A Quote by V. S. Pritchett

The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.

V. S. Pritchett

Quote Topics

Always Because Edge Nature Once Part Past Present Remembers Unknown Unless

Quote Author

V. S. Pritchett
British - Writer
December 16, 1900 - March 20, 1997

It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it’s where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own. Scientists too, as J. Robert Oppenheimer once remarked, ‘live always at the ‘edge of mystery’—the boundary of the unknown.’ But they transform the unknown into the known, haul it in like fishermen; artists get you out into that dark sea.

Rebecca Solnit

It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that-it's all illusion. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing. Everything is unknown-then you're ahead of the game. That's what it is. Right?

John Lennon

Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown - but the present is real, and your opportunities are now.

Maxwell Maltz

Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

We can't have an idea of what life should look like, about how spirit should be manifesting as our very life, because all of those ideas would just be products of the past - something we learned, imagined, or desired. Once again, we find ourselves back in the unknown - not in the idea of the unknown, but in the lived reality of it. It's the mind humbled, on its knees, with bare feet and free of the known.

Adyashanti

Edited by mostly unknown scholars in A.D. 367, compiled from documents written 30 to 110 years after the Christ event by no one who was present at the events, and composed for the most part by unknown authors in the Greek language that Jesus never spoke, it is held up as the only true record of the Christ story.

Leonard Shlain

The unknown winner of an unknown city, located in an unknown country, is Man.

Dominique Pire

Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us, ZORAC announced after a short pause. The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious.

James P. Hogan

Improvisation is empowering because it welcomes the unknown. And since what's impossible is always unknown, it allows me to believe I can cheat the impossible.

Philippe Petit

The mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-create what it knows and is familiar with. Even if it is painful, at least it is familiar. The mind always adheres to the known. The unknown is dangerous because it has no control over it. That's why the mind dislikes and ignores the present moment.

Eckhart Tolle

But between the plan and the operation, there is always an unknown. That unknown spells victory or defeat. ... Some people call it getting the breaks. I call it God. God has His part in everything. That's where prayer comes in.

George S. Patton

Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.

H. G. Wells

Unless we make revolutionary reforms, some day - in some unknown serra - some unknown Fidel Castro will rise up in Brazil.

Janio Quadros

The reason why Christ is unknown today is because His Mother is unknown.

John Henry Newman

Anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness. That's when our understanding goes deeper, when we find that the present moment is a pretty vulnerable place and that this can be completely unnerving and completely tender at the same time.