go on and close your eyes, go on imagine me there She's got similar features with longer hair And if that's what it takes to get you through Go on and close your eyes it shouldn't bother you

Melissa Etheridge

Beauties, when disposed to sleep, Should from the eye of keen inspector keep: The lovely nymph who would her swain surprise, May close her mouth, but not conceal her eyes; Sleep from the fairest face some beauty takes, And all the homely features homelier makes.

George Crabbe

When you lose the gayborhoods, you lose the political power that comes when you're concentrated in precincts, and you also lose the cultural vitality.

Cleve Jones

There are many different techniques and forms of meditation. The common element among these techniques is that the person takes time out from the daily pace of life to close their eyes and reflect on thoughts or images that create internal feelings of peace and relaxation.

Tim McCarthy

Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much.

Walter Savage Landor

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

So use all that is called fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all and lose all, as her wheel rolls... A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Pat Tillman

Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death- Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.